Talk:Oyster Bay (hamlet), New York

Difference between the Town and the Hamlet of Oyster Bay

So there is no village of Oyster Bay? Which village is Oyster Bay High School in? (I ask because it is where Thomas Pynchon went to high school). -- Jmabel 10:01, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Oyster Bay "village" is technically a hamlet, not a village. The community is within the Town of Oyster Bay, a town which contains 18 villages and 18 hamlets. So the town of Oyster Bay is not the exact same thing as the Hamlet of Oyster Bay. The Hamlet is where OBHS is located. The term "Hamlet" is often used in state's statutes to refer to well-known populated sections of towns that are not incorporated as villages.

Oyster Festival

Does someone want to add information about the oyster festival?

You could add it yourself, but it doesn't deserve an entire paragraph; just a line or two indicating when it takes place, when it started, and the average attendence. There are other Oyster Festivals besides the one in Oyster Bay. The Norwalk, Connecticut Norwalk Oyster Festival started a few years before the OB one, and they often book well-kown musical acts (Willie Nelson, Cheap Trick, etc.). Here's the OB Oyster fest website if anyone wants to look:

http://www.theoysterfestival.org/

Notable Resident Section

There are currently two sections, one for "notable past residents" and one for "notable residents," this seems redundant.

I don't think we should include every single person in show business or athletics who happens to live in or near Oyster Bay. I can understand a former President like Roosevelt or a notable author like Pynchon (who has roots in Oyster Bay, didn't move there after becoming rich) being listed, but someone like Victoria Gotti, who has done nothing notable in Oyster Bay (besides being the daughter of a serial killer), I don't think needs to be on this page.

I'm going to delete the "notable residents" section, so if you want to include those people, you can add it to the existing section on famous residents.

Recent News Section

I removed a new section called "Recent News" which mentions a fire at the local Hardware shop. I removed this section because it is non-encyclopedic; this page is not for the purposes of posting local news (there are already links to the local papers). This space is also not for the purposes of advertising your business, so the fact that a Hardware store burnt down is not notable enough to be included here. (nor are the other arson-related fires that happened in the Summer of '05, even if it is a senstaionalistic story, it wasn't national news.)

A news story which I'd like to see included here (and which is more relevant to the page and to the future of the town) is the purchase of several pieces of property by Charles Wang, CEO of Computer Associates and Oyster Bay Cove resident. He bought over 50 residences and commercial properties in downtown Oyster Bay in the late nineties and has been planning on 'revitilizing' the town. I'll try to post some relevant links when I have the time, but that is a much bigger news story (as is the Avalon Bay protests) which isn't even mentioned on the page.

Charles Wang "Oyster Bay's Landlord" Newsday article

Is there too much on Wang's plate?

BY ELIZABETH MOORE Newsday Staff Writer

July 24, 2006

The handsome new storefronts and sensitive renovations are hard to miss, tucked here and there along South Street, Audrey Avenue and elsewhere in the aged downtown of Oyster Bay hamlet.

A handful of chic retailers has moved in, as has an art academy. And an elegant brick public walkway has been built to link a main street to its parking lot, with formal plantings of ginkgo trees, lilies and an antique fountain enticing shoppers to explore a once-hidden nearby Victorian garden tended by local volunteers.

It's all the doing of Charles Wang, the hamlet's biggest landlord, who has promised to restore the sheen to a community he considers "my front yard." Yet, summing up local sentiment, Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto still compares Wang's arrival here to the powerful, helpful-seeming aliens' landing in that old episode of "Twilight Zone." They came armed with a mysterious tome titled "To Serve Man."

"It turned out 'To Serve Man' was a cookbook," Venditto recalled. "There's no longer any question in my mind that Charles has the best interests of Oyster Bay in his heart ... The question becomes, what is the best interest? ... The jury is still out."

Oyster Bay's landlord

The uncertainty has lingered stubbornly ever since the late 1990s when the former Computer Associates magnate began systematically buying downtown properties in the deteriorating but historic hamlet, eventually accumulating 87 of them. From dilapidated immigrant apartments and Buckingham's Variety Store to the building where Teddy Roosevelt became a Mason and the marina where Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan keeps his yacht, Wang owns a little of everything here: growth potential, functioning businesses, cherished history and the full gamut of Oyster Bay's mundane daily headaches.

Most Nassau residents may care more about Wang's Promethean effort to redevelop the Nassau Coliseum site. Another Wang effort -- a proposed 166-acre "smart growth" community called Old Plainview -- comprises twice the land area and will probably be decided sooner, with hearings scheduled for the fall. But Wang's portfolio in this hamlet is the only one where his words have yet been followed by shovels in the ground.

It remains a mixed if generally positive picture, residents say.

