August 29, 1982

THE Glen Island Casino, the empty former nightclub on Long Island Sound that was popular in the Big Band era, is in the limelight again as Westchester County, which owns the casino and the park where it is located, renews its efforts to find an operator who will restore the facility's image. For more than two years, the administration of County Executive Alfred B. DelBello has been soliciting proposals from entrepreneurs in the hopes of realizing the potential of the New Rochelle site, where Glenn Miller, Ozzie Nelson, the Dorsey Brothers, Glen Gray, Claude Thornhill, Tommy Reynolds and Shep Fields once filled the hall with the sounds of swing. Tomorrow, the County Board of Legislators is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the administration's latest selection, a proposal by a group of investors who want to lease the casino for at least 10 and possibly 25 years and spend an estimated $1.7 million to make it a ''premier'' seafood restaurant and catering establishment, featuring weekly nostalgic ''Big Band nights.'' While the lease could be voted on by the Board tomorrow, setting the stage for the casino's revival perhaps next year, quick action seemed doubtful last week. Some of the lawmakers announced they would not be ready to decide until they could learn more about the proposed lease and the individuals who would be taking over the Casino. The administration, in April 1981, had proposed a lease with another bidder, the owners of the Lighthouse Restaurant in Yonkers.

FROM the outside, 444 West 22d Street offered a pleasant prospect, a four-story brick remindero f the days in the early 19th century when Chelsea was home to the l ikes of the poet and educator Clement Clarke Moore. It did not take a n expert eye to discern that the facade had recently undergone a t horough restoration. Inside, however, the town house failed to inspire similar confidence. In the basement was what looked to be an impossibly old boiler and long cracks ran through some of the walls. The view out back was of an ivy-encircled yard in disarray. For these reasons, the prospective buyers retained a private building inspector to help them calculate the cost of bringing the house, which had a sale price of $500,000, up to standard. This kind of assessment, however approximate, is increasingly being used by purchasers before they sign the papers - whether they plan to turn the house or cooperative apartment into an ideal dwelling or just a habitable one. Depending on how ambitious their schemes are, buyers might call in an inspector, an architect, a contractor or all three to help them judge not only the cost of obvious work but also to find any hidden problems and to figure the expenses that go with fixing them.

Turning abandoned railroad stations into restaurants, boutiques, roadhouses and similar establishments has become almost routine as train service has declined over the last three decades. But rarely has there been as ambitious a reclamation as that planned for the abandoned Lackawanna station on Grove Street in Montclair, N. J. With private investment of almost $10 million and a Federal grant of $1.48 million that has just won preliminary approval in Washington, the old station will be transformed by a development group, Montclair Center Associates, into Lackawanna Plaza, a shopping complex that will include a 50,000-square-foot supermarket for the Pathmark chain.

A RECENT decision by the United States Supreme Court has officials of Connecticut's 169 towns braced for antitrust suits against them - and also for a possible threat to the state's strong tradition of home rule. ''The court has ruled that we can be sued,'' said Michael L. Werner, the Mayor of Bristol and first vice president of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. ''It's really pretty scary.'' Mr. Werner referred to a January decision of the Court that said local municipalities were not automatically immune from antitrust legal actions.

NEW JERSEY is expected to play a major role in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's coming expansion in competitive business fields. The stage was set for the expansion when an antitrust agreement between the company and the Justice Department was signed by a judge last week. In return for giving up its 22 operating companies, A.T.& T. is allowed, under the agreement, to enter the growing field of telecommunications. ''Most of the expansion is in New Jersey,'' said Winston Hensworth, a securities analyst who follows A.T.& T. for Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. ''Just as I.B.M. scattered all over the Hudson Valley, A.T.& T. is moving to New Jersey.''