Paddle Diva Sings the Blues

If paddleboarding classes are not appropriate at a marina, where should they be allowed? 

Following an East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals decision on Tuesday night, that question will likely be one for the town board to grapple with in the coming months. The zoning board voted 4-0 on Tuesday to uphold a determination by the town’s chief principal building inspector, Ann Glennon, that Paddle Diva, which operates out of the Shagwong Marina on Three Mile Harbor, had expanded the marina’s use beyond what is allowed under town code by running paddleboard classes and renting and selling boards and other items there. 

In considering Paddle Diva’s appeal of the determination, the board had weighed such questions as whether paddleboards are boats, whether they can be stored at marinas as boats are, whether a paddleboard school can be operated out of a marina, and whether a retail shop associated with a paddleboard business was comparable to a marina store. 

The board on Tuesday accepted that a paddleboard is a form of a vessel, and in doing so had to consider other questions. “Out-of-water storage is another issue,” said Roy Dalene, a board member. The Shagwong Marina is classified as a recreational marina, which, unlike a boatyard, is not allowed to store vessels out of water.

Paddle Diva, which is owned by Gina Bradley, began operating out of the Shagwong Marina in 2012. Its offerings soon expanded from paddleboard lessons to include paddleboard sales and yoga classes. The building inspector was called in to take a look last year after the company was cited for converting an office space into a retail shop without the proper permit; its owners subsequently applied for a permit retroactively. 

The shop is an expansion of use, the board agreed, but the various classes Ms. Bradley runs do not fall under a defined use in the town’s code. Because of that, the board found, they are prohibited.

“If you all of a sudden introduce a use such as yoga or a training center,” said John Whelan, the board’s chairman, “. . . you could have 20 cars show up every hour.” 

The zoning board’s decision this week could have ramifications not only for other paddleboard companies, but also for other marinas. Members made it clear that some form of legislation is needed to deal with the explosion of paddleboarding classes being offered in the town’s waterways. “The town board needs to look into this, to create places” for such activity, Mr. Whelan said. 

Also on Tuesday, an Amagansett couple was before the board for the third time in four years in an effort to expand their house on Marine Boulevard. Carter Burwell, a composer of film scores, and his wife, Christine Sciulli, an artist, are this time hoping to add 782 square feet to their main house and to add a nearly 600-square-foot artist’s studio to the property. The existing house is 3,149 square feet with a 1,430-square-foot deck that they bought in 2010 from the fashion designer Elie Tahari. 

Their 2012 application, which would have required five variances as well as a permit to be built near coastal bluffs and duneland, was turned down. Earlier this year, they returned with a scaled-down proposal that required no variances but still involved building in a protected area. The board agreed with the Planning Department’s assessment that, while variances were no longer needed, the proposal itself was still an overly aggressive expansion on the site. 

In their latest application, they have eliminated some proposed retaining walls and made the driveway smaller, but have left plans for the detached studio largely unchanged, Tyler Borsack, a town planner, told the board.

The couple’s attorney, Richard Whalen, pointed out that the total lot coverage would be reduced by about 250 square feet. 

It appeared, from comments by Mr. Borsack, the planner handling this iteration for the town, that the new proposal may finally strike a winning note. “It has been designed to be more compact, with the intent of minimizing the visual massing that the board perceived was a problem with the previous design,” he said. 

The board has 62 days to make its decision.

The board also signed off on the first of two applications it had voted to approve for Fred and Joanne Wilson, the owners of two neighboring properties on Seabreeze Lane. They will tear down the two houses on the lots, one of which they just built four years ago, to create a family compound with two new houses.