Expected by Spring: A Place to Go
A long-awaited public restroom in Amagansett’s business district is moving closer to reality.
At the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Monday, Rona Klopman told her colleagues that a subcommittee on which she serves has held three meetings with Tom Talmage, the town engineer, and Joseph Catropa, an architect with L.K. Mclean Associates. The group has refined plans for the restroom’s design and location, she said. In appearance, it will resemble the Amagansett Library and will likely be situated behind it, in the public parking lot on the north side of Main Street, occupying six existing parking spaces.
Construction of the restroom will not, however, decrease the number of parking spaces, said East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee. Rather, a net increase in spaces will result after the lot is restriped, he said.
Mr. Talmage and Mr. Catropa were to mark the structure’s location on Tuesday, but that has been postponed. Alex Walter, Mr. Cantwell’s executive assistant, said a timetable for the construction and the restriping awaits a final determination on the restroom’s location and the new parking configuration. “We hope to have, by mid-December, construction documents complete and published and ready to bid,” he said. “We’re looking to have a pre-bid conference and bid due date by January, and hope to start construction by mid-February, weather permitting.”
It is hoped that the projects will be completed in the first half of April, Mr. Walter said, but no later than May 1.
Mr. Cantwell told the committee that plans would be presented at an upcoming meeting. “You can look at the layout, the design, and have at it,” he said.
The committee also resumed a discussion of whether it should request a hamlet study. “The question would be, what kind of planning issues are really critical in Amagansett,” Mr. Cantwell said, adding that zoning in the hamlet “is pretty well established over a long period, so it tends to be more focused.” Infrastructure, parking, traffic, and affordable housing might be among the issues, he suggested.
“We’ve agreed that a hamlet study is necessary,” said Kieran Brew, the committee’s chairman. “We have infrastructure issues here, for two months a year.”
The discussion circled back to the parking lot. “This lot gets used for multiple purposes and is not tightly regulated,” Mr. Cantwell said, noting that people park and go to the beach, or take the Hampton Jitney to New York, or leave their cars for extended periods, “yet its primary purpose was to support the downtown area, a place where residents and visitors could park and use the commercial district. That seems to be getting maxed out, certainly in the summer. How to deal with that is a good question.”
Mr. Brew said he would send committee members a link to the town comprehensive plan, adopted in 2005, which they should study in preparation for next month’s meeting.
“One of the pitfalls in talking a?bout broad-based planning uses,” Mr. Cant?well said, “is, people tend to throw? in everything but the kitchen sink. It starts to become untenable. If you have a meeting, focus on what you think are the most important planning issues, not every issue.”
Also at the meeting, committee members voted unanimously to ask the town board to take advantage of a recent state law authorizing the use of cameras to enforce the speed limit in school zones. The equipment, which would be paid for by Suffolk County, would be positioned on Main Street near the Amagansett School.