The East Hampton Town Board’s public hearing last Thursday on amending the “purposes” section of the zoning code to control development drew more than 35 comments, nearly all of them in favor of modifications that would better reflect the town’s comprehensive plan.
An overhaul of the zoning code was launched in May with the formation of the Zoning Code Amendment Work Group, which itself followed a campaign by an Amagansett resident, Jaine Mehring, to encourage the town board to “restore rational restraint and inspire more modulated proportions” in development.
After the 2005 update to the comprehensive plan, “We did not simultaneously or subsequently then take a major look at the zoning code, which is a huge chunk of what our community looks like,” Jeremy Samuelson, the planning director, told the board. Hence, an incongruity “where we have an aspirational set of documents that we all agreed to and worked very hard to create, but then we didn’t actually get under the hood in a major way and update the zoning code to go along with it.”
In the ensuing years, there has been a development boom marked by houses and lot coverage that take full advantage of what the code now allows. Many residents have lamented a breakdown of rural character as huge houses rise to loom over neighborhoods and accessory structures such as swimming pools and pool houses encroach on required setbacks.
Several initiatives have been added to the comprehensive plan since the 2005 update, among them the town’s Climate Action Plan, in 2017. Hamlet studies for all five hamlets were added in 2020, the Coastal Assessment Resilience Plan was added in 2022, and the Community Housing Implementation Plan was added this year.
“Our approach — I hope somewhat rationally — was that we couldn’t get into the specifics of ‘how big is too big,’ [or] ‘where should a house go,’ without
ensuring that the ‘purposes’ piece was as it should be,” Mr. Samuelson said of revising the zoning code. The working group is now studying the sections of the code pertaining to definitions, and a dimensional table that would dictate a house’s maximum allowable size and a parcel’s maximum lot coverage based on parameters such as lot size.
The proposed updated “purposes” section, according to Mr. Samuelson, “reflects some of the hard-learned lessons over the last two decades that reflect things like what happens when you get greater rainfall, and what happens when you live in a climate-changing world.”
The updated section adds greater emphasis to sustainability, coastal resilience, and affordability. Two separate sections on water were folded into one.
An existing statement on orderly growth, for example, has been supplemented with the purpose “to promote the goal of the comprehensive plan to reduce overall build-out to minimize adverse impacts on the town’s infrastructure and municipal budgets, and to protect natural and cultural features.”
Proper use of land, the purpose of which is now described in 37 words, would become 159 words and add, among other purposes, the need to “identify and prioritize resident and community needs to prevent disorderly growth for the sake of growth.”
A section on climate change is new. It speaks to the “increased adoption of renewable energy sources and reduced dependence on fossil fuels” as well as “conservation of energy and nonrenewable resources, reduction of consumption and waste, and minimization of polluting and deleterious emissions and effluents.”
Also new is a section on density and congestion, its purposes to avoid the undue concentration of structures and occupancy; prevent the danger of overcrowding; lessen and, where possible, prevent traffic congestion, and promote and protect orderly movement and the ability to bike and walk easily and safely.
The hearing continued for some two hours as one resident after another spoke, some on behalf of another. Idoline Duke of Springs read a letter from her husband, Biddle Duke. The proposed amended purposes, she read, “bear little resemblance to what we are all seeing out there. The purposes as stated are simply excellent. Please, please make all this happen.” Mr. Duke advised the board to “brace yourselves, because you are going to need political strength and courage. You will be told by influential, wealthy people that what is in place works fine.” But “the cost of runaway development is so huge. The main cost is an astonishing decline in the quality of life here over the past two decades.”
Ms. Mehring read a letter from Paul Goldberger, an East Hampton resident and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and architecture critic, who in a scathing 2022 letter to The Star disparaged large houses under construction on small lots on Handy Lane in Amagansett. Those parcels, he wrote, “are so small that these McMansion wannabees are set one beside the other, jostling so tightly that in some cases the only place a driveway can fit is across the front lawn.”
In 1983, Mr. Goldberger wrote “The Strangling of a Resort,” a cover story in The New York Times Magazine that documented overbuilding in East Hampton and Southampton. Ms. Mehring continued reading Mr. Goldberger's contemporary letter: “Since then, more houses than I could ever have imagined have been built, often on lots too small for the enormous size of today’s construction, and more and more land has been lost altogether despite the impact of land purchases made possible by the community preservation fund.” He urged the board to revise the zoning code, “and recognize that as it is now written it will allow a degree of building that, if it continues at the current pace, really will bring about the strangling of the town.”
One of the few who did not wholeheartedly support the amended purposes section, a builder, complained of what he called the working group’s “lack of transparency.” Another worried aloud about property values and property owners’ rights should the code be tightened.
Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc applauded the assembled crowd. “You are engaged in protecting your town, you are coming and speaking directly to your elected representatives to let us know what you want, and this is the way democracy is supposed to work,” he said. “I want to commend you on the civility. There are varying viewpoints here, but everybody’s been very respectful of each other’s view.”
Councilwoman Cate Rogers, who is leading the effort to revisit the zoning code, said in an email this week that she will submit a resolution to accept the proposed amendments when the board meets on Tuesday. “I look forward to presenting further recommendations that will balance development with protection of our resources and preserving community character,” she added.
