East Hampton’s historic Town Hall, made from a grouping of vintage buildings that were donated by a collector who preserved barns and other structures from all over town, will be gussied up with plantings like those that might have once been found in their dooryard gardens, as well as other indigenous and deer-resistant plants, if a plan being developed by the town’s litter committee bears fruit.

    The buildings are now surrounded only by expanses of lawn. Besides beds of herbs, perennials, evergreens, and other shrubs, a wildflower meadow could take root to the east of the driveway entrance, supplanting an empty patch of grass.

    Deborah Klughers, the chairwoman of the litter committee, submitted a proposal to the East Hampton Town Board earlier this month, and this week said she hopes to get a go-ahead soon.

    Working with the committee on the project are Colette Gilbert, an herbalist who is the East Hampton Historical Society’s curator of education and who recently installed a historic and sustainable garden at the Mulford Farm, and Sara Shepherd, an herbalist and master gardener.

    With Ms. Klughers, they met recently with Marguerite Wolffsohn, the town planning director, to sketch out a multi-phased plan. The project, it is hoped, or at least its seasonal beginnings, could be unveiled on Earth Day in April.

    It all depends on the community, Ms. Klughers said this week. Organizers will be seeking the public’s opinions and ideas, and, crucially, donations of labor and materials from residents and businesses, such as nurseries and landscaping firms.

    Ms. Klughers said that a group of veterans, a local contractor, and others have already expressed interest in lending a hand.

    The gardens would be 100-percent organic and make use of recycled materials and would showcase not only the heirloom plants historically found here but traditional types of gardens and gardening techniques.

    Students could be involved in the process, and schools could use the gardens to teach children about the early settlers of East Hampton Town, according to the proposal.

    In addition, the committee envisions including senior citizens and the disabled, with the inclusion of a sensory garden that could be experienced using touch, smell, sight, sound, and taste.

    During the first phase of the project, Ms. Klughers said, plantings would be installed along the front facades of the historic Town Hall buildings, facing Pantigo Road. Garden beds would also be created along walkways leading from the parking lot to the main Town Hall entrance, and alongside a path that connects the main Town Hall campus to town offices at Pantigo Place. A raised bed under a Town Hall sign, on grass near the highway, has also been suggested.

    “Everything that we want to do is going to depend on people helping us,” said Ms. Klughers. No funding from the town is sought. Should the project be approved, the litter committee could accept donations, which would be funneled through the town and collected in a dedicated fund.

    The mission of the town-appointed committee includes promoting “community beautification” and “enhanc[ing] the quality of life for the citizens of East Hampton,” as well as implementing educational projects.

    Brainstorming is still under way, but in order to make the gardens an “interactive learning and teaching experience,” according to the proposal, there could be plaques listing the plants’ scientific and common names, brochures with information about how certain plants were used in the past and how they could be used today, and other informational initiatives, such as a Web site with local planting and gardening information.

    Schoolchildren, the committee anticipates, could work the gardens as a way to fulfill their community service requirements. “Maybe we’ll grow up a few new farmers while we’re at it,” the proposal says.

    Herbs, flowers, or food grown at Town Hall could be donated to those in need at the end of the growing season, the proposal anticipates.

    “It could be something special,” Ms. Klughers said. Garden planners would develop a five-year plan, she said, and a second phase could include a field of lavender that would be visible outside the Town Hall meeting room, and the expansion of plantings onto the grass at the right of the drive into the complex.

    “I think it’s great,” Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc said this week of the idea. “I think about, like Home, Sweet Home and Mulford Farm.”

    “I really think the building looks rather stark,” he said of Town Hall, which currently has nothing but grass around its foundation.

    “It’s a good example of public-private partnership,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “It would accentuate the historic structures and add to them. Why not?” he said. “It’s a great showplace. Why wouldn’t we want our Town Hall to look beautiful?”

    At Tuesday’s East Hampton School Board meeting, a packed house of parents, teachers, and staff members sought warmth from the bitter cold and answers to their many questions. Near the end of the meeting, the first draft of the proposed budget for the 2013-14 school year was finally unveiled. Isabel Madison, the assistant superintendent for business, presented the 27-page document to the board. A copy was not made available to the public.

    “The numbers are still very soft,” Ms. Madison said in addressing the board. Revenues related to state aid and the tax levy were still unknown, she pointed out, among other missing pieces. Despite outstanding items, the proposed budget is $65,040,170 — representing a 3.47-percent increase over last year’s budget of $62.8 million. According to the first draft, the budget for next year amounts to an increase of more than $2 million over the previous year.

