A lawsuit over a proposed swimming pool at the Huntting Inn in East Hampton Village is worthy of public attention. The inn’s owner, Tilman Fertitta, the chief operating officer of Landry’s Inc. and owner of the Houston Rockets, has argued via representatives that a pool is necessary for the property’s continued success. But his desire has run up against the village code’s restrictions: The rub is that the Huntting Inn is in a residential zone and is not allowed to expand.
The village is not alone among local governments in confronting landowners whose visions are grander than their properties’ boundaries. A stipulation that “pre-existing, non-conforming” uses can stay within their current bounds is heard often in planning and zoning circles, but, in practice, lawsuits like this one often result in de facto expansion. Courts have tended to go along with hotel and inn owners in particular who claim that guest amenities like pools or bars are standard and should be allowed. This is how any number of businesses on residential parcels of land have grown bigger and bigger despite laws intended to restrain them.
It has not escaped our notice that the inns of the village have been trying out various new commercial uses in their own backyards lately, from pop-up boutiques to last summer’s famous Gucci coffee van. It is our hope that East Hampton Village digs in on the Huntting Inn pool. Even though the site’s use as an inn goes back more than a century, it is in the end on a parcel of land no different from its residential neighbors’ — whose interests are at least as important as those of its latest owner.