Long Island’s economy is energized thanks to continued job growth and a drop in the regional unemployment rate since 2021, HIA-LI president and CEO Terri Alessi-Miceli said last week at the advocacy group’s annual Economic Development Symposium.
Much of that optimism comes from the development of communities like TRITEC’s Station Yards in Ronkonkoma and Shoregate in Bay Shore. “When we build strong, vibrant communities,” Alessi-Miceli said, “it fosters job creation and competitiveness and helps our young professionals by giving them an option to stay on Long Island.”
But in order to build these properties effectively, TRITEC Executive Vice President and Partner Jimmy Coughlan stressed that the region must find ways to overcome the series of challenges that have led to Long Island’s severe housing shortage.
Joined on the panel by government and IDA representatives, Coughlan pointed to statistics that rank Nassau and Suffolk near the bottom of a list of 141 large U.S. counties in overall housing growth since 2012. And of the five U.S. counties with 1.5 million residents, Suffolk County built nearly 80 percent fewer housing units than the next closest region in the same period.
Coughlan said Long Island faces a simple supply-and-demand issue. By not keeping up with demand, “prices start to rise, people start to get priced out and they look for other areas of the country where they have better affordability and quality of life.”
One of those areas is Austin, Texas, which Coughlan used as an example of how increasing supply is the most effective remedy for rising home costs. When prices skyrocketed due to the influx of homebuyers during the Covid pandemic, developers built more than 40,000 new apartments, and housing prices eventually dropped across all tiers.
Due to rising construction costs and inflation, TRITEC has only been able to start one new project in recent years, Coughlan said. And though addressing the affordability issue through government pricing requirements is “well-intentioned,” this type of legislation ultimately discourages housing development.
“Projects can’t be worth less than they cost to build,” Coughlan said.
NIMBYism remains one of the leading barriers to development of new housing, but with TRITEC’s successful revitalization of areas like Patchogue, Bay Shore and Ronkonkoma, “people are starting to get it,” Coughlan said. The 418-unit Shoregate development is 98% occupied within walking distance of locally owned restaurants and shops.
Town of Islip Supervisor Angie Carpenter said the residences have turned Bay Shore into a model of what Long Island downtowns can become. “Shoregate is a picture-perfect example of what transit-oriented development is all about,” she said.
Smithtown has received tens of millions of dollars in funding for sewer infrastructure, including $21.3 million from a New York State program in 2024, according to Town Supervisor Ed Wehrheim, which will benefit current and planned housing developments. Lack of sewer access is another barrier to increased housing supply in Suffolk County, Coughlan said.
Overall, Long Island created 91,000 non-farm jobs, 86,000 private-sector jobs and 25,000 healthcare jobs from 2021 to summer 2024, Alessi-Miceli said.
“We have a lot to be optimistic about,” she said, “but we have a lot more work to do.”