    In scanning the budget for big-ticket items, legal costs are expected to rise by more than $55,000 — reaching nearly $570,000. Further, the budget for staff is also projected to increase by more than $100,000.

    In terms of cuts, reading instruction in kindergarten to third grade is expected to decrease by nearly $150,000, while art instruction in grades seven and eight shows a drop of nearly $80,000.

    The English as a second language program, on which the district spent more than $1.7 million last year, will be cut by 5 percent. Technology instruction, on which the district spent nearly $400,000 last year, will see a decrease of 33 percent. Further, the music and social studies programs will see cuts of 6 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

    On Tuesday, the board will conduct its first line-by-line budget work session at 6 p.m. The public, while invited to attend, will not be allowed to comment. George Aman, the board’s president, said the meeting is not expected to go much past 8 p.m. Future work sessions are scheduled for Feb. 12 and 26, March 21, and April 9.

    But prior to the unveiling of the budget, parents of East Hampton Middle School students were on tenterhooks, awaiting some resolution regarding the whereabouts of Charles R. Soriano, the middle school principal. Dr. Soriano, who has been out on an extended medical leave since early fall, was originally scheduled to return to work following the Martin Luther King holiday earlier this week.

    Those plans were diverted Friday afternoon, however, following an e-mail Dr. Soriano sent out to teachers, parents, and staff at 2:29 p.m. In it, he wrote: “Unfortunately, yesterday’s follow-up with my doctor in N.Y.C. did not go as I wanted or planned; he declined to write my clearance to return until I see another specialist next week. This was a personal disappointment, but my health must come first; and I know that you would agree. I have made a request to our superintendent for extending my medical leave until 25 January.”

    Dr. Soriano concluded with, “I look very forward to being back at E.H.M.S. as soon as my doctor gives me the green light.”

    At the time the e-mail was sent, teachers and staff had already begun gathering for a going-away party, complete with cake, for Thomas Lamorgese, who has served as interim principal of the middle school since mid-November. This past week, Dr. Lamorgese has continued filling in for Dr. Soriano.

    Dr. Soriano again declined to discuss his leave, preferring to respond to The East Hampton Star by e-mail only. Concerning his extended absence, Dr. Soriano wrote that “as soon as my doctor in N.Y.C. clears me I will be back to work. I hope that will be very soon.”

    At Tuesday’s meeting, the board unanimously approved a late-added resolution to the superintendent’s report. It did not appear on the written agenda. It read: “Resolved, that Superintendent Burns is authorized to undertake a review of the matter of the status of the middle school principalship in relation to establishing and assuring that the necessary continuity of leadership can be established for the remaining term of the 2012-2013 school year, and it is further resolved that Superintendent Burns is to report back to the board of education at its Feb. 5 meeting with recommendations as to the manner in which such continuity can best be established and assured for the benefit of the middle school community.”

    As had been the case at prior meetings, when the board voted to extend Dr. Soriano’s medical leave, several expressed surprise that the board did not address the issue of a precise return date. By instead opting for a review of the situation by Richard J. Burns, the district superintendent, some wondered whether Dr. Soriano would be returning at all.

    Nevertheless, the review temporarily eased the concerns of many. “We’re pleased that the superintendent is reviewing the status of the principalship and assuring that the necessary continuity of leadership will be established for the remainder of the year,” said Claude Beudert, who teaches special education at the middle school. “That it will benefit the middle school is appreciated.”

    Earlier in the evening, Ana Nunez, who the district hired at the beginning of December following the suicide of David H. Hernandez, an East Hampton High School student, told the board that as a community liaison between the district and Spanish-speaking parents she has already gotten in touch with more than 300 parents.

    Ms. Nunez will conduct a meeting tonight in the high school library to go over issues related to school structure, requirements, report cards, and absences. The meeting will be conducted entirely in Spanish. Future sessions will convene at both the John M. Marshall Elementary School and the high school.

    Also Tuesday, Bridget LeRoy, the district’s communications consultant, updated those assembled about the continuing education program, which was eliminated from the budget last spring.

    The program will run from March 12 to April 18. Classes, which range from basic drawing to bridge to defensive driving, among other offerings, will be held at the high school on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings between 5 and 8. Those interested in learning more can call Ms. LeRoy at the district office. Admission is granted on a first-come-first-served basis.

    Twenty years ago this week, Katie Beers, who was kidnapped two days before her 10th birthday, was released from a macabre dungeon beneath a Bay Shore house where she had been held for 17 days by John Esposito, a family friend.

