Planning for New Campus Progresses

One of my priorities when I served in the State Assembly was the future of the Southampton college campus.

As part of Long Island University between 1963 and 2006, Southampton College was a critical part of providing higher educational opportunities on the East End, as well as an important part of the local economy and the cultural landscape. Tens of thousands of students benefited from the presence of the college.

It was a personal lifeline for me, by providing me the chance to get a college education here at home when going away to school was just not feasible.

In 2005, LIU made the decision to close the campus for financial reasons and was set to put the 82-acre campus property on the market to the highest bidder, which would have most likely led to its conversion to luxury housing. A grassroots coalition was created that became the catalyst allowing State Senator Ken LaValle and me to convince the State University of New York to acquire the campus as an additional campus for Stony Brook University.

By all accounts, Stony Brook University’s stewardship of the Southampton campus has been checkered. Stony Brook University originally initiated a four-year undergraduate sustainability program that was extremely popular with students. It was just beginning to put down roots when the Great Recession and a change in leadership at Stony Brook resulted in the program being eliminated from the Southampton campus.

I joined with students and brought a legal challenge declaring the closing of the campus to be illegal. After that successful legal challenge, Stony Brook again began to undertake new programs at the Southampton campus, most notably the construction of the new marine biology facility and the addition of graduate programs in the health sciences.

Then came the pandemic. During those years, Stony Brook ignored the campus. Nearly half the buildings on the campus, including the windmill and Southampton Hall, were condemned. New programming languished.

There was no single administrator responsible for the campus. There was no long-range plan for its future. It led me to call Stony Brook University the biggest slumlord on the East End, and to demand the preparation of a comprehensive plan for the campus.

Finally, in early 2024, after a series of articles in this newspaper highlighting the plight of the campus, the leadership of Stony Brook finally responded. A new Southampton Campus Advisory Committee was created by Stony Brook. I am proud to be a member of that committee, with many other East End leaders.

I am happy to report that the Southampton campus is finally getting the plan I had called for. Hopefully, today’s planning efforts will lead to action tomorrow.

I wish to commend the work of Stony Brook University Executive Vice President Wendy Pearson, who has led this planning effort. With President Andrea Goldsmith poised to begin her tenure at Stony Brook next month, there is a real opportunity to rehabilitate the campus so that it can meet its true potential.

There are several important decisions that will be critical to a viable and thriving Southampton campus.

First is the proposal to construct a new state-of-the-art hospital on the Southampton campus. Buoyed by the completion of the Emergency Department building in East Hampton this spring, attention is again being focused on the construction of a new hospital.

State legislation was passed in 2018 to authorize the construction of this facility on the campus. However, the pandemic and its aftermath diverted attention and focus away from this project.

In 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul identified the condemned dormitories on the Southampton campus as a potential source of desperately needed workforce housing for our community. Stony Brook University has now engaged the State Dormitory Authority in assessing this proposal.

It is imperative that local government and community stakeholders be engaged in this planning process. Questions such as need, density, architecture, traffic, infrastructure all will need to be addressed. This must be a grassroots process involving the community and not a top-down approach emanating from Albany.

Further, what will the plan say about Southampton Hall, the historic mansion that served as the administrative home for Southampton College?

Clearly, this building needs to be repurposed to serve the needs of the new campus. How can that building best be utilized?

The strength of the college has always been marine sciences and fine arts, whether under LIU or Stony Brook. How can we build on the strengths of these programs? Can we expand the health sciences curriculum with the new hospital? What other programs would meet the needs of the East End community?

Finally, there is the windmill. The governor signed legislation in 2024 authorizing a partnership between Stony Brook and the Town of Southampton to preserve and restore the windmill on the campus, where it has stood for more than 130 years, after facing demolition in Southampton Village.

That partnership needs to be finalized now. It makes no sense that a plan to rehabilitate the campus should include the removal of the most iconic symbol of the campus. Nothing could do more to send the wrong message to the community about the commitment of Stony Brook University to the campus.

I am pleased that plans for the future of the campus are proceeding. Many important decisions about its future are before us now. It is a great opportunity. Community involvement is critical.

After many fits and starts, it is an opportunity that we cannot squander.