Who doesn’t love Monopoly? Don’t answer. Monopoly is an iconic board game in which players buy and trade land, develop it with houses and hotels, and collect rent from their opponents, aiming to drive them into bankruptcy.
Named after the economic concept of a monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity, the Monopoly game is a derivative of The Landlord’s Game, created in 1903 by anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie.
Per Wikipedia: “Magie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.” Gee, that sounds like today’s headlines, innit?
This Land is My Land
Go check out the U.S Constitution for some context. To the framers, safeguarding property was pivotal in maintaining liberty and preventing tyranny. They saw property as an expression of individualism and autonomy, not just land and possessions, but as a fundamental human right.
To that end, our village governments play a vital role in protecting our property rights, balance-tested against local needs and community development. Basically, property owners improve their properties as they see fit, at maximum ROI, natch, within the bounds of our various village building codes. And us? We get to watch.
Experience shows that, in the ideal, real estate development requires alignment with demographics, economy, and land constraints. Many agree that the most feasible and sustainable path to our town’s “revitalization” is “mixed-use” properties, namely – residential housing above, curated ground-floor retail/services below.
There does not appear to be a peninsula-wide vision or playbook for real estate development among our nine historic villages and unincorporated areas of the Town of North Hempstead.
In a sense, each village government is its own fiefdom and is experiencing a boom in residential development, hundreds of units as market rate rentals, affordable units, and/ or condo sales. C’est la vie in our town.
Many of our local development projects, which shall remain nameless (to protect the innocent), are in the proposal, permitting or early construction phase. Some are fully built and already occupied.
The Big Debate
The “pro-development” camp of developers and builder-adjacent believe that multi-unit buildings are aligned with our town’s current needs for housing and revitalization. Great Neck’s respective mayors and village trustees mainly agree with the builders that mixed-use buildings are better than the alternatives – all residential or purely commercial. In some cases, the status quo of a neglected, blighted structure is unsafe or unacceptable, so any improvement at all is welcome.
Purportedly, a new residential base will support small businesses, and modernized, beautified storefronts will make our downtowns livelier for future generations.
The “preservationist” (a/k/a This is Not Forest Hills!) group, on the other hand, has legitimate concerns over parking adequacy, building height, neighborhood character, anticipated public school enrollment, and load on infrastructure. At public meetings across the peninsula, village trustees provide their constituents equal time to voice their issues.
The heated debates often spill over onto social media by “anonymous” and others. While the preservationists acknowledge individual property rights, they insist that the scope of the pending projects must be scaled down. Why not more attached garden style- condos, with lower sight lines, they ask. (Answer: less ROI)
Some Anticipated Perks
| We can all agree: Great Neck is a high-demand area with limited available land. The argument for new apartments are that they provide options for downsizing seniors and empty nesters who want to stay in town, young professionals who cannot afford single-family homes and families seeking access to Great Neck schools who need more affordable options than the current housing stock.
New multifamily options also offer luxury rentals/condos for higher-income buyers, inclusionary zoning or negotiated affordable units, and more modern, accessible, energy-efficient housing. If you build it, will they come? Development proponents say yes and insist that more households in new buildings will increase foot traffic on Middle Neck Road and its tertiary streets. |
Broom Clean & Vacant
Many suburban downtowns, including parts of Great Neck, face steady vacancy rates due to e-commerce and shifting consumer habits. With no disruptor on the radar, that is unlikely to change, so the stores risk staying empty.
In Great Neck Plaza, there is little retail variety, only an abundance of service businesses—food, beauty, banking and medical. We all know that getting a major supermarket to anchor The Gardens, our only real shopping center with ample free parking, (relatively speaking) took many years.
Incoming Aldi (dpring 2026) is taking only half of the “Best Market” space, and that is with landlord Kimco, and all its profuse resources, doing everything possible to lease the space. What is a “small” landlord to do, then, to defray rising carrying costs and slimming margins?
Innovation is Key
Assuming that the continuing trends of new development, online commerce and waning visitors from out of the area, how might we make “town”–particularly Great Neck Plaza–a more vibrant walkable destination and community gathering place, for those of us who live here? Only this:
- Beautification, color, art, lighting, music in the streets.
- More Promenade nights and al fresco dining.
- Fewer parking spots and wider sidewalks with benches.
- Free parking permits for P/T retail employees in garages.
- Less ticketing of cars, more free parking in general
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