Amagansett: Curb The Slurb

With the East Hampton Town Board about to name a date for a general airing of the Amagansett Corridor Study, it is time to take a closer look at some of the study's recommendations.

The 300-page report is an exhaustive document which seems to have left no stone unturned. The town got its money's worth on this one. That is not to say that its conclusions are without flaws.

The consultant's mission was to determine how best to protect the Montauk Highway, from Pantigo Place to the beginning of Napeague, from the dreaded "highway sprawl" so prevalent elsewhere in the nation and to keep Amagansett itself oriented toward people rather than automobiles.

West of the hamlet, the study is on target. It protects existing nurseries, allows for limited business use of residential properties to encourage working from home and bed and breakfast establishments, and suggests narrowing the definition of neighborhood business zones to distinguish them from central business districts.

To the east, however, the recommendations are less successful. The study recommends a "planned commercial district" for the entire north side of the highway from the Amagansett train station to Moran's Country Store (formerly Gray's). Such zoning would encourage exactly what the town hopes to discourage - the spread of what planners call "slurb."

New commercial growth has to be accommodated somewhere, but sanctioning further strip zoning rather than seeking to centralize retail uses would be counterproductive, even if developed in good taste. The acreage to the north of Amagansett Main Street would be a better alternative. "Walkability" could be maintained.

The Bistrian family has long hoped to create more business zoning on its almost 43-acre tract behind the village core. This vacant land is zoned residentially, with 10 acres set aside for affordable housing. The tract adjoins Amagansett's municipal parking lot on the south, Windmill Lane on the west, and an almost 20-acre residential parcel, also with affordable housing potential, on the east.

The study recommends that the entire tract become an agricultural zone with provisions for affordable housing. This is a mistake. If the community really wants to keep Amagansett Main Street walkable as well as attractive, the way to do it is to build more retail stores within the core, not in a satellite district outside it.

Why not allow more retail development around the municipal parking lot and a mix of affordable and other multifamily housing, along with open areas and greens, on its perimeters? Not only would Amagansett have a convenient, clearly demarcated village center, but Springs residents, whose business establishments are few, could drive there, park, do some shopping, and leave without ever having to cope with, or add to, Main Street traffic.

The Bistrian property and the land east of it on the north side of Main Street should be rezoned in part to neighborhood business. This is especially suitable now that the town has prohibited supermarkets and put a 10,000-square-foot cap on the size of stores in these zones. The study further recommends eliminating many high-intensity uses now allowed.

What the study calls a "scenic vista" behind the parking lot is neither scenic nor a vista in the usual sense: It cannot be seen at all from the highway, and from Windmill Lane it is marred by power lines and train tracks. And it has not been active farmland for a long time.

As for the proposed planned commercial district east of the hamlet, the study suggests strict guidelines for construction: landscaped 100-foot setbacks as buffers between highway and stores, campus-style layouts, and a limit of one business per building. In other words, the study makes recommendations to ameliorate the aesthetic of strip malls while encouraging continued strip development.

This is reasonable for the six-acre parcel already earmarked for commercial development between the V&V service station and what had been a Chinese restaurant - but not for the rest of the land. Six acres is large enough to accommodate businesses such as a supermarket, large drugstore, and the like. But no matter what aesthetic controls were in place, expanding retail uses to the east would continue to spill development outside the village core and contribute to highway sprawl.

The rest of the proposed new commercial district, 19.7 acres abutting Bunker Hill Road, is zoned for residential use and affordable housing. While the study recommends central business zoning, it states that affordable housing is suitable for the parcel as well.

In discussing affordable housing, the study recommends that two-family houses be added to the code in addition to multifamily buildings. That is a good idea - except that segregating affordable housing from other multifamily complexes, especially in a commercial zone, is distasteful.

One other note: The consultants seem to have taken the pulse of the neighborhood in recommending against a change of zone to allow an inn and restaurant just east of Windmill Lane and more or less behind Miss Amelia's Cottage. This proposal, which includes an attractive greensward off Main Street in place of two small shops, seems in keeping with the study, and we see no reason why an application for a change of zone should not go to public hearing. The East Hampton Town Board would decide the fate of the property after hearing from all sides.

The character of the East End depends as much on our hamlet centers as on our beaches and open spaces. These centers should be convenient and pleasant places in which to live and shop, walk and bicycle, or sit on a bench. Village life is much to be prized. Any plan for Amagansett must make this its goal.