Sands review process reboots, goes to Nassau County

Daily Point

Rolling the dice, again

For the second time this year, Las Vegas Sands is beginning the environmental review process necessary to move forward with its plans for a casino resort at the Nassau Hub.

This time, however, in an unusual move, it’s the Nassau County Legislature that will serve as the lead agency, leading a scoping hearing that will take place Monday to kick off the environmental review known as SEQRA.

The county’s involvement came after state Supreme Court Justice Sarika Kapoor determined that the county, not the Town of Hempstead, should serve as lead agency on the effort. While the town held its own scoping session in January, the court’s finding led county officials and Sands executives to decide to restart the process altogether, with the county in the lead.

Presiding Officer Howard Kopel told The Point he can’t remember another instance where the county acted as the lead agency on an environmental review.

"The county doesn’t agree with what happened in the courts," Kopel said. "But I know there’s going to be some very careful adherence to dotting all the I’s and crossing all the t’s."

Kopel noted that the legislature has given appropriate public notice of the hearing, including posting it to the legislature’s website, where a link already exists guiding residents to a livestream of the event.

Sands, meanwhile, seems to be trying to increase its visibility, too. On Thursday, the casino giant introduced a revamped website at sandsnewyork.com, which included new renderings, photos and details about what residents and visitors could expect from a Sands resort at the Hub.

"In the same way that transparency with the community has been a top priority to Sands throughout this process, we think it’s especially important as the project moves forward into the SEQRA hearings," said Sands spokeswoman Jennifer Solomon. "This website is a tool that will facilitate that transparency and demonstrate the continuous collaboration between Sands and the community."

Beyond the notices, however, the legislature did not replicate some of the extra steps Hempstead took in the winter, when town officials sent a postcard to every resident advising them of the hearing. The town, too, chose to use a larger room in the Long Island Marriott to accommodate more participants — and offered two different hearings on the same day. The legislature, meanwhile, is offering just one hearing — at 5 p.m. — and is holding it in the legislative chamber, which can accommodate a maximum of 200 people.

The public can, however, make additional comments to the legislature by mail or email, addressed to the legislature’s clerk, Michael Pulitzer, the public notice said.

The differences in strategy come months after Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman began to cast doubt on whether the county will be awarded one of the three available downstate licenses, suggesting that he was "a little concerned" about whether the process was fair and saying, "If it’s a fair process, we win."

But several sources also noted that the difference between the town process and the county process is that Sands has been through the scoping once before and knows what to expect, so officials aren’t starting from scratch.

"We feel like it’s unlikely that there would be any unaddressed concerns because we’ve already done this," one source told The Point.

Added Kopel: "I think we’re hitting every point."

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Back to worrying

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/0904nationalcartoons

Reference Point

On Newsday's 84th, foresight from the founder

Sept. 3 is an auspicious day at Newsday. It was the day of the newspaper’s birth, in 1940.

When our 10th anniversary came around in 1950, Alicia Patterson, the paper’s founder, editor and publisher, felt compelled to note the occasion "since the first ten years are generally conceded to be the hardest ... "

In an editorial that ran on Sept. 5 and carried her byline, Patterson reminded readers of the promise made in Newsday’s first editorial: "We are not going to line up behind any county political organization. Our news and editorial policy will not be directed or dominated by advertisers, politicians, pressure groups or friends."

She contended the paper "followed this line even when it seemed the better part of wisdom not to" and promised to do the same for the next 10 years. She lamented Newsday’s growing pains including World War II, a lack of equipment, and crowded working conditions at Newsday’s original facility, a former auto dealership in Hempstead; praised the "courage and audacity" of Newsday’s employees, 23 of whom had been with the paper since its inception; and acknowledged some truths about daily print journalism, truths that persist to this day.

"A newspaper is not unlike a human being with his mixture of bad and good," she wrote. "We have made mistakes, plenty of them. We have also done some things of which we are proud. Our chief virtue, I believe is that we have kept punching. We haven’t been afraid."

And she signed off with a note to readers that described the covenant that has always governed newspapers and readers.

"But most of all we want to thank you, our readers," Patterson wrote. "If you hadn’t liked us, Newsday could not have survived. Neither money, nor power can make a newspaper successful. That is the gift of the people. We are proud of your friendship. Our plan is not to let you down.

"P.S. In case this fine resolution goes away from time to time, please bear with us. Because it will!"

Patterson knew, in other words, that you can’t please everyone all the time. And she was reminded of that one week later, on Sept. 12, 1950, when the opinion section featured a letter from someone identified as "A Patron of Newsday" who planted his or her tongue firmly in cheek in objecting to a Newsday story about that year’s New York gubernatorial race between two-term incumbent Republican Thomas E. Dewey and Democratic challenger Rep. Walter A. Lynch.

"I always had the greatest regard for your paper until I read about the Dewey, Lynch nominations," the reader wrote. "You call yourselves American, unbiased, and God fearing. I am a Republican, but I shall vote for Lynch in the coming election because you forgot to say what religion or race Dewey belonged to."

Of course, it would have been virtually impossible at that point not to know Dewey’s race or religion — he had, after all, run for president of the United States two years earlier. But the main take-away from the letter was that the relationship between a newspaper and its readers, as special as Patterson rightly deemed it to be, can be fraught.

And so it still goes, on Newsday’s 84th anniversary.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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