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Whether or not you've been to the Old Bethpage Village Restoration, or whether you were did when you were a kid, remember liking it, not liking, it not caring about it, or love it and go once a month, I think most people that a reading this post would take some interest if it ever shut down. And as many of you know already, that is exactly what Tom Suozzi wants to do.
I will first state that I do not work directly with the finances of the county or the village, so I dare not state numbers or statistics, but I can speak from a common sense standpoint. And as a lifelong Long Islander that grew up in the town of Bethpage, I do know the terrible effects that would come about if it were closed, and, as would be the inevitable outcome of all this, divided up and sold to developers.
It is mostly worked by VOLUNTEERS. These are people who donate their time and efforts to better the community and enrich the lives of thousands of people who still find some interest in the history of Long Island. There isn't a tremendous amount of full time staff, certainly not enough to warrant laying them off and losing the REVENUE that the museum brings in - not just what is there now, but much more so, the money that could be there, if they only advertised the place and events, and made it a selling point for tourism on Long Island, like Williamsburg, or Mystic Village is for their respective states. What is there now is gross mismanagement, or bullying on the part of the Nassau County Legislature.
Really, how many family-friendly, open-space, historic, fun, romantic and inexpensive places are there left to visit on Long Island? This is the kind of place that makes living on Long Island worth anything in the first place. People don't even know about the events they have, and how it brings the community together - between the old-time baseball, and the fair, the civil-war reanactments, candlelight walks at holiday time, bonfires and hot cocoa, and the beautiful day out that is the village itself - this stuff is what people use to escape everyday life, to bring their families together. This is worth far more to the morale of the community than anything else, and on top of it, it could be made into a highly profitable venue - think about it - concerts, holiday feasts, fireworks... so much more could be done that would attract not only the history buffs, but the general population as well.
So... you could have a bustling, successful tourist destination that would bring cash flow into the Long Island economy, a place where Long Island merchants and the community and tourists could centralize, a place that locals could escape from the stress and sprawl of Nassau county, making it a much, much better place to live and visit, or... you could have more strip malls, more condos and more McMansions built on tenth of an acre plots. Please, if anyone that actually lives on this island can make a convincing argument to say how the majority of the population here would disagree with this, I would love to hear it. Our elected representative disagrees. So, really, is he representing us at all, or is he just interested in using the recession as an excuse to sell off the land so that he can get favors from powerful developers as he makes another run for the governorship? From a common sense angle, the answer seems pretty clear to me.
Why, when times are tough, do we run and hide when instead we can make modest investments to fight the recession by reorganizing and promoting and taking advantage of what is already there? Please... tell people about the place, reminisce about your times there, make the issue known, and do everyone a favor and take two minutes to write to one of our higher representatives, to make the issue known to them, and our feelings about it, as well, before it's too late, and well, there will be no more history worth keeping track of here...
I have enjoyed Old Bethpage Village many times. It's wonderful around Christmas and I also like seeing the old fashioned baseball games. I'll make sure to make another visit soon.
You can be sure I will be contacting elected officials on this and more. Tom Suozzi seems to give didley squat about preservation by this move. Thanks for letting me know.
What a sad state of affairs. Old Bethpage is one of the few places to go on Long Island that maintains an historical feel. Most Long Islanders don't realize the dearth of nice parks in the area, and the idea of losing one more is something that should not be tolerated. Walter, I feel that your take is very short sighted, as the fewer attractions an area boasts the less valued and valuable that area becomes. It is in all Long Islanders interest to fight this moronic idea, once a resource such as this is lost it cannot be regained.
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I used to go there as a child growing up in Amityville. I want to bring my daughter there someday.
