According to the criteria of a study developed by Dr. Richard W. Butler, the East End of Long Island has reached a critical moment in its evolution as a resort that could herald its decline.
Butler, born in Birmingham, England, in 1943, is a Ph.D. professor who taught at the University of Western Ontario for 30 years and relished examining the strata of a rock because of the way it told the history of the area in which it was found — the changes the land underwent and where it might be headed. But it wasn’t rocks that made Butler famous among academics and sociologists. In 1980 he published an article in The Canadian Geographer about vacation destinations and what he called the Tourism Area Life Cycle, or TALC, outlining the development and demise of a resort. Butler’s TALC uncannily parallels the transformation of the East End from a rural farm economy to its present-day incarnation as a global brand.
The notion came to Butler that resorts have a predictable life cycle when he revisited one of his favorite childhood summer spots, Blackpool, a seaside town in Lancashire. In 1881, when the British railroad connected Blackpool with the rest of England, it became the most popular beach destination in northern England for nearly 100 years. It was known for its sandy Pleasure Beach, an old-school amusement park, its own circus, and at the height of every season the “Blackpool Illuminations” light show along the promenade. At its peak Blackpool was so popular that the demand for service employees brought 100,000 new residents. For nearly a century it was the most visited resort in northern England.
Its demise was quick and unexpected. Changing tastes dramatically impacted the resort’s desirability. In the 1950s easy access to air travel became available to vacationers. You could reach an island in the Mediterranean in the time it took you to drive to Blackpool. Holiday camps, ballrooms, and amusement parks fell out of favor. London might have been swinging in the 1960s, but it left Blackpool forlorn and shabby, a relic, a consequence from which it never fully returned.
There are resort destinations worldwide that have fallen and managed to revive, like Miami Beach, Las Vegas, or the Greek Islands, and others that didn’t, like Costa del Sol, St. Tropez, Atlantic City, Reno, and the Catskills. But it’s not possible that could happen here. Or is it?
The start of Butler’s theory is that a resort is never invented from within. It’s almost always discovered by a group of outsiders looking for a new place to vacation that is “distinct in physical beauty and culture.” This is Butler’s first stage, “Exploration.” That’s how it started in the Hamptons in the 1870s, when a group of young artists, the Tile Club, published an illustrated article in Scribner’s magazine of the area’s rural and peaceful charm. The story tweaked the interest of trendy New York society, and when the railroad connected all the way to Bridgehampton, “the Hamptons” were discovered.
Still, only a few visitors were able to enjoy the East End because there were no tourist services — no hotels or restaurants or transportation. The locals, realizing they could make money from the outsiders, initiated Butler’s second stage, “Involvement,” a critical moment in which the local population becomes complicit in the transformation of a hometown into a resort by providing accommodations and services. This was the start of the boarding house era, when farmers began to rent their homes for the summer season to vacationers who paid them many times more than farming. This moment of development is also sometimes referred to as the “euphoric” phase because locals are so excited by the prospects of getting rich from tourists that they lose all suspicion of the visitors and give themselves over to serving them and selling them the land.
This cooperation with the newcomers paves the way for the next stage, “Development,” the large-scale expansion and development of the community. Boom time. Houses, stores, restaurants, and transient accommodations are built for newcomers. When the building boom started in East Hampton there were at first few regulations, codes, or rules to control growth or protect the land and environment. More so, nobody wanted to pass laws that would kill the goose that laid the golden egg — real estate — with too many restrictions. The real estate economy massively expanded the number of job opportunities for locals, particularly in construction services, turning builders, plumbers, and electricians into millionaires. The development stage raged practically unabated on the East End for over 70 years, ravaging the countryside with vanity architecture.
Stage four is “Consolidation.” The local economy coalesces around a 16-week season and is completely dependent on tourism and all its tributaries. Every facet of the community is directed toward the summer season. Spiraling home prices caused a young generation of locals to move away. The very fiber of the community changes. Few residents farm or fish for a living. Not many farmers wanted to till the loam when it could be sold for tens of thousands of dollars per square foot.
The Brooklyn-ization of Montauk is a scary example of how quickly a community can become overrun, the local culture swallowed up, and the place becomes too expensive for its own good. Sag Harbor is the latest victim; gone are most traces of a quaint fishing village, the small locally owned shops. It’s now a sightseeing destination chockablock with expensive restaurants, and not enough parking for the hordes.
Butler’s stage five, “Stagnation,” is where we are now. We are stewing in our own juices. We’ve reached the tipping point at which the sheer number of visitors grows beyond the location’s ability to absorb the influx, physically and psychologically. The main artery of the Hamptons is a narrow two-lane blacktop, and in the summer months the traffic in either direction can be backed up for 20 miles. Butler cites rowdiness and a loss of original features, like our farm fields, and he specifically cites beaches that are overcrowded and full of rubbish. This past summer, in an interview with The East Hampton Star, a member of the East Hampton Town Board described a Tuesday night musical event at Main Beach where there were “thousands of people on the beach. . . . People were like ants on the dunes.”
This stagnation stage leaves locals and visitors equally dismayed that the place is fraying around the edges, and the sense that it’s not as much fun as it used to be. The enjoyment of homeowners sharply decreases. Indeed, the summer season can be downright unpleasant. For a few, the summer becomes traumatic. It’s not just congestion, it can feel out of control.
Butler’s stage six offers two possible outcomes, decline or rejuvenation. Well, we don’t need rejuvenation, we’re already on steroids. In some ways we need to quiet down. Regain control. Stricter code enforcement. Stricter policing. More police. Not so egalitarian that a thousand people congregate on the federally protected sand dunes. Be tough and be vigilant. If you think this place isn’t transient, just check out the number of bed-and-breakfast rentals in the Hamptons, it’s an eye-opener.
Is it possible there will eventually be such a great decline that it will be the end of the Hamptons? Probably not. Not the way it was in Blackpool. As long as there is the Atlantic Ocean and Wall Street in Manhattan, there will always be the Hamptons, but it will be unrecognizable. At best a wealthy suburb. At worst like a theme park.
For me personally, I will see it through no matter what it becomes, for as long as I can. The ether really does sparkle, like the artists say it does. There is always October. There is real community out here in the winter. This place adopted me almost 50 years ago, so no matter what happens to it, I’m here for the duration. That’s stage seven.
Steven Gaines is the author of “Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons.” He lives in Wainscott.