Suffolk County Cuts JLL Out of Midway Crossing Project

The Midway Crossing development in Suffolk County’s Ronkonkoma spent years lingering in the minds of local residents and businesspeople. There could be many more years of struggles ahead.

This week, the county terminated its deal with JLL as master developer of the $2.8 billion project, Newsday reported. County administration claimed the Chicago-based firm didn’t make enough progress towards hiring or arranging financing.

From here, the county — which owns the land — appears poised to reboot the entire development. It will seek a developer and proposals for the 179-acre stretch between the LIRR tracks and the Long Island MacArthur Airport terminal, though there’s no timeline attached.

The real estate conglomerate doesn’t seem ready to walk away without protest. JLL vice chair Derek Trulson said the company “fulfilled, and will continue to fulfill, all its obligations” to the county and had both financing and partners lined up.

JLL’s project called for 2.7 million square feet of development, including a convention center, 300-key hotel, health sciences facilities and a new air terminal for the airport. There was once a 17,500-seat arena planned, too, but that was scrapped when the New York Islanders chose to move to UBS Arena in Elmont.

The project seemed unwieldy from the start, when a previous administration tapped JLL to lead the charge in April 2018. It was projected to take 10 to 15 years to develop, but kept running into delays. Last month, the Islip Town Board took $872,000 off the table that would’ve gone towards planning construction of the airport terminal, which Islip was a partner in.

There has also been litigation, including a lawsuit from Islanders great Pat LaFontaine. The hockey legend and his business partner sued JLL executives over work they weren’t allegedly paid for doing.

While there’s optimism about where the project could go from here, there’s also frustration that there’s little to show for almost a decade of work.

“It’s now been seven years and we are essentially at square one,” Association for a Better Long Island executive director Kyle Strober told Newsday.

— Holden Walter-Warner