Building Limits Considered

The East Hampton Village Board will hold public hearings on May 15 on proposed amendments aimed at reining in outsized houses, accessory structures, and lot coverage, as well as basement living areas. All of the zoning code amendments were proposed in response to concerns relayed by the village’s historic preservation consultant and code enforcement officer.

Earlier this month, Robert Hefner, the village’s historic preservation consultant, warned the board of a trend toward burgeoning gross floor area and lot coverage on the larger parcels in many neighborhoods, and the possibility, under the present code, of still larger houses and coverage. In order to maintain a sense of proportion and the character that has developed in those neighborhoods over 350 years, Mr. Hefner recommended a graduated formula for lots larger than one acre, aimed at restraining construction or reconstruction projects that produce massive houses and numerous accessory structures, swimming pools, or tennis courts.

Similarly, cellars have begun to extend beyond the footprint of many houses’ ground-floor levels, Ken Collum, the village’s code enforcement officer, warned the board in February, adding additional habitable space, and density, sometimes at multiple levels.

The proposed amendments will revise the gross-floor-area limits of houses and accessory structures as well as lot-coverage limits, relating the maximum allowable to the size of the lot on which they are situated. Also to be added is a definition for “cellar” to state that it cannot exceed the exterior face of the wall of any building’s first-floor level.

With no comment from the public, the board voted unanimously Friday to institute new fees for a number of violations. Minimum fines pertaining to beaches, garage sales, noise, peace and good order, peddling and soliciting, littering, streets and sidewalks, and zoning will now increase after failure to pay for 30, 60, and 90 days.

The amendments, for such violations as failure to contain a beach fire in the proper receptacle or to clean up after a dog, for example, or the posting of illegal garage sale or real estate signs give the village the ability to follow up on unpaid summonses. Under the new laws, the village can prosecute a summons when someone fails to appear in court. The violation would previously have been dismissed.

Also as expected, the board voted to grant a sanitary easement to Starbucks so that the septic system at its Main Street location can be upgraded. Starbucks, like a number of other buildings along Main Street, has a septic system under the Reutershan parking lot that predates the village’s acquisition of that property as a municipal lot.

At a meeting held last month at Village Hall, representatives of the coffee chain told Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and the board that because of planned interior modifications to increase storage space, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services is requiring a septic system upgrade. The work will likely be done in the fall.

The mayor ended the meeting by expressing the board’s support for the East Hampton Town Board’s vote, taken the previous evening, to enact an overnight curfew at East Hampton Airport, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., to extend that curfew from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. for planes in a “noisy aircraft” category, and to limit such aircraft to one takeoff and one landing per week from May through September. 

The board “is in accord with the resolutions that were passed by our colleagues at the town board level,” the mayor said. He called the measures “a work in progress,” but said that “we support the initial action, and it will continue to be monitored. We’ll see how it goes.”