Wainscott on Steroids

Tall steel beams mere feet from the road now outline what will be a massive and looming retail space, a 17,500-square-foot superstore

Sep. 24, 2014

Editorial

As we commented back when the matter was pending before the East Hampton Town Planning Board, the pitch made by the late Gregg Saunders for a commercial building on Montauk Highway in Wainscott was one for the textbooks. Now that work on the former Plitt Ford site is well under way, some residents are beginning to notice. They are right to wonder what the heck happened and why those who own the property now are getting away with it.

Tall steel beams mere feet from the road now outline what will be a massive and looming retail space, a 17,500-square-foot superstore. Unlike every other business structure in this part of Wainscott, this building is as close to traffic as possible and instantly mars the area, a gateway to the rest of East Hampton Town. A pending request to open a car wash not far away is troubling as well.

The construction on the old Plitt Ford site, as approved by the planning board in May 2012, meets the letter of the law for the business zone in which it sits, but that does not make it right or appropriate. It represents a significant failure of the planning board to, well, plan.

Mr. Saunders had played the town like a fiddle four years ago, before his untimely death in a head-on collision not all that far from his property. Having told the board at a hearing that he wanted a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s there, the review should have been far more critical. Instead, it amounted to a love-fest. That summer, Whole Foods did indeed test an outpost there, but decided it wasn’t worth it in the long run.

Since then, the modest, shingle-covered building Mr. Saunders presented in Town Hall morphed into today’s massive structure. Indeed, the board’s saying yes also may be failure from a regulatory point of view, given the sight lines, neighboring properties, and potential traffic calamities, as one observer termed it.

It’s important to note that with only a few exceptions, the planning board is made up now of the same members who green-lighted the Wainscott project way back when. We deeply hope they have learned from this experience and will, accordingly, act more in the community’s interest the next time a large, commercial proposal comes their way.