Many visitors heading east for the unofficial start to summer this Memorial Day weekend will surely be surprised to see two oversize billboards under construction on the north and south sides of Sunrise Highway, just west of the Shinnecock Canal.
The Shinnecock Indian Nation is installing the electronic billboards, which will sit atop just-completed 61-foot-tall steel columns, on stone bases atop a river-rock platform. The vertical billboards, 30 feet high and 20 feet wide, are expected to be displaying advertising in time for the holiday weekend.
The black structures, which the tribe calls monuments, sit on property on the shoulders of the east and westbound lanes of Route 27 between exits 65 and 66. The Shinnecocks say it is sovereign land, exempt from local, county, and state regulation.
Construction began late last month and continued this week despite a cease-and-desist letter from the State Transportation Department and opposition from Southampton Town officials, who have called the billboards out of character for the rural area, distracting to drivers, and a cause of light pollution visible to nearby residents and wildlife. A Hampton Bays civic group held a protest at a nearby rest stop last week.
The Shinnecock emblem will be featured atop the two stone towers and will display the time and temperature in LED lighting. The monuments could also display emergency messages, such as Amber Alerts for missing children, the Shinnecock Indian National Council of Trustees has said.
Tribal leaders say the signs are part of a development project to bring in much-needed income “to help alleviate the economic disparity between the Native community and the surrounding Southampton area.”
The state issued the cease-and-desist notice on Friday. “The Department of Transportation, in consultation with the Attorney General’s Office, is reviewing the matter and in the process of taking appropriate legal action,” Glenn Blain, a spokesman, said.
“We have been good neighbors since 1640, but our good nature has been met with encroachment, theft of land, racism, and double-talk,” a statement from the trustees said. “The project in question is going to provide substantial resources to our Nation and allow our people to finally address the economic disparity that has plagued our community for generations.”
Money will be allocated toward law enforcement, education, road repairs, youth programs, and funding an affordable housing project for residents of the Shinnecock Reservation, just a few miles away from where the billboards are rising.
The tribal council says that town and state transportation officials have mischaracterized “a questionable easement that grants limited rights to build and maintain a highway, but never grants ownership rights in the Nation’s land. . . . Town officials have mischaracterized the project in an effort to sow seeds of fear in the East End community and smear the Shinnecock people as the harbingers of the end of the beauty of the Hamptons.”
In early May, elected officials from across the East End, including County Legislators Bridget Fleming and Al Krupski, co-signed a letter to the elected leaders of the Shinnecock Indian Nation requesting that they stop construction. “Although we respect the Shinnecock Nation’s desire to improve living standards for its members, we believe these structures directly hurt our region by urbanizing the landscape,” the letter stated. “They would be more fitting in New York City’s Times Square or Las Vegas, Nevada.”
The letter also expressed concern about driver safety and the possible threat the large structures might pose to traffic should a vehicle crash into one of them.
Town and county officials have also questioned whether the billboards comply with federal highway law in terms of setbacks from the road, which is a state highway, and with the “fall zone from a designated evacuation route.”
“Whether or not such immunity exists, we implore the Shinnecock Indian Nation to stop construction and work collectively with other South Fork governmental jurisdictions on economic development projects that are more in keeping with our area,” the officials wrote.