New Hyde Park Mayor’s Message: Blight on Jericho Turnpike

The following are the opening remarks of New Hyde Park Mayor Robert Lofaro made during the public meeting of the New Hyde Park Village Board on October 15, 2013:

We hear a lot of folks talk about the vacant stores along Jericho Turnpike and I know I’ve lived in this community all my life and there’s always been vacant stores on Jericho Turnpike; that’s nothing new today as is was 15 years ago.

You have applicants like Saf-T-Swim, you have a dance studio that’s in the village that wants to stay in the village, you have a new bakery, you have the new tanning salon, you have Deluxe Car Storage and many other businesses coming into the Village of New Hyde Park.

I’m encouraged about that and we have also had conversations with some property owners on other businesses that want to come to the Village of New Hyde Park so I don’t think that this is a lost cause along our main street. It’s a corridor that’s going to continue to reinvent itself and we as a board are committed to making a more pedestrian friendly and more aesthetically pleasing Jericho Turnpike and through our codes and what we’ve developed it would be businesses that fit well into our community, so the board should keep up the good work in trying to encourage the right businesses to come to the Village of New Hyde Park.

I’m very encouraged, it’s not this blight that everyone talks about. Sportloft continues to stay in the village when they could have moved out; they didn’t. We know that’s an important place. Most of the times, these businesses are moving out because of landlord issues; the landlord’s raising the rent.

Now, I’m not saying that that’s right or wrong – that’s just the fact, it’s not that they’re leaving this community because it’s a community lost – it’s an economic issue related with many cases, landlords; these applicant’s said it was the landlord that after 14, 15 years of business, they have to relocate because of that.

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