The expiration of its 30-year lease of town-owned land is still more than a year away, but the Maidstone Gun Club, which leases some 97 acres of town land off Wainscott Northwest Road at an annual rent of $100, has informed the town it intends to negotiate its renewal.
Walter Johnson, the gun club's president, filed the proper notice with the town clerk on March 2. The current lease expires Oct. 31, 2023, and another is forthcoming, "pending a written agreement" with East Hampton, according to Mr. Johnson's letter. John Jilnicki, an attorney for East Hampton Town, confirmed last Thursday that the lease renewal is "at their option."
"They just have to exercise it and give us notice . . . but I think there are some issues the town would like to look at," he said.
Among them, Mr. Jilnicki said, are whether the entire 97-acre tract is needed for the gun club, how noise complaints can be handled, whether lead-shot remnants of ammunition are causing pollution, and whether the rent should go up. The club originally operated in the Devon Woods area, but when the community there grew, the town offered up some of its vacant land in Wainscott.
"We've got more people out here than we have had, and we do get complaints about noise," Mr. Jilnicki said. "I think we can sit down and talk about some of these issues with them and get some resolved."
The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee chimed in, too, during its monthly meeting on Aug. 6. Several committee members took issue with what they described as nuisance-level noise, a below-market rent, potential pollution from lead shot, and "secrecy" of the gun club's operations and membership.
"This is public land being used for a private club . . . it does not have wide community use," said Barry Frankel, who led the committee meeting in place of its chairwoman, Carolyn Logan Gluck.
The gun club also pays improvement taxes, but committee members questioned whether the low rent could be considered a "gift of public funds." New York prohibits municipalities from "making gifts or loans of any money or property to or in aid of any individual or private corporation or association," according to the state comptroller's office. Public leases typically involve getting land appraisals, which Mr. Jilnicki said the town may do here.
A nearby organization also leasing public land, the Country School on Industrial Road, faced a similar inquiry in 2017, nearly getting evicted when the town attempted to hike the nonprofit school's annual rent from $3,000 to $76,000. A solution was reached that allowed the school to stay for at least 15 more years; Deena Zenger, the school's founder, said by phone this week that she now pays the town about $18,000 a year in rent and improvement taxes.
Part of that, according to Mr. Jilnicki, was that the town was bound at the time by Federal Aviation Administration rules that dictated what rents could be charged and for which purposes. Those largely concerned aviation-related interests, he said, and have since lapsed along with the town's F.A.A. grant assurances, but state law still obliges East Hampton to seek fair-market-value rents from its tenants whenever possible.
The Maidstone Gun Club's original lease began in May of 1983, but 10 years later, it renegotiated with the town, receiving more time in exchange for giving back some acreage for a new radio tower. Also as part of the 1993 agreement, the club received an electronic security gate at its entrance plus 250 key cards for access.
During the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Aug. 6, Barbara D'Andrea and Dennis D'Andrea, longtime residents and committee members, defended the gun club, which is frequently used by local police officers and those in neighboring municipalities for training and periodically offers safety training for recreational hunters.
"The gun club is locals," Mr. D'Andrea said. "Just leave the guys alone. Most are probably volunteer firemen, the people who save our lives."
One of their children is among what they described as the club's approximately 1,500 members. Ms. D'Andrea said, "It's not an elitist group."
"Do you demand to know every member of a golf club? They're doing a whole lot more pollution with the chemicals they use to keep the greens pristine," she said by way of comparison.
A recent email from the gun club, obtained by The Star, noted that its rifle range has been closed indefinitely. "No club members and/or guests are permitted to use this range until further notice. No exceptions will be made," the Aug. 5 email said. The gun club's clerk, Stephanie Mamay, did not return an email or phone message seeking comment.
On its website, the gun club calls itself "a low-cost shooting facility for the common man," though most of it is behind a password-protected security wall.
Reached by phone on Monday, Mr. Johnson declined to comment other than to say the group is "not secretive."
The club has, though, been in communication with the town. "They've been pretty responsive. I hope that they continue to be agreeable and willing to work with us," Mr. Jilnicki said.
