Hamlet Workshops to Begin
Four days of what are expected to be intensive public sessions, called charettes, will get underway in earnest next week in each of East Hampton Town’s hamlets in a process intended to result in plans for the business centers of each hamlet. Planning consultants will be on hand, and each hamlet will eventually be the focus of a separate two-day planning and design session.
Residents have been invited to attend the sessions in order to help shape the questions and concerns to be examined by the planners, and then to vet ideas and possible future changes.
According to a flyer, the consultants, who are representatives of Dodson and Flinker, a Massachusetts firm, need residents’ “input to better understand how homes, businesses, recreation, and community work today, and how they can function better in the future.”
The sessions will begin with three meetings focusing on Springs. On Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., a walking and auto tour of the hamlet will launch from Ashawagh Hall in Springs. The tour will be followed by a workshop at Ashawagh Hall at 6:30 p.m., offering a chance, the consultants have said, to share “ideas and opinions about what’s working well and what needs to be fixed to make Springs a better place to live and work.”
That information will be used to craft “ideas and alternative scenarios” that will be presented to the public by the consultants at Ashawagh Hall next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. The team will listen to comments from the public.
The process will be repeated with a focus on Wainscott, beginning on Friday, May 20. A walking tour will leave from in front of the HomeGoods store at 10:30 a.m., and be followed by a workshop at 6:30 p.m. at the LTV Studios on Industrial Road. The discussion will again center on problems and on what’s working, and also on “how best to foster a vibrant commercial center in Wainscott,” according to a statement.
To piggyback on that session, there will be a public workshop on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon at LTV, at which participants can “explore ideas for traffic, parking, sidewalks, open space, and mixed-use redevelopment in the center of Wainscott.”
Members of the public are welcome to attend any of the meetings, but they have been asked to send an email to [email protected] to indicate they plan to attend.
The hamlet centers of East Hampton and Amagansett will be the subject of meetings from June 1 through 4; Montauk’s downtown and dock area will be discussed at similar sessions in the fall.