    She had already lived through years of neglect by her biological mother, Marilyn Beers, and sexual abuse by a man married to a surrogate mother with whom she was often left.

    But after her release, she was placed with a foster family in Springs, grew up here, and is now a wife and mother who wrote about her journey in a book released this week, “Buried Memories: Katie Beers’ Story.”

    Written with Carolyn Gusoff, a journalist who was a Long Island News12 reporter covering the abduction, the book not only provides the horrific details of Ms. Beers’s ordeal, but tells how she was able to recover and mature through a positive childhood and adolescence in a welcoming community.

    “The Springs School was a safe harbor,” said Mary Bromley, an East Hampton psychotherapist who counseled Ms. Beers regularly from the time she arrived here until she graduated from East Hampton High School and went off to college. The two remain close.

    In a chapter of the book detailing her therapy with Ms. Bromley, Ms. Beers says that “even now when I’m anxious I have a little bit of Mary with me.”

    “It’s a great story, in terms of recovery,” Ms. Bromley said of Ms. Beers’s journey. A psychotherapist who worked for 10 years in a special victims unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, she was tapped to work with Ms. Beers by the county’s Department of Social Services, which was looking not only for a therapist experienced in working with sex crimes victims, but someone who could help prepare a child to testify at a trial.

    Ms. Bromley was with Katie through meetings with the district attorney, judicial hearings, and the trial of Sal Inghilleri, who had sexually abused her since she was a toddler. She testified clutching a teddy bear and Ms. Bromley’s hand. Mr. Inghilleri was sentenced to 12 years in prison and died there after being returned to jail for a parole violation in 2010.

    At first, Ms. Bromley said, she drove Katie to meetings UpIsland herself, but when that became a strain, the East Hampton Town Police stepped in, ferrying the two safely to and fro.



     The community embraced little Katie with “a collective sense of love,” Ms. Bromley said. “People respected her privacy and accepted her.”

    Between the Suffolk County District Attorney, James Catterson, who was personally involved in the case, Lt. Dominick Varrone, a detective who led the investigation into her kidnapping, an “amazing prosecutor,” sensitive case workers at Child Protective Services, and the Springs community, “she really had the best of the system,” Ms. Bromley said. “She would say, ‘the whole world is on my team.’ She often said this trauma was one of the best things that ever happened to her, because she got a good family” afterward. Everyone worked together in a united approach to help her heal.

    Katie Beers’s arrival at Springs School stands out for Chris Tracey as a memorable day in his 30-year career in education. A vice principal at Springs at the time, he and Peter Lisi, the school superintendent, welcomed the new student whose arrival was accompanied by a swarm of reporters outside. 

    “We met with her that morning,” Mr. Tracey said. “She was sitting in the chair, and her feet didn’t even hit the ground.”

     “We tried to make her laugh and let her know we were her friends, and make her feel confident.” And then, as with any new student at the school, they walked her down the hall, where she became just another cherished member of Dolores McGintee’s fourth-grade class.

    Students and faculty had been briefed before she arrived, and for the most part, no questions were asked. Mr. Tracey later became an administrator at East Hampton High School, and also knew her as a student there. At both schools, he said, “Based on what I saw, I think she adjusted very well. She just blended in after a while.”

    “For many kids, they wouldn’t have gotten through it,” he said. “There was something special about this young lady — resiliency and courage.”

    “I could tell by the way she walked in, with a whole class watching her, that she was spunky,” said Debra Foster, who was a health and physical education teacher at Springs School when Katie arrived. “And it turned out to be true.”

    A couple of years later, when the sixth-grade health class got into discussions involving sexual predators, Ms. Beers volunteered to talk about the subject with her fellow students. “She ran the whole discussion,” Ms. Foster said. “She’s a very special young woman.”

    Ms. Foster told how, in the first few days when the media remained camped outside the school, Robin Streck, another student who was about the same size as Katie, put on the new student’s coat with a hood, and left the school in full view of reporters, acting as a decoy while Katie was taken out the back.

    Non-uniformed East Hampton cops stood guard around the school and at either end of the foster family’s street to make sure she would be left alone.

    “The whole community just put their arms around her and nurtured her, and helped to make her safe,” Ms. Foster said.

    In her early counseling sessions with young Katie, Ms. Bromley used art therapy techniques to “help her gain mastery over her feelings.”

