On the Waterfront, Struggle Brews
Despite the unwillingness of the owners to sell the properties on Ferry Road, Sag Harbor Village officials are moving forward with plans for a waterfront park they want to see next to the bridge to North Haven. The John Steinbeck Memorial Park, named after the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who lived in Sag Harbor for many years, would provide opportunities for recreation and ecological improvement as well as a nod to the village’s whaling and literary history.
“It’s a great vision on the part of the village to see what this could be,” said Edmund D. Hollander, the landscape architect who came up with the conceptual drawings the village unveiled on Friday. A village resident, he also presented the plan to residents at the village board’s regular meeting Tuesday night. Maryann Connolly, a landscape architect and vice president of Hollander Design who lives just outside the village, also worked on the park plan.
The village has a big hurdle to cross first. It wants to buy the properties and, with the Town of Southampton, approached the owners about purchasing the two and a half acres with money from the community preservation fund. But the owners, developers who have had longstanding plans for condominiums on the four parcels they own there, have made it clear they do not intend to sell. The village has been considering another option — acquiring the properties through condemnation.
“I have nothing against condominiums, but I think the opportunity that is presented here is something that comes along very, very rarely,” Mr. Hollander told the audience Tuesday. “To create an area that could so dramatically change the entrance into Sag Harbor across the bridge here and provide so many recreational opportunities for so many different people and so many different uses in this area.”
The idea is to combine five parcels with an adjacent village-owned property to create a park that would allow for beach access, recreation, and more parking. The parcels are 1, 3, and 5 Ferry Road, where the vacant Harborview Professional Building stands, plus a small right of way that used to be owned by the Long Island Rail Road and a contiguous lot at 2 West Water Street, where the 1-800-LAWYER building, known for the business of its previous owner, stands.
Greystone Property Development, aManhattan real estate company, has submitted an application to build 11 condos, 8 on the Ferry Road parcels and 3 on neighboring West Water Street.
Plans show the park with two sandy beaches, a fishing and small-boat pier, and a pedestrian walkway under the Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter Veterans Memorial Bridge that would connect it to Windmill Park. Among other amenities, there would be public restrooms with a solar-paneled roof, three trails celebrating the ecology and history of the village, a weather station, osprey nest stands, a “young whalers” playground, and a band shell or some sort of amphitheater, Mr. Hollander said, where the community could gather.
“We’re even discussing as a possibility the idea of replanting oyster beds in Sag Harbor Cove, which will help to filter any storm runoff,” he said. The larger goal is to improve water quality in the cove.
Because it is named after John Steinbeck, the park would include a literary trail with plaques about his work. “I think it’s wonderful Steinbeck wrote ‘The Winter of Our Discontent’ in Sag Harbor. Clearly, he’d never been on Main Street in the summer or he’d have renamed the book,” Mr. Hollander joked.
Village officials have been discussing the idea of a park since August. “Public response to the Steinbeck Park has been overwhelming,” Mayor Sandra Schroeder said in a statement on Friday. “I cannot tell you how many people have expressed their very strong support for this plan. Many see it as our last chance to get it right and save our historic waterfront. The village does not need or want more condominiums. What we want and need is a transformative park plan that will build on our maritime heritage and protect it for our children, their children, and their children’s children into the future.”
By phone Friday afternoon the mayor said she would prefer to buy the properties directly, using C.P.F. money, to which village taxpayers have contributed millions of dollars through real estate transaction fees, but, she said, “If we have to we’re going the condemnation route.”
The village board has retained an attorney, Saul R. Fenchel of Garden City, who specializes in condemnation proceedings. State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who also works as the village attorney, said on Friday that the preparation for condemnation was well under way. He expects the village to make a decision about whether to start legal proceedings for condemnation in the next few months. A public hearing would follow.
Since only towns administer C.P.F. money, the village asked Southampton to put the properties on its acquisition list back in October, a move that allowed the town to obtain an appraisal, which was completed recently, according to Mr. Thiele. The figure has not been made public to allow for negotiations with the property owners, he said.