East Hampton Village Law Challenged
In May, when the East Hampton Village Board held a public hearing on zoning code amendments that would add graduated formulas for allowable square footage of residences and coverage of lots larger than one acre, Joseph P. Rose, who owns multiple properties in the village, said adoption “would almost certainly” lead to a legal challenge. In June, the board adopted the amendments, which had been recommended by the village’s planning and zoning committee, and in July, Mr. Rose’s prediction came true.
Last week, he and Rajesh Alva, a Hedges Lane neighbor who had sharply criticized the amendments at the hearing, filed suit in State Supreme Court against the village, the village board, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., and the planning and zoning committee. They are asking the court to invalidate the amendments and declare them unenforceable.
The board has exceeded its authority, their complaint states, relying on a “biased, cherry-picked, and incomplete survey” of properties by a “rogue committee” that worked “without public notice, input, or oversight.”
The board’s actions followed an April presentation by Robert Hefner, the village’s director of historic services, in which he called a survey of 173 properties “a wake-up call” to the prospect of irrevocable harm to the village’s character.
The amendments include separate formulas to calculate floor area and lot coverage for parcels between 40,000 and 80,000 square feet and those that are larger. Previously, one set of standards applied to all residential properties.
Central to the planning and zoning committee’s recommendation was a statement in the village’s 2002 comprehensive plan that “new development and redevelopment should be compatible in terms of size and scale with each existing residential neighborhood and should reinforce their integrity as they have developed over 350 years.”
Like many other property owners who spoke against the amendments at the May hearing, Mr. Rose and Mr. Alva complained of a rush to judgment and legislation based on what they charged was flawed analysis, inadequate public notice, and no consideration of the impact of the changes.
The new formulas, they said, “drastically limit the flexibility of owners of larger lots in building homes and accessory structures, based on little more than rank speculation” that existing regulations allow construction and reconstruction that is out of proportion to their surroundings. While many speakers at the May hearing acknowledged that such a phenomenon is occurring in neighborhoods with smaller streets with smaller lots, they saw no such problem on larger parcels.
“Incredibly,” Mr. Rose and Mr. Alva’s complaint states, “the board purported to justify these amendments by making the sweeping assertion, for the first time in more than a dozen years since its passage, that the comprehensive plan should somehow now be considered tohave inadequately maintained the special character of the Village.”
Mr. Rose owns a vacant lot at 23 Apaquogue Road, adjacent to his Hedges Lane property. Adoption of the amendments, his complaint states, “substantially reduced” his development options.
Mr. Alva, who owns property at 40 Cooper Lane in addition to Hedges Lane, had long planned to demolish the Hedges Lane house and build a new one of approximately 6,200 square feet. He was granted building permits about one week before the amendments were adopted, but they were revoked and a stop-work order issued because the structure would have exceeded the new square footage limit.
In a June letter to the board, Mr. Rose, a former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of city planning in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration, repeated an offer to partner with village officials in discussion of appropriate land use. He said on Friday that his offer stands.
“We appreciate the village’s respect for and desire to protect the special character of our neighborhood and we welcome the motivation behind the regulatory changes,” he wrote. However, “we are deeply concerned” that the amendments “may well prove detrimental to the character of the neighborhood, burdensome to its residents, and contrary to the overall interests” of the village.
Asked to respond, Mr. Rickenbach offered no comment. Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, would say only that “the case is being reviewed and handled by village counsel.” Mr. Hefner did not respond to two emails seeking comment.