Starbucks Asks for Easement

The East Hampton Village Board is expected to grant Starbucks an easement so that the sanitary system at its Main Street location can be upgraded. A resolution to grant the easement may be voted on at the board’s meeting on April 17 and the work is likely to be done in the fall.

Like a number of other buildings along Main Street, Starbucks has a septic system under the Reutershan parking lot that “goes back decades, before the village acquired that property as a parking lot,” Linda Riley, the village attorney, said  yesterday. “There’s nothing in writing, but it’s been there forever.”

At a March 25 meeting at Village Hall, Starbucks representatives told Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and the board that because of planned interior modifications to increase storage space, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services is requiring a septic system upgrade. The interior work will not add to seating or the building’s maximum occupancy, but will allow for more efficient operation during the store’s peak summer season, the board was told.

The requirement that the company obtain an easement for the septic system has delayed the interior work, Ken Collum, the village code enforcement officer and fire marshal, told the board. A building permit for interior changes expired in December, he said, so the company must reapply.

The installation now has three leaching rings, but it is not covered by an easement, Ms. Riley said. Additional space would be allotted in the easement to allow a potential fourth ring, but such a ring would be subject to the board’s prior approval.

The company would be compelled to provide liability insurance naming the village as an insured party, Ms. Riley said, and would have to restore the area to the satisfaction of the superintendent of public works.

“We support Starbucks,” the mayor said, but “we just don’t want to see an encroachment or, somehow, further advancement of the retail footprint.”