Positive Path Forward

State lawmakers and Governor Kathy Hochul delivered for residents of the South Fork and Stony Brook University in the state budget formulated last week.

As part of the massive spending plan, the governor agreed to a measure that would allow the state and the Town of Southampton to partner in an effort to restore the historic windmill at Stony Brook’s Southampton campus.

Additionally, Hochul’s plan to create up to 15,000 affordable housing units on state-owned land across the state — including at the Southampton campus — was included in the budget.

Both measures mark a significant dedication by state and Stony Brook officials to finally begin to reinvigorate and reinvent what has become a dilapidated campus. The windmill was condemned last year — one of more than a dozen buildings, including a number of dormitories and other buildings, including Southampton Hall, to be condemned in recent years.

It’s estimated that it could cost as much as $2 million to fix the windmill up. Under the legislation approved in the budget — introduced by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele and Senator Anthony Palumbo — the university would be permitted to enter into a long-term lease with the town, which would allow the town to use Community Preservation Fund revenue to restore the historic structure, which was built in 1714. The lease is modeled after a similar agreement between the town and the Village of Westhampton Beach to use CPF money to restore the Governor John Adams Dix Windmill in that village.

It was a creative solution on the part of Thiele and Palumbo, and one that, hopefully, will result in quick action to begin the process of rejuvenating the teetering campus.

The affordable housing measure, which Stony Brook administrators eagerly supported when it was first proposed in January, could also significantly change the makeup of the campus, making it less of an insular community, and more of a vibrant population center.

Details still have to be worked out, but the potential affordable housing would be open to all residents, not just those affiliated with the college or the planned relocation of Southampton Hospital to the site.

There is plenty of room on the 82-acre campus for both a new hospital and what could be hundreds of workforce units.

The governor’s initiative grew out of her failed effort last year to require some municipalities to provide more affordable housing, circumventing local zoning. The current proposal, utilizing vacant state land, is much more appealing, and one that should be embraced not only by state and university officials, but a community that is eager to see the affordable housing crisis addressed.

Stony Brook has been heavily criticized for an apparent lack of direction for the crumbling campus over the past few years, but the two measures approved this week as part of the governor’s budget will go a long way to reversing that trend and assure everyone that the campus will once again shine as one of the gems of the South Fork community.