    Ms. Beers produced drawings and paintings of the underground bunker in which she was held. It was under a hatch, topped by a 200-pound weight that led to a narrow, seven-foot shaft. She was held inside a soundproof box, two feet wide by seven feet long and three feet high, inside the dungeon. The only light came from a closed-circuit TV, on which she could see the police looking for her outside the house.

    Mr. Esposito, a key focus of the police investigation, finally confessed and led investigators to her. He was sentenced to 15 years to life, and will be up for parole in the fall.

    In an appearance on the “Dr. Phil” CBS TV show, which aired on Monday, Ms. Beers said she spoke at a previous parole hearing for Mr. Esposito, and believes he should spend his life in jail.

    The episode was titled “Young, Innocent, and Held Captive,” and was just one of a number of appearances and articles about Ms. Beers this week, coinciding with the release of the book.

    “I was 9 years old, and I had a funny feeling,” Ms. Beers said on the TV show Monday, as she described how Mr. Esposito had taken her to his house and locked her up. He chained her around the neck once he realized her wrists were too small to be restrained, raped her, and hit her. Tearfully, she described how, finally, he came into the dungeon followed by police.

     “I had the will to survive,” she told Dr. Phil. “You were a very street-smart, savvy girl,” Dr. Phil said to her. She was a bit like Tatum O’Neil’s character in the movie “Paper Moon,” Ms. Bromley said. “In some ways, she has a very strong constitution. And the ability for denial — both of which helped her.”

    “Had Mr. Esposito not come forth, I don’t think we ever would have found Katie,” Mr. Varrone said on the show.

    Support for Ms. Beers was widespread. Ms. Bromley has a whole bin of letters to Katie from children all over the world. “We went through some of them together,” she said.

    Still, “it was not easy for her,” the therapist said. There were setbacks, for instance, when photos appeared in the newspaper of her abusers.

    Together, Ms. Bromley and Ms. Beers read “17 Days,” an earlier book about the kidnapping by Arthur Herzog, a Wainscott resident who died in 2010.

    After learning that a 75-year-old Manhattan man who had also been kidnapped and held underground had a house in East Hampton, Ms. Bromley contacted him and asked him to meet with Katie, believing that they could help each other.

     It was remarkable to learn, she said, that they had both employed the same survival strategies, such as reviewing the moments of their lives while in captivity. “He talked to her about the ability to get angry, and she talked to him about forgiveness.”

    At a press conference at Hofstra University in Hempstead on Tuesday with her co-author, Ms. Beers reunited with Detective Varrone and with Ms. Bromley.

    She normally visits East Hampton several times a year, but, she said in a phone interview on Tuesday, as a mother now of two young children — a boy, 31/2, and a girl, who is 17 months — it has lately been only once a year, for an extended week in the summer. She has been married to her husband, whom she met in college, for six and a half years, and works at an insurance agency. She is still occasionally in touch with her biological mother and brother.

    Her parents — the Springs couple that took her in as a foster child  — continue to maintain their anonymity. They supported her decision to write the book, Ms. Beers said Tuesday, but desire to remain out of the limelight and allow the focus to remain on her and her remarkable recovery.

    Though she was not formally adopted, “they are my parents through and through,” Ms. Beers said during a phone interview on Tuesday.

    The family had three older children, and, upon arrival in Springs, Katie was set into a structured, normal family routine, with her foster parents dropping her off at school and expecting her to pitch in with household chores.

    Many East Hamptoners have posted greetings and messages of encouragement on her Facebook page, set up in advance of the book release.

    Since the age of 10, just after her ordeal, Ms. Beers knew that someday she wanted to write her story. “I wanted people to see that there is recovery after trauma,” she said Tuesday.

    “Until eight years ago I didn’t realize how much of a, quote unquote, media sensation I was,” she said. “The community of Springs was instrumental to my recovery . . . keeping me safe,” she said. Everyone “really just gave me a chance to be a kid, and grow up.”

    Ms. Gusoff said that in the book she calls what happened “a community rescue.” They hope to arrange a book signing on the East End, Ms. Gusoff said.

    Ms. Beers said Tuesday that she would love to become a motivational or inspirational speaker, spreading hope to those who must try to recover from an ordeal. But, she said, “I’m very happy with the life that I have in central Pennsylvania.”

    Ms. Beers learned to develop trust in people, and a sense that “the universe is benevolent,” Ms. Bromley said earlier this week. “And she really accomplished that with her foster family, certain friends, a boyfriend here, and with me.”

    “And she put away a guy,” she added. “She’ll have me for as long as she needs me,” Ms. Bromley said. “I’m honored to do this work. Therapy is about love. And if it isn’t about love, it isn’t going to work.”

