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2005
Smart
Growth Awards
June
17th, 11:30am - 2:00pm
at
the Crest Hollow Country Club
Check
out our 2005
Awards Journal, detailing all of our honorees
Special
Thanks to Our Sponsors
See
More Images and Press Release
Learn
About our Past Events and Honorees
A
Message From the President...
My,
how things are changing. Only a couple of years ago, say
the words “Smart Growth” and you could be assured of a shrug
of ignorance, a look of confusion, or a snicker. No more.
Smart Growth on Long Island has become a serious and respected
business. It's not surprising, as municipal leaders, planners,
developers, and community leaders come to the same urgent
conclusions: We can no longer afford the luxury of poor
development and sprawl. Only the good planning tools of
Smart Growth are offering solutions.
Smart
Growth is no longer a concept; it's happening on the ground.
The Long Island Index — a product of the Rauch Foundation
— has set the stage, changing the land use debate by providing
credible, hard facts about the attitudes, opinions, and
plans of Long Islanders. A real life, shove-in-the-ground
example is New Cassel — a remarkable story of a community
working together with a municipality to pump new life into
a distressed area. So many are involved in creative, progressive
efforts, from Riverhead to Glen Cove , Westbury to Brookhaven,
Greenport, to Great Neck. In fact, almost every town on
Long Island has joined the movement toward progressive land
use.
The
winners of this year's Smart Growth awards demonstrate some
wonderful trends. Witness the New Gerard project in Huntington
village with apartments over lovely retail shops. The compact,
creative and attractive design of the Avalon apartments
in downtown Glen Cove and the Bristol in downtown Westbury
both provide for a mix of incomes. This year for the first
time VISION even offers an award for clean energy and green
design to the Setauket Firehouse.
Certainly
there's no argument, we still have far to go. High taxes
are driving school districts and civic groups to oppose
any developments with children, creating single-age conclaves.
There's apparently no slowing of big box development — Wal-mart,
the most troublesome “great white shark” of all box stores
has clearly set its sights on Long Island . And frankly,
we can't yet point to the equivalent of the magnificent
Kentlands , Maryland , or Celebration, Florida .
Yet
there is more good news. Enlightened civic groups are pressing
forward with proactive development that says “yes” to community-enhancing
projects and place-making, and that empowers a most important
element: political will. Consider the Lake Ronkonkoma Civic
Organization and its efforts to revitalize a challenged
downtown and sprawled artery. The civic group worked tirelessly
to create a new, realistic, glorious vision for their community.
It's happening more and more.
On
behalf of VISION, I offer my sincerest thanks for this year's
nominees, and heartiest congratulations to our award recipients.
Let's take inspiration from these efforts, and continue
to press forward with smart development that enhances our
communities, provides housing for different ages and incomes,
offers safe and walkable environments for our children and
elderly, and preserves our precious environment and quality
of life. We're moving forward in the right direction, so
onward!
From
the Executive Director...
We
are often asked if Smart Growth is taking hold on Long Island
. To try to get a handle on it we put a little spreadsheet
together on activity over the last nine years: To date,
Vision has given 830 presentations on to a range of Long
Islanders (100 elected officials, 150 local organizations,
30 members of the press, 50 regional organizations, 300
individuals, businesses, developers and community members,
and 200 tied to our ten community projects).
This
outreach has been a labor of love ranging from Knights of
Columbus halls, to local civic associations to Chambers
of Commerce. It reaches down where real decisions are made
on the local level. My favorite moment in nearly nine years
of working on this issue was when my local pizza delivery
guy, Charlie, gave me a detailed explanation of all of the
new initiatives to make downtowns and streets more walkable.
This
local level education has been the bulk of our work. What
has all this talk yielded? This is as far as we can tell:
--
Developers have proposed 25 Smart Growth projects. Sixteen
are in planning, 3 in construction. Six are completed.
--
Municipalities have generated 30 Smart Growth projects,
20 from unincorporated hamlets in 9 different Towns and
10 from incorporated Villages. These are in various stages
of completion.
--
Policy-wise, 6 towns have put forth initiatives to address
affordable housing. Ten have active open space programs.
Five have active downtown revitalization programs. Five
towns are actually moving ahead with code changes to facilitate
mixed use development.
Scores
of Long Island individuals and organizations are getting
the message and implementing a smart growth agenda. So what
has Vision done? Among highlights are code changes related
to our Mastic project that double the density of the redevelopment
area. Stay tuned for groundbreaking on a 65,000 square foot
mixed use center in Shirley. In Middle Island and Coram
we are wrapping up a land use plan that will facilitate
code changes to allow mixed use. In Lake Ronkonkoma , initial
projects are underway to bring back the downtown while we
await roadway reconstruction. In Rocky Point we have been
given an opportunity to work with the community and a developer
to create a walkable neighborhood with a community benefit
package providing significant support to the school district.
In Nassau County we are working with the Nassau Council
of Chambers of Commerce and the Nassau Village Officials
Association on the Nassau HUB redevelopment and transit
plan. Stay tuned for more in Oyster Bay, Port Washington,
Farmingdale and Southampton .
In
short, we are making a solid contribution. Are Smart Growth
ideas taking hold? Yes. Are we implementing them efficiently
enough? Frustratingly, no. It is still unnecessarily difficult
to advance quality projects. A national planner said recently
that it takes about as long to get a Smart Growth project
through the development process as it took us to fight World
War II. There are a couple of developers (and community
folks, for that matter) who agree that needs to change.
Today
we will celebrate the hard work and achievements of the
distinguished honorees. Hopefully we will all take their
passion, creativity and inspiration forward into our work.
Lets get it done!
Special
Thanks and Congratulations to our 2005 Honorees |
