How to Get a Grip On Noisome Night Life
Heaven help Montauk if it gets another Surf Lodge, Beach House, Ruschmeyer’s, or Solé East. Each of these booming high-season hangouts, once modest hotels, were expanded to include sprawling outdoor venues far in excess of their capacity in terms of guestrooms and floor area. To cite but one example, the Montauk Beach House grew out of the 30-something rooms of the Ronjo Motel to host gatherings for as many as 300 people, according to a former promoter there. This may have been legal, which we have doubted, but it was wrong for the area and for East Hampton Town’s commitment to its zoning laws. Now, with summer 2015 fast approaching, the town board has been thinking about what would happen if other motels and resorts went the same way.
One approach getting the board’s attention is to try somehow to block or limit the addition of drinking and dining facilities to the town’s roughly 70 hotels, motels, and inns. Though state court decisions suggest they could not be entirely stopped, the town might well be able to craft rules capping the number of patrons or tying the maximum to the number of rooms. But this approach would not necessarily help with the bars and restaurants, many of which have eagerly allowed patrons to spill onto patios, parking lots, and lawns, vastly increasing capacities and alcohol sales receipts — think Sloppy Tuna and Memory Motel in Montauk and the suddenly hip Moby’s last year in the shadow of Town Hall. Then there has been Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague, where beer and mixed drinks have been sold in the state highway right of way for years.
The right tools might well be already in hand, however. The town’s public assembly law acknowledges that large gatherings can disturb the peace, interfere with roadways and cause a strain on police and emergency services, and create excess noise, septic flow, and need for garbage disposal and litter removal.
As far as commercial premises are concerned, the law prohibits the sale of food or beverages from an unapproved location, like a pop-up outdoor bar, without a special, one-time permit. It goes further, banning the use of outdoor areas for business purposes unless they are included in the customary or approved use of the premises. And there’s more: Commercial assembly requirements are triggered when guests park vehicles on any public street, highway, right of way, or other off-site location due to lack of on-premises space. And even more: Permits for commercial gatherings in non-commercial areas can be sought only for events that truly benefit bona fide charitable organizations or those at which nothing is sold.
From where we sit, town officials are ready to take on the most excessive for-profit outdoor parties that mar many a summer night. The only question is if they will have the courage to do so.