Suffolk County launches search for developers at canceled Midway Crossing site

Suffolk County on Thursday launched its search for a new corporate partner to lead redevelopment of 48 acres of county-owned land in Ronkonkoma that had been the proposed site for the scuttled $2.8 billion Midway Crossing megacomplex.

The county Thursday afternoon released its formal invitation for developers to submit their “vision and concepts” for the site between the Ronkonkoma Long Island Rail Road station and Long Island MacArthur Airport. The site currently includes a sprawling LIRR parking lot.

Submissions by developers are due by May 29.

Business leaders Thursday said the Ronkonkoma site, positioned between MacArthur Airport and the $1.2 billion Station Yards multiuse project under construction on the north side of the LIRR tracks, is ideal for a convention center.

“We are a stone’s throw away from New York City,” Matt Cohen, president and CEO of the Long Island Association business group, said in an interview Thursday. “It could really capture this market that may find New York City too expensive or too crowded.”

Chris Coluccio, president of the MacArthur Business Alliance, a consortium of Ronkonkoma companies near the airport, said he’s spoken to national business leaders who “have all said they would like to use the airport and the area to hold these kind of conventions, but there’s no place to go.”

Christopher Kelly, senior marketing vice president for Ronkonkoma-based Station Yards developer Tritec, said the company is weighing a bid for the Long Island Hub project.

“Given the proximity of the site … to Station Yards, we are certainly interested in what happens there and how it can complement the ongoing revitalization of the area,” he said in an email.

Read the full article in Newsday.