When he takes office as Sag Harbor Village mayor on Tuesday, James Larocca intends to start making good on campaign promises to protect the waterfront from redevelopment, find a spot away from the waterfront for Bay Street Theater's new home, and come up with a new comprehensive plan.
"I don't think in terms of mandates or no mandates, I have a moral obligation to stick by what I ran on," said Mr. Larocca, a trustee who edged out Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy by 22 votes in the June 15 election. "It would have been nicer if it was a little wider, but it is what it is."
The village board will hold its organizational meeting, including the swearing-in ceremony, in John Steinbeck Waterfront Park on Tuesday. "I thought we should make it a civic event," Mr. Larocca said.
At the meeting, he will appoint Edward Haye, a lawyer and former member of the Sag Harbor School Board, to the trustee seat he is giving up and announce appointments to replace Tim McGuire, the chairman of the zoning board of appeals, and Dean Gomolka, the chairman of the board of historic preservation and architectural review, whose terms are up.
During the mayoral campaign, Mr. Larocca criticized Ms. Mulcahy for attempting to manage waterfront development by devising a new zoning code for a proposed "waterfront overlay district" that he deemed was too limited in scope. The most recent meeting on the new code, which was scheduled to be held on June 23, was canceled by Ms. Mulcahy. "I was in favor of having that meeting," said Mr. Larocca, who wants to use the procedural framework for the overlay district to develop a more far-reaching zoning code.
"One of the things I think will help enormously is including all of the commercial waterfront," he said. "We have in place a procedure that has produced eight drafts of a waterfront zoning plan. My part will be to introduce in the public hearing phase the changes I want to make. The public hearing process is all about reacting and changing to public input."
While the code is being finalized, the village has imposed a temporary moratorium on development in the waterfront district through Sept. 1. Mr. Larocca said he hoped to have a revised code finished by that deadline. "If we need an extension, it will only be one or two months."
Given the support for his candidacy from Thomas Gardella, the deputy mayor, and the opportunity to appoint a trustee to the five-person board, Mr. Larocca can form a majority bloc, but he said he plans to work with Aidan Corish and Bob Plumb, the re-elected trustees who had supported Ms. Mulcahy. "The intensity of this campaign . . . will make that a little harder, but if they're acting in good faith, we should be able to work it out."
Ever since the Bay Street Theater announced that it had purchased the West Water Street Shops parcel as the site for its new home, Mr. Larocca has advocated against the proposal. "I don't think a large new building like that should be on the waterfront, especially when there are sites nearby that are viable," he said during the campaign.
Friends of Bay Street, a nonprofit organization formed to finance and build the theater, was awarded a lease to a municipal parking lot owned by National Grid, and Adam Potter, the chairman of Friends of Bay Street, personally bought a Bridge Street property commonly referred to as the Dodds and Eder building. Mr. Larocca thinks either of those properties would be a more appropriate spot for the theater.
"I have reopened conversations at the highest level of Bay Street with people that I know and am comfortable with," he said. "Our initial conversations have been very good. We have different views about outcomes — I want to save the waterfront, and they want to build their theater — but as far as I'm concerned everything is on the table."
He also supports Mr. Potter's effort to purchase 2 Main Street, the building that contains the K Pasa restaurant and other businesses. Mr. Potter said he planned to raze it and turn the site into an extension of Steinbeck Park. "That would be a game-changer," Mr. Larocca said. "I hope that discussion is real. That would be sensational. The vista would open up."
Having the theater on Bridge Street, in the village's office district, is part of a vision he has for developing the area. "We have to look at the whole area as chess pieces," he said. We have eight or nine tiles there, and this is where not having a master plan is really a weakness, because we have no overarching framework. We'd like to see housing, parking, retail, theater and arts, but what's the best configuration? We should take a holistic view of all those properties with an enumerated set of aspirations."
If the village were to build a parking structure to provide more spaces, he also envisions it going in that district. "Now I'm not proposing this yet, if I ever do, but I'd like to see it on the existing lots," he said. "If you're going to build one, that would be the easiest and least controversial place to do it. I think all these things can and should be in play, and I have no idea how it will come out."
