Another round for another Hub

Daily Point

Three bidders for Ronk Hub

Suffolk County received only three submissions from potential bidders interested in developing the land known as the "Long Island Hub" — the vast stretch south of the Long Island Rail Road’s Ronkonkoma station.

The Point has confirmed that the three companies include Ronkonkoma-based Tritec Real Estate, Syosset-based Blumenfeld Development Group, and IMEG, the Woodbury engineering firm formerly known as Cameron Engineering.

The submissions came in response to the county’s Request for Expressions of Interest, which was generated after Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine canceled the project previously known as Midway Crossing and removed Jones Lang LaSalle as the master developer in January.

A committee that was constituted to review the responses will meet soon "and put the next steps in place quickly," said Romaine spokesman Michael Martino. He told The Point that the number of submissions made sense because the county’s request was "very specialized."

"We knew there would be a limited amount of people who could respond to this project," Martino said.

Previously, county officials said Jones Lang LaSalle hadn’t put together a "viable financial plan" or a full development team, and was unable to bring its proposal to fruition.

"Ed Romaine has taken these steps to bring order to the past chaos," Martino said.

IMEG’s John Cameron had been a partner of JLL in the previous proposal. Now, he told The Point, his company has submitted on its own.

"We have seven years of experience on the site," Cameron said. "In all candor and humility, we know more about the site than probably anybody."

Tritec Real Estate has ties to the site, too, as the company is developing Station Yards, a mixed-use development that eventually will feature 1,450 housing units, on the north side of the LIRR tracks.

"We want to listen to the community to see what their thoughts are and get their input into the planning process before we propose a specific project," Tritec principal Jim Coughlan told The Point.

"But we think we’re uniquely qualified as a Long Island developer who has addressed many of the issues that this regionally significant project is going to face ..." Coughlan added.

Coughlan noted that Tritec has had to deal with multiple layers of government, infrastructure challenges, and zoning and environmental review processes in its work on Station Yards.

"We’ve successfully addressed [those challenges] on the north side and are looking forward to potentially doing so on the south side," he added.

Developer Ed Blumenfeld, meanwhile, told The Point his past experience in bidding for and proposing plans for the Nassau Hub would serve him in building at the Hub in Suffolk.

"We have a vision that we know that we can complete and bring to market the same way we had when we tried to do the Nassau Hub," Blumenfeld said, noting that his proposal would require the infrastructure funds that the county and state have promised.

Gov. Kathy Hochul had announced that the state would allocate $150 million for a variety of infrastructure improvements on the Ronkonkoma property, although some of it would be used for a pedestrian walkway linking the LIRR station to a new north terminal for Long Island MacArthur Airport.

The county’s efforts come as the Town of Islip is simultaneously going through its own process to seek a developer for a new or upgraded terminal and ways to connect it to the train station. About a dozen industry representatives have applied to lead potential projects there.

"The town and the county are in constant communication regarding this project," Martino said.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

The Wrench

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/junenationalcartoons

Final Point

Gold Coast villages host rare scraps

Despite its status as a very upscale community on the North Shore of Nassau County, with only 407 people as of the last U.S. Census, the Village of Centre Island has emerged this season as a center of hard-fought electoral intrigue.

This week, Andrew Woodstock, who’s been an insurgent mayoral candidate, urged a state Supreme Court justice to reverse his recent disqualification from Tuesday’s ballot. Woodstock charged in legal papers that the incumbent mayor, Lawrence Schmidlapp, and his wife, the village clerk, participated in a conspiracy to block him from running for office.

The details are complex, but the Schmidlapp side got Woodstock’s petition voided after charging "moral turpitude" related to a past court case involving his construction company, and residency concerns. Woodstock, however, says he has been a Centre Island resident for 32 years.

And Centre Island isn’t the only tony North Shore burg drawing outside attention for not-so-neighborly ferment in the lead-up to Tuesday’s village elections across Long Island. For the first time in many years, the Village of Sands Point, population about 2,700, has a contested mayoral election with nonprofit executive Jeremiah Bosgang challenging incumbent Mayor Peter Forman, who has held the position since 2019.

Forman has been listed in the past as on the board of register.com, a public internet tech company. He's known politically for his involvement with the Republican Jewish Coalition. Bosgang is executive director of the nonprofit Sands Point Preserve Conservancy, with which he’s been involved for some 13 years, before which he was involved in film and television development, and he has served on the board of trustees of the Community Synagogue in Port Washington.

Bosgang’s campaign says on social media that he is "running for Mayor to restore honest, effective leadership that puts our community first — because he believes local government should work for you, not against you." Forman told The Point on Thursday: "I have always been and am a taxpayer — and aligned with other taxpayers."

Both are veiled shots. Online innuendo has gone further. Bosgang has defended himself as a presence in the community against Forman saying he didn’t attend village meetings until recently.

Forman offsets the "against you" dig by saying, "We have balanced our budgets, generated millions of dollars a year in additional cash for our funds, improved our water infrastructure, improved our Village Club, and maintained the highest public safety."

Needless to say, these heated races are too small for a big-league pollster to poll, so anyone in suspense in Nassau County will just have to await the results to see what happens.

— Dan Janison dan.janison@newsday.com

Programming Point

The Point will be back in your inbox on Monday.

Subscribe to The Point here and browse past editions of The Point here.