Despite holdouts, there are comfortable majorities on both the East Hampton Town Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals that favor allowing the 108-year-old Devon Yacht Club, at 300 Abram’s Landing Road in Amagansett, to proceed with its plans to renovate and reconstruct its buildings and amenities.
Aside from the Wainscott Commercial Center’s quest to subdivide the 70-acre “sand pit” at the entrance to the town, Devon’s is the largest application in front of the planning board. It has taken over three years to get the club this close to what’s considered a “complete application,” ready for a detailed environmental review and public hearings.
“We’re not quite there yet,” said Ed Krug, chairman of the planning board, at its May 21 meeting, “but we’re getting close.” Mr. Krug has called it a “model application” in the context of coastal retreat.
“We’re trying to see if we can get through this process sometime this fall, because it’s going to take about a year for the club to arrange for the construction,” said Richard Warren of Inter-Science, speaking for Devon. Construction at the 13.82-acre site overlooking Gardiner’s Bay will occur in two phases, during successive off-seasons.
The planning board has now decided that it will lead the environmental review, and has informed other interested boards — the Z.B.A. and the Architectural Review Board, as well as the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation — of that decision. Those boards have 30 days to respond. Once they do, and assuming none contests the “lead agency” designation (which is considered unlikely), the application can be deemed complete, and environmental review can begin.
“The last time the planning board looked at it, which was March of 2024, we didn’t really know how to best advance the project, because it needed 20 variances,” the planning consultant Lisa Liquori told board members at last week’s meeting. Back then [2024], she explained, there were some new members on the planning board who had yet to see the complex application.
The Z.B.A., which has been considering the application for a year or more, advised the planning board on April 22 that “the project was likely to obtain NRSP [Natural Resources Special Permit] and variance approvals,” but that it would make no final decision until the planning board decided how lengthy and detailed the environmental review would be, and after a public hearing was held.
Five days before, on April 17, “One Z.B.A. member [Denise Savarese, vice chair of the Z.B.A.] [had] strongly objected to the suggestion that the Z.B.A. is looking favorably on the application,” Ms. Liquori told the planning board last week.
Just as Ms. Savarese was the sole Z.B.A. critic, Louis Cortese, a planning board member, was the lone holdout on his board.
“On one side, the proposed renovation provides not insignificant environmental improvements over the status quo,” he allowed, citing the proposed new I/A septic system and increased building setbacks. However, he said, in most cases, the distance from sensitive environmental areas was only “de minimis” — negligible — because the site was so constrained. Meanwhile, the gross floor area was increasing by 43 percent.
“I think good planning requires not just coming up with the most deluxe, prominent expansion, but maybe to consider a more quaint and discreet type of renovation,” Mr. Cortese said. “They’ve moved in a positive direction, but it’s minimal. The way this thing has gone is that they produced a plan and the only questions have been whether or not the drainage should be done a certain way, whether the fill should be done in a certain way, and should they minimize the platform with the flagpole. These are all small things. The question I want to consider is, do we expand it as much as possible, which is what the applicant wants to do, or do we come up with a different plan that’s a lot smaller? Maybe not what they want, but I think it’s better for the town, in the long run, with good planning.”
No one questions the need for renovation at the yacht club. All agree the buildings are dilapidated, and that a terrible septic situation is impacting the parcel’s freshwater wetlands.
According to the application, six buildings will be demolished and replaced with five new ones, all FEMA compliant, including a two-story clubhouse (60 percent larger than the current clubhouse); a bathhouse, a sailing center, a staff residence, and a boat workshop. Over an acre of the parcel would be revegetated.
Other than Mr. Cortese, members of the planning board offered minimal, but positive, comments. “I am a member of the Devon Club,” said Reed Jones, one of the board’s newest members. “But I am confident I can be objective and fair. I have no hidden bias. I think we are the appropriate lead agency. I’m comfortable with what I’ve seen so far.”
Michael Hansen, another member, stressed the environmental benefits of moving the staff housing (26 employees live there) and its aging septic system, away from the wetlands. Mr. Warren told the board that the D.E.C.’s freshwater wetlands division favored the project.
“Sea level rise will physically transform East Hampton,” said Mr. Hanson, citing the town’s Coastal Assessment Resiliency Plan. “This is an important project to get out ahead of all that.”