    In a poem, “For Katie on Her 15th Birthday,” Ms. Bromley wrote to her:

    

     “It has taken many years

     to crawl out of that hole

     and there have been

     many strong arms along the way

     to pull you out.”



    “You have come up into the light,” it later says.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees have taken the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to court. In documents filed in State Supreme Court in Riverhead on Dec. 28, the trustees sought to annul a Nov. 30 Z.B.A. decision approving the construction of a stone revetment on the shore of Gardiner’s Bay. Arguments will be heard on Feb. 12.

    The suit also names Joshua Young and Christiane Lemieux, owners of a house at 157 Mulford Lane, in the Lazy Point area of Amagansett, who received the okay for  the 147-foot revetment. The appeals board had denied the homeowners’ application on March 13, but reversed itself following the project’s approval by the State Department of Environmental Conservation.

    The dune seaward of the couple’s house on what was once a parcel of one-third acre has been eroded to the point that storm surge and subsequent flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy and subsequent northeasters leave the house vulnerable to future storms. Erosion has already claimed houses to seaward

    David Eagan of the Wainscott firm Eagan and Matthews is the attorney for the trustees. Neither John Jilnicki, the town attorney, nor Robert Connolly, the attorney for the Z.B.A., returned calls by press time.

    The suit alleges that the Z.B.A. made a number of errors in approving the revetment. For one thing, it claims that the board has agreed the wall can be built north of the high-water line, which is seaward of the current Young-Lemieux property line and therefore, the suit says, on beach owned by the trustees on behalf of the public.

    The suit also claims that in approving the revetment the Z.B.A. had determined that the applicants’  house was in imminent danger, “when in fact the Z.B.A. had previously granted the owners the necessary relief to demolish the existing residence and construct a new 1,719-square-foot residence on pilings in a more landward location.” Having first offered an alternative means of saving the house precludes the Z.B.A.’s “imminent danger” finding, the suit claims. 

    Also alleged is that approval was not based on any change of law or circumstance that warranted a departure from the board’s denial of the original application, which was for variances and a natural resources permit for a nearly identical rock revetment seven months earlier. 

    Although approved by the Z.B.A., no building permit had been issued for the project at the time of the trustees’ filing.

    “It’s black and white,” Mr. Eagan said yesterday. “They [the applicants] didn’t meet the standards of imminent peril,” Mr. Eagan said. “It’s why the Z.B.A. approved relocation in the first place. They didn’t exhaust the alternatives. They didn’t relocate.”

    Reached yesterday morning, Diane McNally, the presiding officer, or clerk, of the trustees, said the Z.B.A. had “abdicated to the D.E.C.” in making a decision that should have been based on the town code and the long-standing authority of the trustees as owners of public land.

     Although private property once extended seaward of the Young-Lemieux land, Ms. McNally said that once the land  eroded and was claimed by the sea, it became bottomland owned by the public. 

    During the trustees’ 2013 organizational meeting Tuesday night, Ms. McNally was reappointed clerk. Stephanie Forsberg was named assistant clerk again, John Courtney remained the board’s attorney, and Lori Miller-Carr was again appointed secretary.

    Montauk’s oceanfront business district, its “downtown,” has become a testing ground, a sea-level stage on which a drama with the potential for environmental and financial ruin, competing philosophies, and the absence of a guiding light, is being played.

    Last week, in the wake of another northeaster, Steve Kalimnios of the Royal Atlantic Beach Resort there called for a special tax district through which he and other oceanfront business owners could raise most of the money needed to rebuild and maintain the beaches. Also last week, however, a newsletter from the Concerned Citizens of Montauk expressed a different point of view, warning that “not all damaged businesses and infrastructure can or should be reconstructed ‘in place’ and ‘in kind.’ ”

     According to Mr. Kalimnios, a recently named committee headed unofficially by the East Hampton Town Board members Theresa Quigley and Peter Van Scoyoc is scheduled to meet on Jan. 7, and every two weeks thereafter, in what he called an aggressive attempt to come up with a plan for erosion response. The committee includes members of the hospitality industry, like Mr. Kalimnios, as well as environmentalists.

