Bridgehampton C.A.C. Urges Gateway Rejection

The developers of a 13.3-acre property across Montauk Highway from Bridgehampton Commons may have followed a Southampton Town request to scale back  plans for the planned development district, but what they came up with didn’t satisfy the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee, which on Monday night urged the Southampton Town Board to again reject the plan. 

In a 21-to-3 vote, the committee approved a resolution asking the town to “withdraw entirely from the plan it initiated to rezone” the land from highway business to a mixed-use planned development district. 

Carol Konner, the principal in Konner Development, and her son, Greg, own two-thirds of the acreage, while Eric Friedlander, who developed North Haven Point, owns the rest. After being told the project, being called Bridgehampton Gateway, was too big, she presented a pared-down proposal designed by Alexander Gorlin, a well-known Manhattan designer. It calls for 85,000 square feet of commercial space, reduced from the 90,000 square feet proposed in February at the last of several hearings. An Equinox gym is planned for 27,000 square feet of that space. Four market rate condominiums at 5,000 square feet are proposed, a 50-percent reduction. As for community benefit, a necessary component of P.D.D.s, 20 affordable housing units are planned on the second story above the commercial space, totaling 15,000 square feet. There would be 15 one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom apartments. Thirty units were initially proposed for 25,000 square feet of second-story space.

A state-of-the-art sewage system that Mrs. Konner said would cost $2.4 million will be installed. She also promised dedicated affordable retail spaces for local operations, such as shoe repair or seamstress shops, and the donation of open space on the highway, as well as trails leading to Kellis Pond, which is just to the west. 

The citizens committee was not swayed. Its resolution was drafted by a subcommittee that is closely following the proposal. “Rather than benefiting the community, such density will have a negative impact on our hamlet,” the resolution read. There are unanswered questions, the committee said, about whether there would be adequate parking for the types of businesses that might rent space and whether the town could control “other negative impacts of such developments.” Namely, members are upset about the recent removal of privacy berms from the front of Bridgehampton Commons. 

A hearing will be held on Bridgehampton Gateway at Southampton Town Hall on May 3 at 6 p.m. The decision for the town board is whether to move forward in considering the planned development district. 

Mrs. Konner, who was in the citizens committee’s audience on Monday but was not called on to speak until after the vote, said she respected everyone on the committee, but, “I’d like that same respect coming back this way.” She took umbrage that the committee was discussing details and making misstatements about aspects of the plan that she said only professionals could properly answer or correct. “And they will be answered next Tuesday night.”

Mrs. Konner reminded committee members that the town had initiated the process when she first presented a plan for an Equinox gym at the site, which would have been legal on one of the nine separate, contiguous lots that comprise the 13.3 acres. 

“You don’t want it? O.K. We’ll just go highway business and that’ll be that. Maybe you should postpone your vote until we have a chance to air our side,” she said, and promised to “meet you all at Candy Kitchen, and I’ll hold my head high.”

The vote on Monday was in stark contrast to the support the committee initially gave the town in exploring a planned development district there last year. Then-Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst had brought up a P.D.D. as a possible alternative when the committee was railing against the possibility of a CVS pharmacy opening at the corner of Montauk Highway and Lumber Lane. (The pharmacy has since withdrawn from the location, though a building is nearing completion there). 

Peter Wilson, an architect who is on the subcommittee, said the committee had been initially attracted to a P.D.D. at Gateway because of the CVS  and the idea that the Konners could build 90,000 square feet of commercial space as of right under highway business zoning. Bridgehampton could “wind up with Jiffy Lubes,” looking like County Road 39 in Southampton, he said. “We were sold a bill of goods right from the beginning. We were given eye wash.”  

“It was that sense of betrayal that led to a re-examination of what was being agreed to,” Pamela Harwood, the committee chairwoman, said.

John Daly, one of the members who did not vote in favor of the committee’s resolution, disagreed. “If you step back and take a good hard look at this, this ‘opposition’ was primarily directed by the adjoining landowners,” he said, referring to Bridgehampton Action Now, a group created by homeowners around Kellis Pond. Others on the committee shouted, “No,” and said the Kellis Pond group were not adjoining landowners.

“What changed our minds was we had time to analyze those plans they were hitting us with. The plan doesn’t work,” Mr. Wilson said. Ms. Harwood acknowledged that some committee members were more focused on the affordable housing. “There are still people who say they will support it because of affordable housing. I don’t think we’re going to get everybody in this room to agree on that.” 

Tony Lambert, who grew up in Bridgehampton and works at the Post Office there, was one of those voices. He said people are moving to southern states because they can’t afford to live here, and he noted the lack of affordable housing. “If East Hampton can do it, why can’t we?  We don’t need to have all these empty houses where no one is in there with the lights on all day long,” he said.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Konner said she was frustrated by the meeting. “It felt like a lynching,” she said, adding that she had met the town’s request to scale back as much as she could and would not decrease the density anymore.  The cost of the sewage treatment plant has already increased nearly $1 million, she said. “There’s nothing more I can say yes to.”