The East Hampton Town Board came under sharp questioning from residents during last Thursday’s public hearing on the possible exemption of the new senior citizens center from the town’s zoning code and land-use procedures.
The 22,000-square-foot senior center, long in the planning, is to be built on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett. Typically, like any other major construction project, it would be subject to the town’s zoning standards and procedures, which would require subdivision, site plan approval, and a special permit from the planning board; it would also need area variances from the zoning board of appeals for total lot coverage, building coverage, and gross floor area, according to a memo from Jeremy Samuelson, the town’s planning director.
The town board, however, has signaled its intention to have the project exempted from all this by applying for what is called a “Monroe analysis.” The term stems from a 1988 case involving Monroe County and the City of Rochester, and involves a series of nine questions that determine how public interests are best served.
Should the town board opt to exempt the senior citizens center from the town’s zoning regulations under the Monroe analysis, it would be the lone town agency to have approval authority over the design and construction of the project, a bypassing of normal checks and balances that has drawn the ire of critics.
Compliance with the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act would still be required, and the town would still be required to seek permits and approvals from agencies outside the town, including the Suffolk County Health Department, the Suffolk Water Authority, and the State Department of Environmental Conservation.
The board had previously indicated that clearing on the site was to begin this month, with construction slated to commence midyear and continue through 2025. But in recent months, as the town board and the project’s architects have finalized the center’s design, some residents have begun to publicly question its price tag, presently $31.6 million, a figure that has ballooned from an estimated $10 million as the design has evolved.
Eight residents spoke during last Thursday’s public hearing, all voicing, to varying degrees, criticism of the board’s apparent intention to circumvent review by the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards. None was more forceful or protracted in their remarks than Jeff Bragman, a former councilman who regularly clashed with his colleagues during his one term on the board, which ended in 2021, after the East Hampton Democratic Committee declined to endorse his re-election campaign.
The town board delegates its planning authority to appointed boards for good reason, Mr. Bragman argued.
“The reason that they’re effective is because those boards have the power to say no. They don’t just give advice that you can listen to and not take, which is what this board wants to do.”
The board’s track record “when you don’t follow planning and zoning is pretty bad, frankly speaking,” Mr. Bragman continued. He cited several large-scale proposals since abandoned or dormant, including an earlier design for a senior citizens center on the site of the existing facility on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton; a plan for a new shellfish hatchery in Springs; another for a tower to house emergency and personal wireless communications equipment that was proposed for a residential neighborhood in Springs, and a wastewater treatment facility to serve downtown Montauk.
Mr. Bragman railed against what he called “an unprecedented series of last-minute meetings scheduled on short notice” that he suggested was intentionally set between Thanksgiving and Christmas to minimize public participation.
“The cost is breathtaking,” he added, a sentiment echoed by other speakers. “Young families” in the town “will have the pleasure of paying for that until they’re ready to use it as a senior center,” he said. “They’ll be paying off $2 million a year on it.”
Mr. Bragman, like Rona Klopman, chairwoman of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, was also skeptical of the need for a facility they described as extravagant. “There’s not going to be a tsunami of seniors” in the town, Mr. Bragman said. “We don’t have accurate information” on daily use of the existing senior citizens center, “but these rationales, that there’s an emergency and we need this large-scale building, are not supported by facts.”
“Where’s the data that calls for such a big, 22,000-square-foot building?” Ms. Klopman asked. “I want the hard data, and I hope this town board comes up with it. You’re going to chase most of the seniors out of this town with taxes if you continue. You’re ginning up a need and you’re using a myth of what this town actually needs.”
Don Matheson, a former builder, told the board that “a lot of money” could be saved on construction with a two-story building rather than the single-story design that results in “doubling the exterior walls that have to be insulated and protected from the weather.” Solar panels would be better positioned on the building’s roof than as planned, as a canopy over parking areas, he said, calling the latter “an extravagance with town money when there are other options.” The cost savings from either modification would “pay four or five times for an elevator,” he said.
Ms. Klopman asked that plans for the project be presented to each hamlet’s citizens advisory committee. Carolyn Logan Gluck, who is chairwoman of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee but spoke on her own behalf, is a co-founder of the Wainscott Tree Society. “At a minimum, I’m asking you, please don’t cut down the trees until you’ve gotten approval from, or at least the review of, other boards and other involved agencies,” she said. “Please slow down. Get the advice from your boards, and respond to your constituents.”
Esperanza Leon of Wainscott, the last resident to address the board, summarized the common theme of the preceding seven speakers. “It is my belief that it is in the public’s best interest . . . for the town not to exempt itself from the zoning regulations in the development of the new senior center.”
The hearing was closed without comment from board members.
At the board meeting’s this week, Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said that it will deliberate on the comments made at the public hearing at its next work session, on Tuesday. The project’s architects will discuss the background and status of the center’s design at a work session on Jan. 23.
