UPDATE (July 6, 2019): Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been scheduled to be on Long Island Monday to announce plans to build a new train station to serve the proposed new arena at Belmont Park, sources told LIBN. However the announcement was abruptly postponed late Friday, according to sources close to the situation.

Instead, Empire State Development scheduled a meeting of its board of directors for Monday afternoon to seek “authorization to accept and approve” the final environmental impact statement for the massive redevelopment proposing to bring a new hockey arena, hotel and retail mall to the Elmont horse track property.

The new train station would be located on the Long Island Rail Road’s Main Line just off the north parking lot of the Belmont property, just east of the Cross Island Parkway and west of the existing Bellerose LIRR station.

Construction of the new station is likely to be folded into the ongoing Third Track project, so that the station could be in operation by the time the New York Islanders’ arena is scheduled to open in the fall of 2021, sources said.

It is unclear how much New York Arena Partners, the developers of the $1.18 billion arena, hotel and retail project, will contribute to the cost of the new station.

Rail riders to the arena will board shuttles at the new station that will also serve those who drive to the property and park in the north and east lots. The proposed station would be more than half a mile from the arena site near the west entrance of the racetrack’s grandstand.

Having full-time train service at Belmont Park was one of the sticking points for local elected officials when it came to supporting the development of the 19,000-seat arena, 250-room hotel and 435,000-square-foot retail village on 43 acres of the state-owned horseracing property.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is also working on improving the switching and other infrastructure to allow for smoother operation of two daily trains to and from the existing Belmont Park LIRR station. Those trains were promised for event days in Empire State Development’s draft environmental impact statement on the arena project. The existing station at Belmont, used on Belmont Stakes day, is only accessible from the west.

Besides the new train station, the plan may also include improvements to Belmont Park Road so that residents from Elmont and other surrounding communities can access the new station. However, according to ESD’s responses to comments on the arena project’s DEIS, no commuter parking is proposed for the Belmont property.

ESD officials have not responded to requests for comment. The project’s final environmental impact statement, which was supposed to be completed by last month, is expected to be presented soon. It’s also expected that opponents of the Belmont redevelopment are preparing to file a lawsuit or two that will further delay the start of construction that was originally planned to begin in the second quarter of this year.