Dispute Imminent Law on Outdoor Parties
A special events law to take effect in East Hampton Village on Oct. 1 will require permits for gatherings of 50 or more people at a private residence and prevent pre-existing businesses in residential neighborhoods, such as the Hedges Inn, from having events outdoors or in tents.
Ever since the law was introduced, the question of whether the Hedges Inn, which is on the south side of Main Street, should be allowed to have large tented events on its property has been a matter of debate. Although the village had approved permits for such events there in recent years, it reversed course in March and denied permits for four weddings scheduled to take place in 2018.
At a meeting of the zoning board of appeals on Friday, Christopher Kelley, a lawyer for the inn, asserted special events were a reasonable and legitimate accessory use for the inn, and sought to have the denials overturned.
Anthony Pasca, a lawyer representing Peter and Patricia Handal, the inn’s neighbors who have decried it as a noise-generating party center, argued that the zoning board had, in a 2004 determination, already prohibited any expansion of the inn’s pre-existing use, including special events.
In the 2004 ruling, the Z.B.A. annulled the use of the Hedges Inn patio for outdoor dining because Palm Management Corp., the inn’s owner at the time, failed to demonstrate it was a pre-existing use. Palm Management sued, but the zoning board’s decision was upheld in State Supreme Court and then by the Court of Appeals. Mr. Kelley said the village administrator and building inspector had incorrectly applied the ruling about the patio as the basis for the denial of tent permits. “I’m here to tell you that that is an entirely false reading of that case,” Mr. Kelley said at Friday’s Z.B.A. meeting. The 2004 decision, he said, was solely targeted at prohibiting dining on the patio and did not outlaw tents. “It did not say the property cannot have outdoor dining. It did not say the property could not have special events,” he said.
To bolster his argument, Mr. Kelley read a statement from Andrew Goldstein, who was chairman of the Z.B.A. in 2004. Mr. Goldstein said that, to the best of his recollection, the determination “did not deal with outdoor dining generally at the Hedges Inn.”
The zoning code limits the use of tents for special events to 21 days a year in residential districts. “It would be ironic indeed,” said Mr. Kelley, “if we were — being the only legal restaurant and inn and having a catering component — the only property that could not have multiple special events on our property, where all the residents could.”
After being denied tent permits in March, the Hedges Inn held tented events at a neighboring residential property.
Making his case against the inn’s holding special events, Mr. Pasca said the business was trying to “stealthily
expand” its non-conforming use. He showed an image, which he said he had downloaded from the inn’s website, of what he described as a “circus tent” where weddings are held. The tent can hold well over 200 people, he said, and the inn’s certificate of occupancy allows for only 113 people at indoor events.
In the 2004 decision, Mr. Pasca said, the Z.B.A. had been prescient about what it was staving off by prohibiting dining on the inn’s patio. He read a passage from the earlier determination, which concluded that the outdoor dining would “enable the owner to operate a different kind of facility altogether, a restaurant facility capable of hosting and catering large special events.”
“A precedent’s a precedent,” Mr. Pasca said. “I was here. I handled the litigation back then. I’m asking you to enforce the code, enforce your own precedent, stop the creeping expansion of nonconforming uses that you’ve been told to stop by the legislative board.”
The hearing will continue at the Oct. 12 meeting of the zoning board.