Newsday.com
Mauling the mall
June 12, 2008

Venditto continues fighting Taubman, but it's time just to build the thing

"Ad nauseam" means to generate disgust or nausea. It was just one of the many scorchingly accurate terms State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Spinner used to describe the Town of Oyster Bay's strategy of using unnecessary litigation to delay the construction of a Syosset mall.

Taubman Centers is now in its second decade of trying to get the town to issue a building permit. Citing rulings dating back to 2002, the judge repeated once again that the developers have followed all the town's requirements and are entitled to build the mall on 39 acres just off the Long Island Expressway at the Robin's Lane exit.

In shorthand, the 30-page ruling told the town it didn't have a legal leg to stand on. Predictably and unfortunately, however, Supervisor John Venditto's first instinct was to shout APPEAL! Venditto says, "The saga continues" without any seeming self-awareness that it is he who has turned this into an endless narrative better described as farce.

It's time to end this story. It began in 1998, when Taubman first submitted its application to build on what is known as the Cerro Wire property, which the developer bought in 2004 from the Tribune Company, owner of this newspaper. Venditto might gain a few more months' delay by pursuing an appeal, but he could gain more by using his last few chips negotiating with the developer for some benefits for the town.

Venditto's losing battle has been costly for the Syosset school district, Nassau County and his town. The mall could have opened in 2003 but is now, with another appeal, not likely to be fully on the tax rolls until 2011. By some estimates, those eight years of lost revenue cost the school district $37.6 million, deprived the county of $16 million and denied the town $4 million. Those figures don't count the loss of $30 million a year in sales tax income which is shared by the state and county, or the economic ripple effect of creating 2,000 new jobs.

It's time to stop the stall and build the mall.

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