    In the C.C.O.M. newsletter, Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director, agreed with Mr. Kalimnios on the need for a plan, suggesting the creation of a coastal protection and recovery plan of the kind advocated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mr. Samuelson said he had not been informed of the Jan. 7 meeting, but he and Mr. Kalimnios seem to agree that, in Mr. Samuelson’s words: “Montauk’s response to more numerous and powerful storms and rising sea level will only be successful if we find a consensus among scientists, property owners, land planning professionals, economic experts, and elected officials. For too long elected officials have avoided taking on the difficult but critical topics of protection and recovery. By refusing to adapt to circumstances . . . we will lose that which is most dear.”

    When the dunes protecting Mr. Kalimnios’s hotel were taken by mega-storm Sandy on Oct. 29, he paid for sand to replace them. But when a second storm followed in early November, he had a couple dozen concrete septic rings installed on the beach. They were subsequently approved by the State Department of Environmental Conservation to provide temporary protection.

     On Saturday, Mr. Kalimnios said he knew one thing for sure: The rings had worked. Although the latest storm took the sand that had covered the rings, at least 7,000 cubic yards remained beneath them. That the rings are still there is a victory of sorts, the hotel owner said, but he called them only a stop-gap solution, and a very controversial one at that.

    Mr. Kalimnios described the latest attack on the area known as Motel Row. This time, he said, the rings protected the Royal Atlantic’s underbelly, but it gutted an artificial dune built to the west at the Ocean Beach resort, which did not have ring protection. “The ocean beat against their basement walls,” Mr. Kalimnios said, and played havoc with the much-touted over-sized sand bags known as geo-cubes in front of the property directly to the east of the Royal Atlantic.

    The latest storm also scoured deep into the beach to reveal steel posts put in  to hold  fencing  in the 1970s. Although the geo-cubes and the concrete rings held, the result was scary, Mr. Kalimnios  said, pointing to a photograph on his computer screen. The photo showed a deep trench running parallel to the beach. Virtually nothing was left of what had been the 300-foot-wide beach between the resort and the ocean when the steel fence posts went in.

    “Why are they bashing me?” the hotelier said of unnamed persons whom he said had been photographing his property before and after last week’s storm.

    “My fear is there’s so much negativity. Why not harness the resources we have to do a soft solution? They are treating us like the enemy.” Mr. Kalimnios returned again and again to the division that he said exists between the business and environmental communities. “Use me, use me,” the beleaguered hotel owner entreated.

    Mr. Kalimnios said the combined financial resources of the beachfront hotel owners should be tapped via a special tax district for most of the cost of rebuilding and maintaining the beach. He insisted that he had never advocated, or considered plans for, “hard” erosion control methods such as sea walls or revetments. Nor had his neighbors, he said. Discounting any help from the federal government, Mr. Kalimnios said this would be primarily a private fix.

    Suggestions presented by the environmental community, for either raising or relocating oceanfront structures, were “pie in the sky,’ Mr. Kalimnios said, adding that they were completely unrealistic, both logistically and financially. “Look, if I wasn’t here. If the other hotels were gone, that doesn’t solve the problem.”

    The hotel owner criticized C.C.O.M. for not recognizing the economic implications that forced him to put in the concrete rings. “My insurance company will not insure me if I don’t secure my asset. I’m securing my asset,” Mr. Kalimnios said.

     “In 2008,” the C.C.O.M. newsletter states, “C.C.O.M. identified the need for a plan. As part of that year’s local election we asked all candidates for town and county office to commit to leading the . . . effort. C.C.O.M identified $200,000 in state grant funding available to East Hampton that was earmarked for a coastal community willing to step up to the challenge.”

    Mr. Samuelson wrote that inaction on the part of local officials resulted in the grant money going to the Catskill region instead. He said on Monday, however, that state money could again be available in the aftermath of Sandy.

    Mr. Kalimnios also faulted the town’s inaction. He said officials should not have been taken by surprise. “There is no beach management department, and the beach is our most important asset.”

    Reached on Monday, Mr. Samuelson said that he sympathized with the hotel owner’s predicament and understood the need to secure his property. It was how the assets had been secured that he was critical of, going further to doubt the effectiveness of the concrete rings.

    “The D.E.C. allowed those rings after they had already been put in — after the fact. If you look at how they behaved, they failed. We warned about uninformed engineering. We said they would fall into the surf zone, bang into each other and break, and then actually hold water in. It was the worst design possible. It’s what happens when people go cowboy.” There are solutions available that are in the code, Mr. Samuelson said, referring to the geo-cubes, which can be refilled if need be. “Efforts should be informed, not done because there’s a sale on septic rings,” Mr. Samuelson said.

               



 Morgan McGivern



An oceanfront house at Georgica Beach that was rented last summer to Bill and Hillary Clinton by its owner, Elie Hirschfeld, has been left at the precipice of disaster by a series of fall and winter storms.”

