The Huntting Inn, stung after the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals declined to approve its application for a pool, spa, and patio, is suing the village, asking the Suffolk County Supreme Court to overturn the Z.B.A. decision, strike the local law the board used to avoid ruling on the outdoor improvements, and be awarded $5 million.
Other aspects of the application were approved, including a building addition that covers three floors and will allow for an elevator to accommodate people with disabilities, and an A.D.A.-accessible bathroom on the first floor that will serve patrons of The Palm, the inn’s restaurant.
“At the outset, it is noted that a portion of the application seeks relief that is beyond the authority of this Board to grant,” reads the Z.B.A.’s Oct. 11 determination. “Specifically, that portion of the application that sought the construction of a swimming pool and patio involves the introduction of an outdoor use to a pre-existing nonconforming use in a residential district.”
The Z.B.A. turned down the application after guidance from Timothy Hill, its attorney. He based his counsel on local law 278-7C (2)(d)(3), which restricts the board’s authority to grant variances for outdoor dining, noting that the law was not limited to that restriction alone.
Whether the pool represents a new use or is an accessory to the inn is a question remaining in contention, despite over two years spent on the application.
Put simply, a judge will rule on whether the Z.B.A. has the authority to say it have no authority. The judge may then remand the case back to the board and force a ruling on the outdoor improvements, either granting them or requiring the building inspector to make a judgement on the pool use.
The 1699 inn was purchased in March 2020 for about $45 million by Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta, the chief operating officer of Landry’s Inc. and owner of the Houston Rockets. A year later, he set to making improvements on the property, which was reportedly in disrepair after its previous owner declared bankruptcy.
(This week, CBS News reported that Mr. Fertitta was expected to be President-elect Donald Trump’s ambassador to Italy. In 2011, Mr. Fertitta’s company purchased The Trump Marina Hotel Casino in Atlantic City and rebranded it as the Golden Nugget Atlantic City.)
Because it’s in a historic district, the inn also needs Design Review Board approval. As long ago as 2021, at a D.R.B. meeting, then-village attorney Elizabeth Baldwin asked the inn to clarify whether adding a pool would be increasing the business’s nonconforming use. Because the inn was built before zoning laws were instituted, it is allowed to operate as a commercial use, even though it is located in a residential district.
But does adding a pool increase the degree of nonconformity? In legal papers, Martha Reichert, its attorney, argues that despite five public hearings and over two years of amended applications, neither the building inspector nor the village planner answered it. Instead, she says, it was understood that the pool was “accessory” to the building’s principal use as an inn.
Had either the inspector or the planner made an official determination that adding a pool was a new use, it would have given Mr. Fertitta the opportunity to appeal that decision. However, that never happened.
After the village lost a lawsuit to the Hedges Inn, in which the same local law played a role, the village board clarified the law, stipulating that the Hedges Inn could install a pool without a use variance, “as the pool is deemed an appurtenant accessory use of the Inn.” Mr. Hill, the attorney, has since said the stipulation was not binding on the Z.B.A. and only applied to the Hedges Inn, a claim Ms. Reichert questions in the lawsuit.
“The Z.B.A.’s unjustified about-face from the Hedges Inn matter to the within application is the essence of bad faith,” she charges. She included the Hedges Inn stipulation as an addendum to the application for the pool in April 2022.
Ms. Reichert argued that the Z.B.A. cannot rule on whether the pool introduces a new use to the property, and accused the board of succumbing to “generalized community pressure.” In the lawsuit, she notes that many of the inn’s neighbors, in the same zoning district, have pools themselves, and says that by denying a pool to the inn, in an “eleventh-hour decision,” the Z.B.A. is violating the inn’s equal protection rights in an attempt to control how inns are used.
A similar argument was made when her firm, Twomey Latham, represented the Hedges Inn.
Further, she tied the denial to Mayor Jerry Larsen’s recent stated desire to purchase the village’s historic inns using its share of community preservation funds, calling it an “abuse of the village’s zoning and police powers that shocks the conscience.”
“The mayor in essence admitted the village’s ulterior motive to depress the value of the inns,” says the lawsuit. Removing the Huntting Inn’s ability to add a pool would set a precedent and depress its real estate value, it adds. “This deprivation would negatively impact the economic viability of the inns, devalue them, and make it easier for the village to purchase the inns.”
In a letter to the East Hampton Town Board, Mayor Larsen said he learned after dealing with Zero Bond’s attempts to operate a late-night club at the Hedges Inn this past summer, how residential zones could be severely impacted by rogue businesses. Purchasing the inns outright, he argued, would give the village the control needed to protect the residential districts they abut.
Both the mayor and the village administrator, Marcos Baladron, declined to comment on the pending litigation.