On the road entering the downtown, construction is under way on Wang's biggest project so far, which Venditto calls proof of his goodwill: Mariner's Walk, 28 luxury town houses instead of an unpopular 112-unit assisted-living complex that had been approved when Wang bought the land. Nearby is the new HSBC bank building he erected, its gabled design keyed to the local architecture.

Mariner's Walk sales brochures promote an image of the hamlet as "an intimate, artsy, seaside enclave" with "fabulous restaurants and shopping." Building on those characteristics is the essence of Wang's vision for Oyster Bay, his development executives say.

A move too far?

But farther out of town, front lawns everywhere this spring sprouted "Stop Avalon Bay" placards, decrying a proposal residents saw as promoting a different vision. Avalon Bay had proposed 300 apartments for a 5-acre parcel it planned to buy from Wang, drawing street protests and angry meetings attacking its "super-high density on steroids" until the town last month declared it a nonstarter.

Though residents' ire was aimed at the developer, not the owner, "people are very concerned, and some are questioning whether the Avalon Bay project is key to Mr. Wang's overall development plan for the area," said Kyle Rabin, executive director of the Friends of the Bay environmental group.

Residents expect Wang will someday attempt to transform their coastline, because he owns not just Oyster Bay's marina but its Commander Oil terminal and adjacent waterfront parcels, Rabin said, and they are waiting for him to show his hand.

On the other hand, some of Wang's most faithful admirers, such as Oyster Bay Civic Association President Marie Knight, have been restless with the pace of change. They expected much more, much faster from a man of such deep pockets and penetrating intellect, who once boasted that development wasn't "rocket science."

"The different projects they were showing us were such wonderful ideas, and they haven't transpired," Knight said, ticking off a list of eyesores whose replacement was promised in 2002.

Until last fall, the public face of Wang's endeavors here was Abraham Poznanski, a soft-spoken Brooklynite who over the years had become a fixture of the business community as the president of Island Properties. Poznanski distributed a newsletter and held meetings about plans, sat on the board of the Main Street Association and the park advisory committee, and formed a "joint marketing committee" with other business groups and landlords.

So when Wang cut ties with Poznanski last fall, "I was shocked, to be candid," Knight said. "I think the general feeling in the village is that Mr. Wang has more or less forgotten Oyster Bay and is dealing mostly with Plainview and the Coliseum."

Poznanski said he believes Wang's experience as a CEO deluded him into thinking he could supervise the myriad details of this revitalization under one management framework, along with the Coliseum, Old Plainview, the Islanders and Dragons, his tech start-ups and other undertakings. That approach can produce some startling sights, such as Buckingham Variety Store's old-timey display window stuffed with Islanders T-shirts and caps.

"He thinks the same guys can run all these little businesses, but it doesn't work," Poznanski said.

"There is momentum"

But Joan Mahon, director of the Main Street Association, a revitalization group, is more upbeat. Soon after Poznan.ski's dismissal, top staff of Wang's new property managers, Renaissance Property Associates, introduced themselves to her. Wang stopped by one snowy December day, too, at her request.

She asked for his help seeing to it that his properties were kept up and that the town did its job "to make sure garbage cans are not overflowing, street lights are working, the plantings, the weeds."

Wang expressed a commitment to be more involved, they drew up a to-do list, and since then, "anything we talked about that day has been done in a nanosecond," Mahon said.

Weeds grow back, though. By late June, when Renaissance staff gave a tour of Wang's holdings, they were sprouting along the brick walkway. Green slime coated the fountain. Last week it was cleaned.

Mahon knows residents wish they could see Wang's master plan for the hamlet. But she said Renaissance stays in close touch, has helped build decorative kiosks for the downtown and routinely follows the association's cues on façade designs. "There is momentum," she said. "We all need to be supportive."

For their part, Wang's crew find that playing revitalization Santa Claus can get a little wearying, as when reading in the paper that a local group expected him to donate one of the lots he had just bought so it could erect a Teddy Roosevelt statue there. Instead, Renaissance has been negotiating since October to sell that parcel to the town.

"We've done a lot, but we have not done a good job of telling people what we've done," said Renaissance CEO Michael Picker.

Picker and a fellow tour guide, Islanders senior vice president Paul Lancey, remain coy about long-term plans for Wang's coastal holdings. "We are currently reviewing many different ideas," Picker said. But to frame his "strategic vision," they drove a reporter to a parcel he doesn't own: the lightly used waterfront park, where they hope a carousel and railroad station museum will draw visitors and invigorate the downtown.

"This is one of the finest beaches on the North Shore," said Lancey, gesturing past the bathers to the sailboats bobbing in a storybook harbor, framed by the green sweep of Bayville and Centre Island. The horizon was unmarred by smokestack or billboard.

"There are spots in Oyster Bay I don't believe anybody's aware of," Lancey said. Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.