With deadline extended, Elmont awaits its piece of $1.3B project pie

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While developers have completed most of the $1.3 billion project at Belmont Park, including a new arena, retail village and parking garage, a promised community benefit has yet to materialize. 

As part of its agreement with Empire State Development, the project’s development entity, New York Arena Partners, committed to build a community center for the people of Elmont, promising to “fund, construct, operate and maintain community space” of about 10,000 square feet “that will offer various community-oriented programming options,” including educational and career development services. 

The agreement gave NYAP five years to deliver the community space or pay a penalty of $5 million to ESD. Though the five-year deadline passed last month, LIBN has learned that ESD has given the developers six more months to act on finding an appropriate property and secure an operator for Elmont’s long-promised facility. 

And now, according to ESD and a determined state assemblywoman, Elmont is closer than ever to finally getting a community center from the Belmont project’s developers. 

An ESD spokesperson said that NYAP, a partnership of the Scott Malkin Group, Sterling Equities and Oak View Group, has recently identified a property and is currently finalizing its feasibility analysis of the Elmont site in advance of building the promised community center. 

A NYAP spokesperson declined to comment, however, Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, who organized a rally at the beginning of the year to urge the Belmont developers to build the community center, says negotiations between NYAP, ESD and local officials are progressing. Originally slated for somewhere on the Belmont property, it was agreed that the center be established inside the Elmont neighborhood because the Belmont site was too busy.  

“We’re continuing having dialogue and we are trying to get to a point where we solidify the operator and the location,” Solages told LIBN. “The conversation is about purchasing a property and finding an operator, someone who can facilitate programs and ensure the viability of the location for generations to come.” 

It’s been a long and bumpy road for many in the Elmont community, where residents have borne the brunt of years of construction, traffic and disruption brought on by the massive Belmont development built on 43 acres of public land. Besides the 660,000-square-foot, 19,000-seat arena that’s home to the New York Islanders, a 340,000-square-foot retail complex and six-story, 1,500-space parking structure, the project still includes a 250-key hotel yet to be built. Construction also continues on the New York Racing Association’s $455 million overhaul of the Belmont Park racetrack and new 275,000-square-foot grandstand, which isn’t expected to be completed for another year and a half. 

“I think there are many members of the community that are frustrated,” said Aubrey Phillips, a member of the Belmont Community Advisory Committee, who remains skeptical that the arena developers will ever make good on their promise. “I’ve always considered the talk of the community center as a way of getting the result that they wanted…it felt to me that it was just a means to an end and that the community center was never really going to materialize.” 

While the community center has yet to come to fruition, other community benefits have been realized. NYAP has funded renovation of two Town of Hempstead parks in the Elmont area, which was also part of the developers’ agreement with ESD. Earlier this year, ESD gave $2.4 million from Belmont Park project funds to the Elmont School District, which was earmarked for security enhancements at the district’s school buildings. 

Still, Solages, a life-long Elmont resident, is “cautiously optimistic” that the community center, one even larger than the 10,000-square-foot facility originally promised, will become a reality. 

“I think now we’re in the best place that we’ve ever been through this entire process, so I’m hoping that we can get to the finish line,” she said. “I feel that everyone truly wants to get this done and that’s what’s happening.” 

Just how much longer is the Elmont community willing to wait? 

“I hope and pray that construction starts next year because I’ve lost my patience and things need to get done quickly because the community has been very gracious with this project,” the tenacious Solages said. “They were able to build an arena and a retail village and there is no option but to build the community center within the next year.”