Long Island Business News celebrates 65th anniversary

The Long Island Business News is celebrating its 65th anniversary by looking at the history of the publication.

A story on its website states, “Recording it all was the Long Island Commercial Review, which was founded by Arthur Hug and the husband-and-wife team of Peg and John Whitmore.

“The weekly was started so ‘businessmen could spring bloody murder about zoning problems, the need for skilled labor and to encourage business on Long Island,’ Hug had told LIBN back in 2003.

“By 1958, Paul and Terry Townsend took the reins, purchasing the paper for $5,000. Paul Townsend, whose family helped found Oyster Bay, is a descendent of Robert Townsend, who was a spy for General George Washington. He was known as a fierce Long Island advocate, promoting Levittown and the Roosevelt Field shopping mall, a project of developer William Zeckendorf. Townsend had also served as development director for North Shore Hospital. No battle was too big, including a failed attempt in trying to keep Mitchel Field Airport as a major transportation hub, and later, success in preventing Robert Moses from building a road on Fire Island and collaborating with the federal government in forming the Fire Island National Seashore, as well as saving and expanding Long Island MacArthur Airport as a commercial hub.  One of Townsend’s challenges that loomed over the decades is the quest to build a bridge over the Long Island Sound.

“The paper was later sold in 1998 to the Minnesota-based Dolan Company, and was lead for 15 years by John Kominicki, considered a luminary in the business landscape, who died in 2017. Now owned by BridgeTower Media, the paper is now led by Joe Giametta, the paper’s current publisher.”

Read more here.