![\"\"](\"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/images.jpg\" "\\"images\\"")
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On September 21st at 5 PM, the Town of Huntington will hold a public hearing to vote on whether or not to rezone a long vacant part of their town near the railroad station, to allow the construction of 490 housing units<\/a> proposed by the large national builder, Avalon Bay<\/a>. Currently the site is zoned as-of-right for 109 single family homes. The proposal is to create a Transit-Oriented District, or TOD for this particular 26 acre site.<\/p>\n While no project is perfect, this one comes about as close as you can to hitting all the marks. The project’s sponsor, Avalon Bay<\/a>, is a large national builder with a solid reputation for building high quality communities, and the wherewith-all to back up their promises financially. They have been working with the various civics for over two years on an investment of over $100 million in an area that sorely needs revitalization. An organized, but relatively small group of local residents<\/a> have recently convinced the School Board to withdraw their previously granted support for the project. And now the town board is backing down.<\/p>\n As of today, it looks like the proposal is going to be defeated<\/a>; a true loss for all the parties involved. Considering how far it’s come, if this<\/span> project can’t get approved, then any hope that Long Island will be able to solve it’s death spiral of high tax\/low affordability\/brain drain, will take another huge step backwards.\u00a0It’s impossible for me to imagine that the local elected officials have been unable to figure out how to navigate a path for the private sector to make this kind of investment in an area that so sorely needs it.<\/p>\n I have no dog in this fight other than the fact that I’m an active homebuilder, and a lifetime resident of Long Island. And I have no doubt that both sides are sincere in their view. But once again, I’m frustrated by another example of a how far away we are from having a process in place that can solve Long Island’s problems. We are a very fractured group of towns and villages, and the result is we’re drowning in our collective self-interests. The Huntington Town Board, School Board and elected officials have a rare opportunity here to lead by example, to get everyone on the same page, to make the tough decisions and the hard calls. That’s going to be a daunting task given what I’ve heard and read. But if they can pull this project back from the brink, that would really be something I’d stand up and applaud.<\/p>\n Facebook – Say NO to Avalon Huntington Station<\/a> On September 21st at 5 PM, the Town of Huntington will hold a public hearing to vote on whether or not to rezone a long vacant part of their town near the railroad station, to allow the construction of 490 housing units proposed by the large national builder, Avalon Bay. Currently the site is zoned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[96,88,94,205,90,66,65,112,89,76,92,91,93,71,95,113],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-housing","tag-affordable-housing","tag-avalon-bay","tag-brain-drain","tag-housing","tag-huntington-station","tag-long-island","tag-new-york","tag-nibmy","tag-reit","tag-suffolk-county","tag-tod","tag-town-of-huntington","tag-transit-oriented-development","tag-urban-planning","tag-workforce-housing","tag-yimby"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1274j-9t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":172,"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":761,"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steveleigh.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFacebook – Say YES to Avalon Huntington Station<\/a>
\nFacebook – Town of Huntington Voters Block<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"