Homey With a Dash of Dated

SOMETIMES you can go home again.

In 2001, Mark Saab and his parents left Syosset for a home on more than two acres in nearby Brookville. But six years have passed since then, and Mr. Saab, now 28, is married and has three young children. What he and his wife, Hiba, found in the close-knit hamlet of Syosset on the North Shore of Long Island proved irresistible.

"I looked in Roslyn; I looked in East Hills," recalled Mr. Saab, whose family owns neighborhood groceries in Manhattan. "But everywhere I looked, you compare it to where you grew up and it is not the same. There is something about familiarity that is comforting."

The three-bedroom split-level house that the Saabs bought recently for 0,000 once belonged to Mr. Saab's first-grade teacher. It is four doors from the house where Mr. Saab grew up - and where his older brother lives.

"I had a great childhood," Mr. Saab said, "so I would love for my children to have a similar one."

The Saabs are renovating the house, investing about ,000 to knock out walls and add a deck, swing set and fence. They plan to move in this fall.

"In Brookville," Mr. Saab said, "you don't know your neighbors - the houses are far apart. I prefer to go back to the way I was brought up. In Syosset it is more intimate."

This comfortable unincorporated suburb in the town of Oyster Bay is central both for work and play. "In under an hour you can get both to Manhattan and to the Hamptons," said Laurie Jackson, a broker associate with Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes and Estates in Woodbury.

It has other assets as well, including top-rated schools and an easy commute to Manhattan. With more than 9,000 families, Syosset is in many ways as convivial as an old-fashioned block party.

Yet on several fronts, it is poised to shed the old-fashioned. The imminent departure of one longtime fixture is generating mixed feelings. In April, a six-acre plot including the Syosset Mobile Home Park, a community of 80 trailers, was sold, thereby sealing the fate of a rare enclave of affordable housing - and the only trailer park - in Nassau County. Occupants lease the land but own their trailers, which in recent years have fetched ,000 to ,000.

Judy White, a spokeswoman for STP Associates, a Syosset-based developer, said designs for the property were still in the planning stages. Trailer owners' property leases extend for another year. "We have made contact with local housing agencies to assist the residents in their relocation efforts both in the short and long term," Ms. White said.

Affordable housing aside, however, a plan to rejuvenate the worn-looking downtown area, along Jackson Avenue near Cold Spring Road and Underhill Boulevard, is widely considered overdue. The area is crippled by traffic and a grade crossing for the Long Island Rail Road, said Laura Schultz, the vice president of Residents for a More Beautiful Syosset, a civic group.

"It may have worked 100 years ago when the farmers were bringing their crops to the train station to market," Ms. Schultz said, "but right now it is chaos with the use and vehicles. The world has changed, but the roads in Syosset haven't."

Nassau County is working on a plan to redo Jackson Avenue with curbs and sidewalks. And last year the town of Oyster Bay adopted the "Syosset Downtown Redevelopment & Revitalization Plan," which Councilman Chris J. Coschignano described as "a wish list of many, many ideas to improve the downtown," including mixed-used development, traffic-calming measures and redesigned parking.

A bank building has replaced an "unsightly gas station," he said. A few new stores have apartments upstairs. Money was allocated earlier this month to study the train station area.

"The town is slowly but surely getting a face-lift," Mr. Coschignano said.

A year ago, 25 storefronts - the restaurants and shops that occupy most of the downtown strip - were sold to Silber Investment Properties, a local company, for million. Discussing revitalization efforts, Adam Silber, an owner, said that "if the town is willing to work with us, we will gladly work with them."

What You'll Find

Capes, ranches and split-levels line blocks off a north-south artery variously known as Berry Hill Road, Jackson Avenue and South Oyster Bay Road. The area is punctuated by small parks. Syosset's five square miles straddle the Long Island Expressway and the Northern State Parkway; larger colonials on one- to two-acre properties are found north of the train station.

Perhaps partly at the expense of the traditional village center, the east-west thoroughfare along Jericho Turnpike is thriving. It is lined with office buildings, diners, strip malls, a bowling alley, big-box stores like Home Depot, and the North Shore University Hospital at Syosset, an affiliate of the 15-hospital North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.