 

Erosion Elsewhere

    Concerned about erosion in other parts of town, Diane McNally, clerk of the East Hampton Town Trustees, said this week that under a new trustee policy beachfront property owners will no longer be able to claim ownership of reconstructed dunes.

    Except in Montauk, the town trustees own and manage beaches on behalf of the public. As far as the trustees are concerned, if the sea strips away a dune, what’s left becomes public beach.

    The trustees place the seaward edge of private property at the beach grass line — the place where the dune grass stops. Dunes are generally understood to have grass growing on them. Before oceanfront property owners will be allowed to replace a lost dune, they will be required to add a covenant to their deeds agreeing that the reconstructed dunes are no longer private property.

    The trustees have begun informing applicants for sand replenishment that they may be allowed to replace sand, but will not be permitted to plant stabilizing beach grass unless they agree to such a covenant. The trustees formerly required only that reconstructed dunes be planted with beach grass in order to stabilize them.

    The trustees are, however, ready to sign permits for several homeowners to replace beach and dune stolen by storms since Sandy’s Oct. 29 visit. The Lerner, Istel, and Beach Realty L.L.C properties, all in the Georgica area — a neighborhood hit especially hard by last week’s northeaster — have the trustees’ blessing. The replenishment projects also have permission from the State Department of Environmental Conservation and East Hampton Village.

    According to Ms. McNally and Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, similar applications are coming in on a regular basis. The Elie Hirschfeld house east of the Georgica Beach road end, where Bill and Hillary Clinton have vacationed in the past, lost all of its protective dune.

    The Lerner property just to the east, which already had village and state permits to reconstruct dunes, took more hits from the three sand-eating storms since Sandy and recently got the nod from the trustees as well.

    Along with the village and the town, the trustees are attempting to keep pace with storms and to adapt to what seems to be the new coastal normal. Ms. McNally said the trustees’ next job is to alert the D.E.C. and the town and village boards to the change.

 



 Morgan McGivern



An oceanfront house at Georgica Beach that was rented last summer to Bill and Hillary Clinton by its owner, Elie Hirschfeld, has been left at the precipice of disaster by a series of fall and winter storms.”

 

    Three charity plunges into the chilly Atlantic Ocean are planned for New Year’s Day, about an hour apart, which means that the truly brave could triple-dip, if so moved.

    The morning’s first will be at Gurney’s Inn on Old Montauk Highway in Montauk at 10:30. A $10 donation to Paddlers for Humanity will be asked, as well a contribution of nonperishable food for East End Cares, which formed to provide relief to Long Island residents affected by Hurricane Sandy. Susan Yunker at Gurney’s can answer questions.

    At 1 p.m., Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett will see the annual Food Pantry Plunge. A costume contest judging begins at 12:30. The suggested minimum donation, which goes entirely to local food pantries, is $25. Warm refreshments are promised, and there will be a raffle with prizes to be announced. Registration begins at the beach at 11:30 a.m.

    Colin Mather, the original plunger here, has asked that anyone who wants to run with him from his Seafood Shop on Route 27 in Wainscott down to the ocean at the Beach Lane road end, join him at 2 p.m. His plunge will benefit Phoenix House. A $20 donation has been suggested.    

    After a relatively mild December, the forecast for New Year’s Day is appropriately wintry, with blustery winds and a high of 32 degrees, which should make for quick dips.

   Cyril’s Fish House, the traffic-stopping hotspot on Napeague, has been front and center at the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s last two meetings, on Nov. 28 and again on Dec. 5, as the board debated whether to recommend a change in its zoning status from residential to neighborhood business, under which a restaurant is an allowed use.

    The change would bring Cyril’s into compliance with the zoning code, allowing it to expand legally. The restaurant was cited for over 40 code violations in the past year alone, according to Robert Connolly, an East Hampton Town attorney.

    Rezoning would affect not only the lot the building sits on but a vacant one to the west, between Napeague Harbor Road and the restaurant, as well, folding the two properties into one 1.13-acre parcel and allowing for an expanded parking area on the western lot. An expansion from 62 seats to 92 might also be allowed, although a number of variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals would probably still be needed.

    Cyril’s, which is in a residential zone, is allowed to operate as a restaurant because it was doing so before current zoning rules prohibited it, giving it a special status. However, under such nonconforming status, expansion of the site is not allowed.

