By Samantha Manning

The town of Roosevelt is the focus of a new program founded by Lawrence Levy, the executive director of the University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, and Eric Strauss, the science director at the Urban Ecology Institute at Boston College. The new program, entitled the “Sustainable Suburban Neighborhoods Initiative,” will aim to reform impoverished towns around the University and within Nassau County, first focusing in Roosevelt.

Asked why Roosevelt was chosen as the first stop on the anticipated “long journey” towards restoring nature on Long Island, Levy responded that it was because of “the lack of greenery” and that it is “racially isolated.”

“When a place looks less appealing…it is easy for people to lose hope,” Levy added.

“Long Island has the problem of fragmentation,” he said. “[Therefore] we have to start all over from village to village…and we have to start somewhere.”

Levy pointed out that, as opposed to city districts that are more unified, each neighborhood on Long Island is distinct with its own characteristics, its own charm and its own problems. Transitioning from one place to the next will require establishing new contacts and understanding the needs of an entirely different community, Levy said.

Strauss is the director of a similar program at Boston College which reformed disadvantaged neighborhoods in and around the Boston area. He decided to invest in the University for its laboratory facilities, the potential to exchange faculties and because of the areas around the University that could benefit from the program.

Levy said that it was hard at first for Strauss to envision a suburb like Long Island in need of as much help as urban areas. So in order to convince Strauss that Long Island also needs assistance, Levy drove him through Garden City to show him the beautiful scenic route that Long Island has to offer.

Then, Levy said he drove him into Roosevelt, where the sights looked similar to the poorer Boston areas that Strauss was accustomed to helping. Levy expressed that it was undeniable how “the scenery changed so dramatically.”

Levy stressed that the intention of the program is not only to plant a few trees and call it a good deed. “It is not an advocacy group-it is a research group,” Levy said.

The organization hopes to involve the citizens of Roosevelt, along with locals from any other neighborhood they may work with in the future. “[The group] is not only re-greening, but renewing the spirit that has been forgotten.” In order to do this, the group will include an all voluntary member base from local churches, schools, and other communal facets of the neighborhood.

Levy’s ultimate goal is for the University students and faculty members involved in the program to link to high school students and encourage their participation. Teenagers from high school could help decide where the plants should go and possibly participate in fundraising for the program, Levy said.

Being unfamiliar in the field of botany, Levy conceded, he first expected that planting one million trees would be a much simpler task than it turned out to be. When he presented the idea to a group of administrators, he said that the “biologists were horrified.” They explained to Levy that land must be studied and observed in order to determine which types of plants would survive. Therefore, a considerable, yet reasonable amount of time will be invested in the completion of the project.

The organization was issued a one-time $25,000 grant by New York State Sen. Charles Fuschillo (R-Merrick). The University has not invested any additional funds into the program, aside from reimbursing Levy for his personal expenses for participating in the program.

There is no official date when the program will begin.

“It doesn’t take much to improve the spirit of the people who live there,” Levy said, referring to the town of Roosevelt. Levy said that another area that the program aims to improve conditions in is downtown Hempstead.