Grand visions of transforming Hempstead Village's downtown have risen and fallen over the years -- but recent developments have given residents and officials renewed hope.

For more than a decade, modest but concrete progress has laid the groundwork for a revival where past proposals of billions in investments have failed to materialize.

There have been more promising developments this year: Hempstead Village received a $10 million state Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant, hundreds of new apartments are almost move-in ready, and the village purchased the six-story Helen Keller office building for $8.7 million.

There are plans to turn the office building into the new Village Hall and to relocate the police department and government agencies there. The move will take two to three years and could begin by the end of this summer, Mayor Waylyn Hobbs Jr. said in an interview Thursday.

As part of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, a local planning committee held its first meeting on May 13. A new website, www.hempsteaddri.com, outlines the process to solicit projects and public input for how to use the grant.

"With the DRI initiative, we get to have community involvement," Hobbs said. "We put people on the committee from the community, local businesses to help us talk about the vision for our downtown, what type of downtown we're looking to have in the village of Hempstead."

As a locus of mass transit -- with the NICE bus station and Long Island Rail Road station -- the village is a transit hub, Hobbs said.

"We're in a situation that's conducive to attract and keep some of our young people that have ... [gone] away to college, graduated, and young professionals that find it difficult to afford to live on Long Island," Hobbs said. "And so many of our projects are affordable."

When Hobbs announced on March 17 that the village had been awarded the grant, he stood in front of the construction site of the 228-unit apartment complex nearing completion at 159 Main St. That $121.5 million project includes 22,600 square feet of commercial space and received tax breaks through the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency.

All the apartments are income restricted for individuals and families earning up to $116,910, according to IDA materials.

Across the street, construction of the new 96-unit Estella apartment building is nearing completion, and a lottery has opened up for 53 affordable units, with a deadline of May 29.

Hempstead Village Deputy Mayor Jeffery Daniels said in an interview that projects like these in northern Hempstead village are moving forward, but "the main focus of our DRI is ... 'How do we get activities sparked in that southern portion, south of Jackson Avenue?'"

The $10 million grant was the latest infusion of state funds to the village.

The village has identified 14 "transformative" projects for which it hopes some of the grant will be directed, including streetscape design to create public spaces, the conversion of the vacant Hempstead Bank on Main Street into an art gallery and artist lofts, the redevelopment of existing commercial buildings, and the addition of hundreds of units of housing.

Those projects, which include public and private spending, total $544.3 million.

Last year, the village received a $3 million state grant to demolish a vacant parking garage behind Main Street and Fulton Avenue. Hobbs said the village has hired an engineer to determine whether the garage can be renovated or needs to come down.

Though the demolition of garage could make way for a long-stalled 336-unit apartment building called Cooper, Hobbs said it's unclear if that project will move ahead despite a site plan already having been approved.

Also last year, the state granted the village $37.2 million to partially pay for a new drinking water facility that will cost about $55 million.

"Waylyn seems to understand how to bring money into the community," said Shelley Brazley, former legislative aide to Hempstead Town Councilwoman Dorothy Goosby. "His approach to eating that elephant is one bite at a time, which makes sense."

Past efforts to transform the village have stumbled with the lack of financing and the onset of community backlash, Brazley said.

"So many of those projects couldn't be realized because there were no funds, and because we are a disenfranchised community ... ," she said. "The apprehension that the community had is that we never win ... but those backlashes are simply because we don't trust anything."

Transcripts from a hearing at the Hempstead IDA for the 159 Main St. project show that some residents were concerned that development would push out longtime residents, while tax breaks for the project would hurt those who remained.

The median household income in the village is $82,454, compared to $143,408 for Nassau County, according to U.S. Census data from 2019 to 2023. About 45.4% of village residents are Hispanic -- of any race, according to 2024 census estimates, while 44.8% are Black alone.

In 2009, the village adopted a comprehensive plan intended to spur development in a central business district. At that time, then-Mayor Wayne Hall -- in the wake of a failed proposal to build a massive $2 billion mixed-use project called Urban America adjacent to the LIRR station -- said the plan would bring more properties onto the tax rolls, Newsday reported.

The village later hired Plainview-based Renaissance Downtowns as a master planner. A 2011 conceptual plan called "The Story of Hempstead Rising" showed bustling streets and pedestrian plazas amid five- and six-story mixed-use apartment buildings.

Those visions haven't been realized. Yet those efforts weren't in vain, and they laid some of the groundwork for new development, said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, a Northport-based downtown planning organization.

"The master-planner piece was important from the perspective of getting that overall rezoning done," Alexander said.

As part of the process of rezoning 26 acres, the village produced an environmental impact statement, "which means every single project now doesn't have to go through an onerous environmental review," Alexander said. "That's all been analyzed. That's all been studied, that's all approved ... that makes it easier to move through the development process."

Hobbs, in an interview, said that "For years, nothing happened, but based on our relationships that we've developed on the federal and state level, we've been able to get the funding that's needed to bring life to this dream that has been in place for many, many years."

LaShawn Lukes, president of the Hempstead Village Chamber of Commerce, expressed optimism about a village renaissance. "We are working with the businesses to strengthen them, to provide them resources so they can build out, understand their industry and thrive," Lukes said.

The chamber plans to launch programs for senior discounts and a "shop local" plan, Lukes said in an interview.

"The community itself, they want the change," she said. "They want to shop in their community and we can keep the dollars within the village."

Antonio Kelly, a photographer and videographer who lives in the village, said that the once-bustling downtown hub that he remembered as a child in the 1970s began a long slide with the emergence of Roosevelt Field mall nearby, and with the white population moving out en masse.

"You had every kind of little store you wanted to go to, you had hat shops, you had dress shops, you had clothing stores, you had bakeries," Kelly said -- and many of those shops lost business and disappeared.

Kelly said that with Roosevelt Field and the rise of online shopping, it's unlikely that Hempstead will re-create what he called its "glory days" -- but he said that something more like Rockville Centre, with "those mom-and-pop stores, businesses like that, restaurants or boutiques ... that could happen, that'd be great, that's what I'm looking for."