Hearing on Subdivision After Six Years
Conciliation was in the air, and olive branches were extended in all directions on Aug. 27, when the East Hampton Town Planning Board scheduled a public hearing on the subdivision of roughly 40 acres of Wainscott farmland, which will result in seven house lots. The development had been years in the making and the subject of two lawsuits. The hearing will be at 7 p.m. on Sept. 17.
Jeffrey Colle bought the property for $26 million from Ronald Lauder in 2006. At the meeting on Aug. 27, Mary Jane Asato of the Southampton legal firm Bourke, Flanagan, and Asato, who has represented the applicant at countless meetings over the years, called the subdivision map “a balance of competing interests” and the best compromise. Almost 70 percent of the land will be kept in open space, presumably for agriculture.
The property is bordered by Wainscott Hollow Road on the west and Sayre’s Path on the east. It is part of what had been a swath of several hundred acres of farmland that ran from just south of Montauk Highway to the ocean. The Wainscott Cemetery and Wainscott School are nearby. Ms. Asato had told the board in 2013 that economic considerations were behind much of the subdivision’s design, including, apparently, the difference in value between an address on Wainscott Hollow Road as opposed to Sayre’s Path, and the proposed access had been the latest cause of debate.
The lots in the subdivision are now laid out along what could be called a baseball diamond. The lots vary from two to two-and-a-half acres, with the exception of the most southerly lot, which is only a half acre. A historic house, known as the Edwards house, is to be moved there as a guest house for the house on the largest lot, Ms. Asato said.
A portion of the property that could be said to be at second base will be the only house accessed from Sayre’s Path. Several board members had argued, unsuccessfully, for most of the access to the property to be through that land instead of from the 1,200-foot-long driveway from Wainscott Hollow Road that the board has now gone along with. “This is bad planning,” Diana Weir, a board member, had said several times in recent months. In fact, if the driveway were extended another 300 feet, it would serve as a crossroad.
The property first came before the board in 2008. At the time Mr. Colle’s plan was to divide the land into between two and four properties, with one as large as 30 acres. Mr. Colle’s website home page is titled Estates by Colle, and large estates are what he is known for. He proposed a 14,556-square-foot, eight bedroom villa with an attached garage, elevator, tennis court, pool, and pool house on a portion of the 40-acre lot. The planning board was seemingly in favor of it. However, at a public hearing on Aug. 19, 2009, a majority of those who attended spoke against the application, with the size of the house a major objection. The board voted to reject the proposal on Sept. 23, 2009, and the applicant sued.
The lawsuit wasn’t resolved until the end of 2011, when Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Arlen Spinner wrote that rejecting the subdivision plan, was “arbitrary, capricious, and at preposterous discrepancy with their own history,” and “not supported by the facts.” He ordered the board to reconsider the plan.
Only two people now on the planning board, Bob Schaeffer and Pat Schutte, were members of it at the time. In the intervening years, however, Mr. Colle changed his mind about what to do with the property. He had won the right to build the 14,556-square-foot house, but, Ms. Asato told the board, the original buyer had lost interest. Another plan was proposed and it, in turn, generated court action. A neighbor, David Eagan, an attorney, representing his wife, Mary Anne McCaffrey, as well as two other neighbors, asked the court to mandate a thorough environmental impact review under the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act. This suit was rejected by Justice Spinner, who called it untimely.
In dealing with the board, Ms. Asato had sometimes been confrontational with individual board members. During a recent meeting, for example, she told Ian Calder-Piedmonte, “I’m not going to sit here and teach you zoning 101.” At other times she has been willing to compromise, however, and she has now gained much of what her client was after.
The initial proposal brought to the board after the judge sent the application back had a line of five of the seven buildable lots along the driveway off Wainscott Hollow Road. Both the Planning Department and planning board opposed the layout, trying to maintain the vista of farmland from Wainscott Main Street north, which the proposed placement of the lots bisected. When Ms. Asato returned to the board with a revised proposal, most members found it largely unchanged, with five lots still on the long driveway. “I am disappointed. You have basically given us a take it or leave it approach,” said Reed Jones, the board’s chair.
The applicant subsequently submitted the plan going to public hearing. Eric Schantz, who is on the Planning Department staff, noted in a June memo that the subdivision had been “substantially redesigned.” This included moving one of the lots board members had objected to from the access driveway to near Sayre’s Path.
Mr. Schaeffer was the one board member who was always vocal in his support of the subdivision. He frequently chided members for what he saw as an overly-lengthy delay. “Let’s get on with it,” he said several times over the months of meetings. He sparred with Mr. Calder-Piedmonte, much as Ms. Asato did, over the idea of trying to guarantee that the agricultural reserve would actually be used for farming. He also took on other board members over the necessity of maintaining a scenic vista.
“If you drive on Wainscott Hollow, people in the summer there aren’t using it for the view, they are using it to get around the traffic on the highway,” he said. He even clashed occasionally with Pat Schutte, who was generally supportive of the application. Not one board member seconded his previous motion to schedule the hearing on Aug. 13. But, on Aug. 27, the board was of one mind, and called the hearing for Sept. 17. Ms. Asato agreed, as well, to meet to explore ways to ensure the reserved land would be used for farming. After the vote was taken, one board member said, audibly, “Whew.”