26 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • OCTOBER 2018
PRESS BUSINESS
LI BUSINESSES INCREASINGLY BACK MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT
Ten years later, her Scottsdale
workforce has grown to over 130 people.
The agency is regularly touted
by Scottsdale economic development
leaders. I reached Venneri by phone
and asked if she had considered
starting her business on Long
Island.
“I love the people,” she said after
mulling it over for a moment. “But I
could never go back. (My) employees
can’t afford to live there.”
Every Long Island employer tells a
similar story. Typically they blame
high taxes, traffic congestion, or
even employee greed. Few acknowledge
that Long Island’s low-density,
highly restrictive zoning rules are
choking us. Millennials, Gen-Xers
and even many Boomers chafe at
archaic suburban patterns that
restrict their social, personal and
professional lives.
The alarming — and escalating —
rate at which companies are leaving
Long Island has finally woken up
the business community. When the
region’s only big-time professional
sports team, the National Hockey
League Islanders, made their We’re-
Moving-to-Brooklyn announcement
5 years ago, they delivered an unmistakable
wake-up call. Last year
the club was forced to walk it back.
By then, however, tens of thousands
of parents had experienced their
children moving back into their
basements, or scattering around the
country in search of jobs.
Here’s the gist: The most desirable
employers, and the most desirable
jobs, are elsewhere. So are the most
desirable employees. Obsolete,
car-centric suburban zoning, which
separates where you live from
where you socialize and where you
work, is a huge factor.
Paul Pontieri, the charismatic
Patchogue mayor who’s spearheaded
a much-admired downtown
revitalization, addressed a packed
room at the Hauppauge Industrial
Association of Long Island’s annual
luncheon this spring. He discussed
the South Shore community’s
revitalization from an employer’s
perspective.
“When Long Island businesses
make the decision to leave,” he said,
“it’s generally a matter of not having
employees who want to stay.”
The HIA luncheon was organized
to tout regional development with
emphasis on retaining employees.
When Mitch Pally, representing the
Island’s major builders’ association,
the Long Island Builders Institute,
cited the Long Island Index estimate
that 42 percent of under-35 Long Islanders
still live with their parents,
the crowd drew in its collective
breath.
Next to speak was Jim Coughlan, a
principal at Tritec Real Estate Company
in East Setauket. Tritec, which
is developing the $1.1 billion, 50-plus
acre Ronkonkoma Hub project, far
and away the Island’s foremost
mixed-use project.
Replacing the sprawling, dilapidated
Ronkonkoma Long Island
Rail Road complex with rental apartments,
entertainment, employment,
retail, nightlife, and restaurants, the
Ronkonkoma Hub is a transit-oriented,
mixed-use project such as
growth-oriented business leaders
might be expected to embrace.
As an update: Two of the Hub’s
hitherto political champions,
Brookhaven Town Supervisor
Edward Romaine and his Islip
counterpart, Angie Carpenter, cantankerously
broke ranks with the
developers late last month, casting
the project’s future in doubt.
Business people can be among the
most vociferous of objectors when
higher-density zoning is proposed.
Opponents often claim that these
projects attract low-income occupants
and bloat enrollment at local
schools. Politicians frequently react
by pressuring the projects to downsize.
Coughlan argued that mixeduse
projects like the Ronkonkoma
Hub consistently attract ambitious
single professionals, childless
couples, and empty nesters, not to
mention employers.
He didn’t shy from the dark side.
“We are going to keep on losing the
best talent we have,” he said, “if we
don’t start building more projects
like the Hub.”
The room stayed silent. He paused
a moment then said what was on
everyone’s mind.
“Many companies here are
zombies,” he went on. “Zombies.
They’re dead, because their employees
don’t want to be there. How
much longer before they’re forced
to leave, too?”
continued from page 25
Alexi Venneri was lured from LI to Arizona, where she launched a digital
marketing agency.
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