The East Hampton Town Board heard on Tuesday from several residents who gave voice to their anger and disappointment that the board and the Maidstone Gun Club in Wainscott, which has been shuttered since August 2022, are close to renewing a lease for the 97-acre property despite litigation brought by several residents who say that errant bullets fired from the private club have hit their houses, posing a threat to their very lives.
Meanwhile, in court proceedings last month, New York State Supreme Court Justice Christopher Modelewski ordered Jonathan Wallace, an attorney representing two plaintiffs, removed from the courtroom after Mr. Wallace repeatedly complained that he had been excluded from settlement and lease renewal negotiations.
Following that March 26 incident, Mr. Wallace submitted a motion on Tuesday calling for Judge Modelewski to recuse himself, citing “bias against me and my client” that is “so palpable” that recusal is necessary.
On the same day, Tracy Carey, a plaintiff represented by Mr. Wallace, submitted an affidavit supporting Mr. Wallace’s motion, referring to “severe prejudice that I and my co-plaintiff, Kevin Coyle, have suffered due to the court’s conduct.” The judge, she said, “disregarded our basic, procedural rights, including our right to participate in settlement discussions and to review any lease or term sheet that clearly impacts our rights and safety. . . . I believe we were silenced by design, not by circumstance.”
The gun club’s 30-year lease, for which it paid the town $100 per year for 97 acres of parkland adjacent to East Hampton Airport, expired 18 months ago. The club had previously exercised an option to renew the lease for an additional term. But on several occasions over the last 20 years, a number of Merchants Path property owners reported bullets striking their houses. Several of them sued the club and the town in November 2022, demanding the club be closed, and a judge granted a temporary restraining order barring the use of all the club’s facilities until further notice.
While some proponents of the club insist that any bullets that hit houses must have come from people shooting illegally in the woods surrounding the airport property, the East Hampton Town Police Department concluded in an investigation made public in January 2023 that bullets had in fact been deflected from the club’s outdoor rifle range and passed through barricades intended to stop them.
The club has proposed that additional safety protocols be included in any lease renewal, and in the March 26 hearing Judge Modelewski asked Nicholas Rigano, co-counsel for the town, if operational conditions and structural improvements were incorporated.
Yes, was the answer, Mr. Rigano citing “the removal of the tubes from the rifle range, so there will be no more outdoor rifle range; that is the whole predicate of the claims that were made here.”
“So there would be no more outdoor shooting permitted?” Judge Modelewski asked.
That was correct, Mr. Rigano said, before being corrected himself by Frederick Johs, an attorney representing the club. “Well, other than the skeet shooting. . . . There is a police range,” Mr. Johs said.
“There is no outdoor rifle shooting,” Mr. Rigano clarified. “The skeet shooting does not involve bullets that can travel more than . . . I’m not a gun guy.”
Judge Modelewski said the plan “makes good sense,” that it did not seem “offensive or patently dangerous, based upon what I’ve come to know about the property and the surrounding residential development.”
On Tuesday, in the main meeting room at Town Hall, Roxana Pintilie, one of the plaintiffs, reminded the board that her house had been struck by multiple bullets. “I’m asking you, do not sign that lease,” she said. “It’s not going to stop. It hasn’t stopped since 2004 and it’s not going to stop. It’s going to continue, and we’re going to find ourselves again in the same situation.” Her children “had to hide in the basement. We live in the basement of our home because of that gun club.”
Barry Raebeck of Wainscott, a persistent critic of the gun club, said that “reopening the legally shuttered facility exposes 90 nearby homes, schools, and businesses to bullets, and all of us to continual noise pollution and poisoning of watershed land with carcinogens.” Several residents have complained that lead contamination is the inevitable result of activity at a firing range.
Kirby Marcantonio, an advocate for the construction of work-force housing, told the board that “a gun club can exist on 10 acres of property, not 97.” In a town with an acute shortage of affordable housing, the land should be put to better use, he said.
Carolyn Logan Gluck, a former chairwoman of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, told the board to “limit the shooting to an indoor range” and asked that it “honor the residents’ wishes, which are not unreasonable.”
Bill Crain, of the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, also complained about lead contamination and the houses that have been struck by bullets. “It’s a dangerous situation,” he said, when the land “could be a beautiful piece of open space” helping to preserve the town’s rural character.
In court last month Judge Modelewski set May 14 as the next hearing date and, before having him removed from the courtroom, warned Mr. Wallace not to move for a temporary restraining order to stop Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez from executing the lease renewal. When Mr. Wallace complained that the judge was effectively directing the other attorneys to “continue freezing me out of any discussion,” Judge Modelewski was clearly displeased, according to a transcript. “I’m going to stop you right there, Mr. Wallace,” he said. “Don’t you dare put words in my mouth. This is not an opportunity for you to conduct speechmaking for snippets that might wind up in the local newspaper.”
Patrick Derenze, the town’s public information officer, replied to an email sent to Councilwoman Cate Rogers, the town board’s liaison to the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, seeking comment. “The town board continues to negotiate with the club,” he said. “As the matter is currently in litigation, the board cannot comment further.”
With Reporting by Christopher Gangemi
