Controversial Hearing

The East Hampton Town Planning Board will hold four public hearings Wednesday night, including one for a proposed subdivision in Wainscott that has generated controversy and three others that have not been questioned.

The Wainscott proposal is for 40 acres of former farmland. The land, owned by Michael S. Dell and being developed by Jeffrey Colle, has been before the board since 2013, and members of the board have themselves been divided on the proposals. The principal disputes about the subdivision, which is called 55 Wainscott Hollow Road, have been about diminished farmland vistas and access from Sayre’s Path, which has now been eliminated.

The other hearings include an application for site plan approval from the owner of four old Schellinger farm buildings on the northwestern side of Amagansett Main Street. The owner, a limited liability corporation called Amagansett Industries, wants to change the use of a part of the first floor of one of the buildings, the one-time residence at 145 Main Street, from an office to an ice cream shop. Site plan approval is necessary because the change would increase sanitary flow.

The owner received permits from the board in 2002, allowing six uses in the four buildings, with two of those uses at 145 Main Street. Billy Hajek of Land Marks has told the board that the owner now uses the second floor of the house to store dry goods, such as T-shirts, but wants to make sure the option of using the second floor for a second business is retained. No table seating is proposed for the ice cream shop, according to the most recent memo prepared for the board by JoAnne Pahwul of the Planning Department, which does not oppose the plan.

Another applicant for site plan approval  that night is the Town of East Hampton. It intends to put up three buildings on an almost three-acre lot on Accabonac Highway, which now has tennis courts on it. Each building would have four apartments to be leased as affordable housing for town residents by the town’s office of Housing and Community Development. Windmill Village, an existing affordable complex, lies to the north.

The final hearing is for a site in Montauk that the planning board asked the town board to consider purchasing with the community preservation fund in July. The over seven-and-a-half acre parcel is north of Montauk Highway near Upland Road to the east of Hither Hills.

Joseph Frisone, its owner, has applied to split the property into two buildable lots and a reserve area. If purchased by the town, the property would expand the some 3,000 acres preserved in the area, including Hither Hills State Park, Hither Woods Preserve, and the Lee Koppelman Nature Preserve.