It appears the Webber Law Group, of Melville, isn’t giving up the effort to force an unnecessary and unwanted mall to be built on the Cerro Wire property in Syosset.
They have launched an end run around the area residents and the Town of Oyster Bay by appealing to the Nassau County Planning Commission. We have been living for many years with the result of Planning Commission decisions (build stores on any size, any piece of vacant land in Nassau) … good thinking!
They say construction jobs are needed, jobs will be created, etc. Notice to all the lawyers working against area residents and the struggling Broadway Mall and the Walt Whitman Mall: Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
Any construction work is short lived. When that job is done, what then, find another piece of land and build stores there to create jobs. We have constructed our way through every open land left in Nassau. Nice job Nassau Planning Commission! Suffolk County land will be gone too in the not too distant future. Like the defense industry, construction jobs have moved to other areas of the country. If an “upscale mall” is needed, build it where the “upscale” folks live. Put the mall on Rt. 25A in East Norwich, call it “Miracle Mile East;” the five Malls in Nassau are enough.
Not one more store should be built until the hundred or so vacant stores already built, for the sake of construction jobs, are filled. Prime example: for two years now, 25 vacant stores have sat on Rt. 107 in the Hicksville/Bethpage area. Again, good thinking! The construction job train like the defense jobs has left the station long ago.
Jobs: except for the holidays, most stores have three employees; the larger stores have a few more. The Planning Commission should talk to some of these “employees.” They would find out that these are minimum wage jobs, no benefits and reduced hours. These jobs are not the true definition of what a real job is – a job that will support a home and a family. So one more time, don’t pee on my leg and tell me its raining!
Here is my idea that will fill up the contaminated land that nobody should live or work on: Build a nice stone wall around it, trees would be nice, but they will die off quickly. Inside could be developed an “Upscale Cemetery” with a special section reserved for lawyers and Planning Commission members past and present. More jobs: office staff, accountants, gravediggers, equipment operators and landscapers or artificial turf installers. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig! Enough already.
Owen W. Magee
