The Empire State Development Corp. will hold two public meetings on March 22 on the proposed Belmont Park development project.
The announcement came on Tuesday along with the release of a 32-page public notice about the scope of an environmental impact statement that can be viewed on the Empire State Development Corp.’s website.
The two-hour meetings will be held at the Elmont Memorial Library at 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
They follow months of public disapproval, mainly from the Belmont Park Community Coalition.
The coalition has previously raised issues about the delayed forming of the Belmont Community Advisory Committee and what it said was the Empire State Development Corp.’s failure to give the group information.
Members of the coalition were not immediately available to comment about the meetings on Wednesday morning.
In December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the New York Islanders would return to Nassau County with the Belmont development.
The winning request for proposal went to New York Arena Partners, a joint venture between Sterling Development and Oak View Group, to create an 18,000-seat arena, a multipurpose event center, a retail center and a hotel on 43 acres of state-owned land currently used for parking spaces at Belmont Park.
The public notice includes two site plan options, each with a Site A and Site B.
Option one has Site A with the proposed arena, the hotel, approximately 85,000 gross square feet of an “Entertainment District” retail space, approximately 350,000 gross square feet of luxury outlet stores within a “Retail Village,” approximately 30,000 gross square feet of commercial office space, approximately 1.2 acres of publicly accessible open space and approximately 1,339 parking spaces below the arena.
Option one’s Site B would include 10,000 gross square feet of community space, approximately 6.1 acres of publicly accessible open space and approximately 2,360 at-grade spaces for parking.
The sites would be connected by two pedestrian bridges.
Option two differs in that the retail village would be at Site B. There would also be 500 parking spaces below the arena, and 1,700 spaces of below-grade parking at Site B.
Option two also has 6.5 acres of publicly accessible land at Site B.
Option two also has one pedestrian bridge connecting the sites.
The document states that the “applicant is seeking community input and consulting with retail specialists to understand how to optimize the arrangement of uses for the Proposed Project’s visitors.”
