Changes Ahead For Business Hubs?

Led by a team of planning consultants, a town-wide project that will bring residents, business owners, and officials together to shape the future of East Hampton’s commercial areas got under way this week.

At a town board meeting on Tuesday morning, the consultants — Harry Dodson and Peter Flinker of Dodson and Flinker; Lisa Liquori of Fine Arts and Sciences, a former director of the town’s Planning Department who led the revision of its comprehensive plan; Russ Archambault of RKG Associates, and Ray DeBias of L.K. McLean Associates — presented an overview of the hamlet and business studies they will oversee. Later that day and yesterday, they presided over initial meetings on the separate hamlets, each of which will be the subject of its own study.

Focused studies of East Hampton’s commercial centers and of its businesses and economy were among the numerous recommendations in the comprehensive plan. Last updated in 2005, the plan lays out goals for the future of the town and ways to achieve them. A number of discrete secondary-planning efforts or studies have since been done or are in various stages of completion, including the creation of a community housing opportunity plan, an affordable housing credit program, and a coastal stratagem.

Eric Schantz, a town planner, said Tuesday night that the hamlet and business studies are intended to further the designs of the comprehensive plan, which include maintaining East Hampton’s rural and semi-rural character, protecting neighborhoods, hamlets, and landscapes from incompatible development, and encouraging local businesses to serve the needs of the year-round population.

The consultants will help officials and community members develop a blueprint to balance the desired preservation of the town’s scenic, agricultural, and historic resources with “the need to grow and accommodate future growth on a reasonable scale, in a way that fits the development with the historic nature of the town,” Mr. Dodson said in his presentation to the town board.

The goal of the business study, said Mr. Archambault, the consultant overseeing that aspect of the effort, is “to determine what the town needs to do to allow businesses to thrive” while also protecting the environment and the character of the community. He plans to create focus groups of business leaders, and to compile data on demographics to determine what drives the local economy — how and where people spend their money.

Meetings were held on Tuesday to elicit community members’ comments about Wainscott, Amagansett, and Montauk. A second Montauk session was held yesterday afternoon, and a session focused on Springs and East Hampton took place last night. Consultants created a list of the key issues named by participants, then invited them, using maps, stickers, and Post-It notes, to point out areas with problems, as well as “special places to be protected, celebrated, and enhanced,” and areas of “opportunity.”

At the session specific to Amagansett and Wainscott, the focus was on two fundamental questions: “Do we want growth?” and “Can growth add as well as detract?”

“Water is our issue here, our economy, tourism,” said Alexander Peters, president of the advocacy group Amagansett-Springs Aquifer Protection. “It’s everything.” He and many others called attention to the excessive nitrogen and phosphorous in the waterways, for which aging septic systems and stormwater and road runoff are blamed. “Without treatment, we’re going nowhere in terms of growth, or we’ll be completely poisoning ourselves,” Mr. Peters said. “Once the word gets out about the reality of what’s here . . . it’s going to really affect our economy.”

He told the consultants that the proposed workforce housing development in Amagansett was another major concern. “This town is about to add to density, in a very dangerous way,” he said, speaking of the 40 units proposed to be built at 531 Montauk Highway.

Some disagreed, saying that the scarcity of affordable housing and seasonal workforce housing was an emergency. “Affordable housing doesn’t have to mean growth,” said Job Potter of Amagansett. “It may mean that some housing units being built end up as affordable units.”

Septic systems were another concern. Residential property owners, and owners of commercial buildings with second-story apartments, must be given incentives to upgrade to systems that remove most of the nitrogen that otherwise reaches the water table, some said. Excess nitrogen promotes harmful algal blooms that have affected marine life and closed waterways.

Continued growth must be carefully implemented, if at all, participants concurred. Traffic and parking, energy sustainability, litter, and preservation of farmland and the South Fork’s historic character were also cited as concerns. Parking, particularly in Amagansett’s commercial district, must be accommodated, some in attendance said, noting that the roads laid out in an era of fewer residents and visitors are now choked with traffic during the summer.

If density is to be kept in check, the town must take a hard look at building codes, said Jim MacMillan, a real estate broker in Amagansett. Builders, he said, “have maximized every single property.” It’s not uncommon, Mr. MacMillan said, “to find a six or eight-bedroom house on a half-acre property. We’re never going to catch up with the amount of lots still waiting to be maxed out. . . . That’s why the roads have been so bad these last years.”

On a map of Wainscott, one resident singled out the Osteria Salina restaurant, pointing out its proximity to Georgica Pond, which has been closed to crabbing for much of the last two summers due to dense blooms of blue-green algae. By the end of the session, the map was dotted with Post-It stickers with notations including “transportation hub,” “road runoff to Georgica Pond,” “need small grocery,” “more pedestrian-friendly,” and “no industrial usage carwash.”

For Amagansett, the suggestions included a transportation hub at the Long Island Rail Road station, apartments above stores in the commercial district, preservation of vistas, and a town purchase of the former Villa Prince restaurant on Montauk Highway east of the I.G.A. In recent years, the building has been seen as the potential site of a 7-Eleven convenience store, which has drawn both support and opposition from residents of the hamlet.

At the Montauk Playhouse on Tuesday night, similar concerns about affordable housing, environmental protection, septic waste, and more were raised.

“We are a year-round fishing community. Anything that takes place needs to take into account the year-round economy of Montauk,” said Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. 

Plans for Montauk’s downtown must take sea level rise into account, said Rameshwar Das, an author of the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan. “Sea level rise is going to affect how tenable the downtown area is going to be over time.”

Routine flooding, degradation of drinking and surface water, a “huge” septic problem, failing or threatened utility infrastructure, parking problems, and a surge in police and ambulance calls were the concerns cited by Jeremy Samuelson, executive director of the Concerned Citizens of Montauk. “We have a host of issues that aren’t getting better,” he said. “Are we envisioning ourselves on an infinite growth track,” he asked, or should the community call a halt and look to maximize and improve on what exists? “The community and the world are changing around us,” he said. “Will we manage that change or be a victim to that change?”

Speaking to the consultants on Tuesday morning, Supervisor Larry Cantwell underscored the diverse nature of the town’s hamlets. “You’re going to need to adjust your approach for these different hamlets,” he said. “This process has to be about finding a consensus of opinion about how we move forward in these hamlets.” People will have varying visions, Mr. Cantwell said, but the town has “had some success in putting people with different opinions into a room.” That approach helped the board forge its policies regarding East Hampton Airport.

The meetings this week will be followed by longer, more formal sessions stretching over two days and nights, which will also center on individual hamlets. On day one of each session there will be a “walking workshop,” when the consultants will travel through the hamlet centers with residents to see sites firsthand. On the second day, Mr. Flinker said Tuesday, alternatives for solving problems will be presented and their impacts considered. An evening “visioning workshop” will allow the public to ponder all the possibilities.

The sessions will help to determine “where you want to be in 20 years,” Mr. Flinker said. “What is it going to look like, and how it’s going to affect the business environment, the living environment . . . we’re not going to solve all the problems, but we want to identify things that the town can do next year, and the year after that”

The session for East Hampton will be held on June 1 and 2; for Springs, on May 18 and 19; for Wainscott, May 20 and 21, and for Amagansett on June 3 and 4. Locations are to be determined.

Separate sessions addressing the Montauk downtown and dock areas, scheduled for Sept. 14 through 17, may be rescheduled after it was pointed out at Tuesday’s meeting that those dates are a Friday and Saturday, during a still-busy time for Montauk business owners.

Information about the hamlet study can be found on the town’s website, ehamptonny.gov. Comments may be sent to [email protected].