By Adina Genn, Long Island Business News
Two transportation initiatives announced Wednesday will boost Long Island’s economy, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone told local leaders at the Hauppauge Industrial Association Business Trade Show & Conference executive lunch today in Brentwood.  Those projects – the MTA-approved funding for the proposed LIRR third track and the addition of Denver-based Frontier Airlines, which will start service at Long Island MacArthur Airport to Orlando – will help to retrofit suburbia, he said. The efforts will help to make the region competitive, attracting a young knowledge workforce.

“It will create an environment in which they can thrive and make the region accessible to them,” he said.

These initiatives “don’t happen in a vacuum,” said Mitch Pally, CEO of Long Island Builders Institute, crediting support from private-public initiatives.

In particular, LIRR initiatives, which include East Side access, and a second-track project in Hicksville, would “increase capacity by 40 percent,” boosting the value of land near railroad tracks, as people seek transit-oriented development.

About 4,500 attendees attended the expo, which boasted 375 exhibitors.

The HIA is home to nearly 1,350 businesses, employing an estimated 55,000 people, according to Joseph Campolo, managing partner at Campolo, Middleton & McCormick, a law firm with headquarters in Ronkonkoma, where a new transit-oriented development is expected to break ground next month.

Additional panelists included Jim Coughlan, principal of Tritec Real Estate; Marty Dettling, senior vice president of the Albanese Organization; and Don Monti of Renaissance Downtowns.

Read it on LIBN: http://libn.com/2017/05/25/leaders-speak-of-a-retrofitted-suburbia/