After completing a third work session in four months on proposed changes to the East Hampton Town zoning code, the town board agreed Tuesday that the next step was to bring the changes to a public hearing. Many members of the public and others directly involved with the zoning code amendment work group, a mixture of government and industry players who developed the proposals, spoke of the need to quickly move forward.
Each town board member broadly supported the changes, but it was Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte who expressed some hesitation when it came to not addressing the table, or formula, of dimensional regulations as part of the same conversation. The table ties lot size to setbacks for the principal and accessory structures, and to total building and lot coverage. So, for example, a house on less than an acre has smaller setbacks but can cover a higher percentage of the lot.
“I wholeheartedly agree with closing loopholes, and that’s most of this,” he said. “I’m concerned we do this now and if the next step is to say, ‘Oh, we want to talk about the formula upstairs,’ we’re going to get less of a reduction of mass than if we talked about it all together. I think there will be a contingency of people who are really resistant the next time this comes up, who will say, ‘You just took away so much of our basement space.’ I’m a little worried about segmenting this.”
Nonetheless, he said he was comfortable with moving it forward to a public hearing as it stood. Later, Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez agreed with him.
The so-called “basement exemption” is the blind eye that the town code now turns toward finished basements. As Councilwoman Cate Rogers, who was thanked by many on hand for her work on the draft amendments, explained, basements on the East End in 2024 are not the simple recreation rooms that parents once finished to give their children a place to play that was separate from a den.
“Lower-level finishes now include bowling alleys, wine cellars, tasting rooms, bathrooms, and spas,” she said. However, none of that space is calculated in a home’s gross floor area. “We’re not saying don’t do this. What we are saying is that it’s time to count some of these improvements to offset the space you can have above ground.”
The recommendation the group came up with is that the first 600 square feet of a finished basement is not counted. Any portion of a finished basement that is over 600 square feet, though, gets calculated in the overall gross floor area of the house, less 50 percent. So, for example, only 200 square feet of a basement that is 1,000 square feet gets counted toward a building’s overall gross floor area. For a basement that is 10,000 square feet, 4,700 square feet would count toward that area.
While Councilman Calder-Piedmonte thought this was a good compromise, he feared it could discourage basement construction and lead to more gross floor area above ground.
“I’m personally not comfortable with the recommendation that we don’t count 600 square feet and then go to 50 percent,” Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said. “For me, it has to be a holistic conversation discussing formula and basements, since we’re going to 10,000 square feet over all.” Like Councilman Calder-Piedmonte, however, she was comfortable with moving the draft code to a public hearing as it stood.
So, as the supervisor mentioned, the big headline, bringing the total gross floor area for any structure, regardless of the lot size, down to 10,000 square feet from the current limit of 20,000 square feet, remains. That proposal had broad support on the board, and while Councilman David Lys did wonder if having a 15,000-square-foot house on a five-acre lot would be such a bad thing, it didn’t sound as if he would die on that hill.
Joseph Palermo, the chief building inspector for the town, said 20,000-square-foot houses were rare, though he admitted, “There’s one being built right now.”
Other proposals, such as limiting the size of basements to the footprint of the house above ground, thus putting an end to so-called “iceberg houses,” counting attached garages over 600 square feet in gross floor area, enforcing a two-foot separation between a structure and the groundwater below (“a no-brainer,” according to Councilman Lys), and importantly, changing the way grade is measured to prevent dugout stories that have led, effectively, to three-story homes, all received support from the board.
Another loophole, in which, for some reason, glass railings weren’t counted toward building height, will be closed. The maximum height for a flat roof is 25 feet, but builders were getting away with placing a 36-inch glass railing on top of that, and this wasn’t being counted in the height of the structure. The homeowners would then turn the area into a rooftop deck, which included, in some cases, 70-inch televisions. So, what was supposed to be 25 feet high suddenly was much higher.
“Roof decks now have wet bars and a lot more activity up there,” Mr. Palermo said. The height of the railing would also increase under the code proposals, from 36 inches high to 42 inches high.
“If you have lived in this town as a year-round resident since 1985, the year our current code was last updated, you have seen how the town has really changed. You are blind if you haven’t seen the damage to our infrastructure,” said Denise Savarese, vice chairwoman of the zoning board of appeals and a member of the zoning code amendment work group. “This is a 40-year-old code, which indirectly dictates, and is accepting of, the overdevelopment that is going on. Our committee is trying to address these loopholes.”
Kevin Bunce Jr., like many others at the meeting, spoke passionately about the environmental degradation caused by recent overdevelopment and warned that “small nature preserves will soon just be a front. A front to create an illusion of what used to be East Hampton before it turned into a glorified Levittown.”
“I’m ready to go to public hearing,” Councilwoman Rogers said, possibly relieved that the project she has been shepherding along will get an airing. No doubt, if the past three work sessions are any indication, it will be well attended.
