One giant leap for Wangkind?
The tricky part about following the progress of a project like the Lighthouse is that there are so few milestones that you can really sink your teeth into. That's why when months go by without discernible progress, it's easy to suspect the worst. Add a dash of Kansas City and a sprinkle of Saskatoon, and all hell breaks loose—even when there are assurances that everyone is taking care of their business.
It's also why days like yesterday seem like major victories, when in reality they are merely single, positive steps up the ladder to the lantern room. In all fairness, the Lighthouse Development Group made sure that yesterday's town meeting actually climbed two rungs.
For the uninitiated, that is, the wider HockeyBuzz community that may not have the time or interest level necessary to follow, or make sense, of this complicated process, the Town of Hempstead voted 6-0 yesterday to adopt the final scope of the Draft General Environmental Impact Study. In plain English, as I understand it, that means that the Town Board accepted the developers' proposal of the range of environmental issues that pertain to this land development project and need to be addressed.
Under typical circumstances, that would have been yesterday's big news. Once the final scope was adopted, the developers would then have to prepare the Environmental Impact Study to state how the project actually impacts the environment and how they propose to manage the environmental concerns. Having no interest in delaying any further, the Lighthouse Development Group, led by Islanders owner Charles Wang and real estate developer Scott Rechler, submitted the completed studies the very same day. You can read as much of the document, in all its thousands of pages,
here, if you so choose.
So what's next? Here is the sequence of steps as reported by Nick Giglia of
Let There Be Light(house), who spoke at yesterday's meeting in support of the Lighthouse Project:
* Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Submitted (Lighthouse/Town of Hempstead) - DONE as of this afternoon
* Review period and public comments (Town of Hempstead)
* Final Environmental Impact Statement and Scope (Town of Hempstead)
* Approval of Property Divisions (Nassau County Planning Commission)
* Re-zoning Hearing (Town of Hempstead)
* Lease Negotiations (Nassau County)
* Building Permits Hearing (Town of Hempstead)
* Shovels in the Ground
As you can see, there's still a lot of work to be done before the earth starts moving. But progress is progress. Now we enter another waiting period, so don't be surprised if the quiet time leads to more speculation that the train has gone off the rails. That began today with a focus on the fact that Wang and Rechler will not be footing the bill for the Lighthouse on their own, and there's
debate about how easy it will be to round up investors in the current economic climate.
In the meantime, Wang was feeling good enough about the day's events to
go on the record with
Newsday's Eden Laikin about a number of issues that have occupied Islanders fans and watchers over the last couple of months. Wang admitted that scheduling an exhibition game in Kansas City was a purposeful tactic in what has been a mostly amicable tug of war with the Town of Hempstead. He also expressed his right to keep his options for locating the team open should the deal sour (including an out in the lease), but spoke even more forcefully of his desire to see the Lighthouse through.
Big House Hat Trick for Former Owners
In what is thankfully only tangentially related news,
The Daily News reports that Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, two members of the so-called Gang of Four ownership group that did Islanders fans no favors, were
arrested on charges of securities fraud today. The charges accuse the Gang of Two of using investment funds from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University to purchase such things as horses and luxury apartments for themselves. The two universities are seeking the return of $114 million. This marks the third time that Islanders owners have faced significant fraud charges in that last 15 years. John Spano and Sanjay Kumar are already serving jail time. It's enough to make you wary of anyone with sufficient funds to buy a professional sports franchise. Or, in Spano's case, insufficient funds.
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