Move Over, Rod Serling. . .

From The West Hempstead Beacon:

Twilight Zoning

To the Editor:

Submitted for your approval. One downtrodden no-tell hotel. The epicenter of officially designated blight. To the east, a waste transfer station, where refuse sojourns through the night in its travels between no place and nowhere. To the west, a seemingly abandoned, litter-strewn, railroad right-of-way, home to rusting shopping carts and the invisible castaways of humanity.

The end of the line, both figuratively and literally, the screeching of a train’s steel against the cold tracks, piercing the deafening silence of a community’s collective voice, too long ignored, too often diminished to a whisper. A lonely whistle-stop somewhere west of a village that both time and Town forgot.

A Zoning Board that sits as Planning Board, rarely adept at either. “Twenty miles of ugly” along the turnpike. Down the avenue, a vigil to the ghosts of glory days past.

A people, not proud of their newly-acquired designation as “blighted,” who have offered up, over years that now meander into decades, a litany of reasons to close and raze that hellish hotel, only to hear in the echoes a barrage of excuses from Town Hall – the evils of Condemnation, the short-comings of Eminent Domain, the impracticalities of the Nuisance Law.

To endure, as no free and taxpaying people should have to, the consequences of malignant neglect on the part of a government that reacts but with hollow words and smiling photo ops.

That reasonable and resourceful “mix” of residential, retail, and recreational use – as proffered by the West Hempstead community since the cause of closing the Courtesy and revitalizing this gateway was first taken up in 1995 – would be the preferred route, all things being equal.

Then again, in the Town of Hempstead, few things are equal, the considerations of affiliation and connection, appearances of self-dealing and shortsightedness, oft times dismissive of that which should be the overriding measures of a government’s deliberations and decision-making, to wit, the preservation of the character of a community, and the promotion of the best and highest interests of its residents.

Whether the blight with which this hamlet is burdened is forever removed by way of Condemnation or private sale, through the long-in-coming will of government intervention or the workings of the free market, these are the reflections on a town government that has lost sight of its obligation to serve, not the parochial interests of the few, but rather, the greater good of the many.

Yes, somewhere in that vast void between darkness and light, lies a hamlet whose battle weary citizens, stakeholders in a land of broken promises, persistent in the cause, descend yet again upon Town Hall to make their case and speak their minds. Somewhere, in that place we call, The Twilight Zone.

Sincerely yours,
Seth D. Bykofsky
West Hempstead, New York
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The writer is a longtime community advocate and former president of the West Hempstead Civic Association.

Blogger's Note: The Town of Hempstead Zoning Board of Appeals held a public hearing on July 11, 2007, on the merits of the Town's Urban Renewal Plan as prepared by the Department of Economic Development.

More than 150 residents were in attendance, the majority of whom questioned the efficacy of the Town's plan, called for the immediate closure and sale of the Courtesy Hotel, and demanded consideration of the Trammell-Crow proposal for redevelopment.

The Zoning Board reserved decision before adjourning for the evening.