IS THE LIGHT STILL ON? A Special Report On The Lighthouse Project

If one listened to the cacophony of voices that were left as October 3rd came and went, one would have heard shrill and concerned voices fraught with panic, anger, frustration, rumor and innuendo. Listening, one would construe that Brooklyn or Queens were imminent. Brooklyn and Queens, two places that are rife with the kind of opposition, protest and lawsuits that makes this impasse with the Lighthouse Project and the Town of Hempstead look like a cakewalk.

Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards got rid of their architect back in early summer that was going for the huge venue that could have also fit the hockey ice and sizing that it needs. Instead, they changed gears and went cheap/fast due to sheer economics which has changed the fabric and aim of what that project was originally going for…the moon. Under the current schema, hockey is NOT and CANNOT be included. Atlantic Yard’s also faces fierce opposition, despite a recent legal win.

Queen’s Willets Point, despite the Chamber of Commerce huckster that uses the press to send the NY Islanders an invite every chance he gets, has a lot of ways to go. They are preparing for a war with the current business owners who are gathered and suing. Fact is, they will use the NY Islanders name as much as they can to try to quantify the many blockades they will see as they attempt to move forward.

Neither of these routes are paved with gold as the good rumors say. Above all, they will not have one iota of what Charles Wang originally aimed to do when he conceived of the Lighthouse Project. These are follies and side stories as people try to pretend that this Nassau County plan, years and millions in the making, somehow doesn’t matter.

It matters.

It means everything.

Two sides sit talking without the news apparatus and public relations hoopla that reached a crescendo with opening night on October 3rd where we heard heated rhetoric along with polticalization. Tom Suozzi dropped that puck, as the Islanders and Lighthouse Project seemed to drop a cultivated message before it all went vweewy vweeewy qwwwwwiet.

So happened?

Kate Murray and Charles Wang met earlier last week on Wednesday. Just the two of them. Plain and simple. Hopefully a conversation that remains positive and constructive continues. The more we don’t hear on all of this is probably for the better.

Meanwhile, labor has been flexing a bit of muscle with some ads in Newsday as well as an online petition. Labor has a huge role here in the process in that the Lighthouse Project stands as a recession buster, able to employ thousands upon thousands in what is still dark times.

Labor stands to reason to be a far more piece of leverage for the Lighthouse Project than Willets Point and Atlantic Yards catcalls. The fact is, the Town of Hempstead would have a lot to explain for this year and after if the project failed to be passed and land remained unused as the economics around the county got tighter and tighter.

Speaking of tighter and tighter, the polls for Tom Suozzi, who has been a huge cheerleader for the Lighthouse Project, has found his polls getting that way. Those concerned about the Lighthouse Project’s politicization have now become even more so as Suozzi’s lead over Ed Mangano has shrunk to single digits. Suozzi will likely need to spend some cash to keep distance, meanwhile the 4 legislature seats are still “too close to call”.

Which will drop faster, my polls or this puck?

These is some concern that the Lighthouse might be used as crowbar to wedge into the battle, despite the fact Mangano has not said a word for or against the Nassau County Exec who is trying to get re-elected.If so, the rhetoric and far deeper rift between Republicans and Democrats that has been magnified by a recession and deep-set anger by constituents who are feeling it’s pain could burst any lucid conversation and negotiation apart.

So, as we sit just over a week deeper past Charles Wang’s October 3rd gong of “certainty”, what is certain is that both sides spoke and agreed for further discussion and to the people that will be involved. No, this is not certainty. But at least it is a start. May it continue unencumbered by anything else.

What if Patrick did not produce signs for 10/03's Islanders game?