Eric Alexander
Director, Vision Long Island
Founder, Long Island Main Street Alliance

Eric Alexander applies more than three decades of experience in housing, transportation, community development and community project coordination to his leadership role at Northport-based Vision Long Island.

Alexander’s focus is on advancing downtown planning, infrastructure investment and mixed-use development, which he does by lobbying federal, state and county government and working with municipalities to develop and implement smart-growth policies, regulations and projects. His work at Vision Long Island has resulted in more than 150 downtown and infrastructure projects supporting more than 17,500 units of transit-oriented development across Long Island.

In 2019 he founded the Long Island Main Street Alliance, which represents 45 downtowns across Long Island. The group helped local companies access public grant dollars for recovery from the pandemic in addition to planning and advocating for downtown grants with the broad-based Long Island Lobby Coalition.

Alexander and the Vision team have focused on the region’s dangerous roads through the Long Island Complete Streets Coalition and have led more than 20 Walking Audits with AARP to make streets safe for walkers and cyclists.

Alexander hosts Long Island Main Street News, an internet-based TV show that has interviewed more than 700 local community, business and government leaders. The show now hits the road to promote downtowns and events that strengthen Long Island communities.

Alexander and the Vision team are also the organizers of the Long Island Smart Growth Awards, which was first held in 2002 and led to the creation of the Long Island Smart Growth Summit. Now held annually, the Summit has over 1,300 attendees.