    In May 2009 the town’s chief building inspector, Don Sharkey, who has since died, told town attorneys and the planning and code enforcement departments that expansion had taken place on the property. He counted 15 structures built without site plan approval or building permits and lacking valid certificates of occupancy, naming several seating areas, a reach-in cooler, a propane tank, and storage trailers, among others.

    Both lots in question are owned by Michael Dioguardi, who has leased the restaurant parcel to Cyril Fitzgerald for many years. The site has been developed since at least 1960. In 1969, according to town records, a C of O was issued for a “one-story frame restaurant and gas station” with a gravel patio.

    The gas pumps are long since gone, but the site has housed a restaurant, in one guise or another, ever since. It has changed names several times, from Fish ’n’ Chips in 1972 to Skipper’s Galley in 1984, to Beach House in 1989, finally becoming Cyril’s in 1990. Always popular, Cyril’s now draws so many 20 and 30-something patrons that it stops traffic on summer afternoons, as motorists brake to a halt on a road with a speed limit of 55 miles per hour in order to allow people to cross the highway. Cars park up and down the shoulder of Route 27, often a quarter-mile or more away.

    If the planning board recommends it and the town board approves, Mr. Dioguardi intends to situate the restaurant farther back from the highway and add 37 parking spots to the west, on the back half of the combined lots. He would also install a new sanitary system; the current septic system is considered outdated.

    The plan has been in the works for several years. In 2010 Eric Schantz, then a member of the Planning Department, weighed the pluses and minuses of a change in zoning and suggested that it might, all things considered, be for the good. Among possible benefits, he wrote, were “safety, both for the patrons and motorists on Montauk Highway,” and the possible reduction of “the impact of the site on the adjacent protected natural features, most notably the expansive freshwater wetlands present.”

    He concluded, however, with a warning: “Any zone change approval

. . . which is solely based upon the fact that a pre-existing use is nonconforming to current zoning would establish a precedent that could adversely impact many other neighborhoods.”

    There is indeed a precedent for the planning board to consider. In 2003, the town agreed to provide the same zone change for the land upon which the Lobster Roll, another destination dining spot on Napeague, sits. However, in that case, no expansion of the restaurant was contemplated. Instead, the town received land for preservation and the Lobster Roll was allowed to improve its parking facilities, as well as widen its entrance and exit onto Montauk Highway.

    The planning board tabled the matter for a week to allow members to mull over the documents involved, before holding a final debate on Dec. 5. Robert Schaeffer, a board member, began the discussion.

     “There are some sanitary issues,” he said, noting that as part of the proposal the owner would be installing a new septic system. And, he said, “rezoning can restore it to its intended use.”

    Reed Jones, the board chairman, while calling himself “pro-business,” nevertheless said he was opposed to rezoning. “I don’t think it is fair to compare this to the Lobster Roll,” he said. “If you grant rezoning it could lead to expansion of use.”

     “It’s a dangerous site. We all want to correct that,” said J.P. Foster. “Now they’re trying to grow it by another 30 seats.”

    Diana Weir disagreed with Mr. Foster. “I don’t think it does anything but give us more control” over the number of seats in the restaurant, she said.

    Ian Calder-Piedmonte also embraced the proposal. “I think it’s a good idea,” he said, calling Cyril’s “sort of an East End tradition.” He reiterated Mr. Schaeffer’s view that the town would get, in return for the zoning change, improved parking and sanitary conditions.

    But Nancy Keeshan, who drives past Cyril’s almost daily on her way from her home in East Hampton to her real estate business in Montauk, strongly disagreed. “I enjoy a daiquiri as much as the next girl,” she told the board, smiling, but said that approving the zoning change would be akin to approving the current status quo.

    The board split down the middle when it came time to vote, voting three in favor, three opposed. Ms. Weir, Mr. Calder-Piedmonte, and Mr. Schaeffer voted to recommend approval. The seventh board member, Patrick Schutte, was unable to attend the meeting. In the end, the board agreed to draft a letter to the town board giving the reasoning behind both pros and cons.

    The planning board’s recommendation is necessary before the town can act on the change. The town board can take the zoning change up at its own discretion, once it receives the planning board’s letter.

    Members of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, had they been members of the planning board instead, would almost certainly have sent a less evenly divided letter to the town board. At their meeting Monday night, members of the committee spoke forcefully about what they consider egregious code violations, a dangerous traffic situation, and, chiefly, Cyril’s impact on the environment, despite the perceived advantages of a rezoning — a greater ability to enforce code, added parking for the always-crowded business, and improved sanitation.

    Thirty more seats, or a dozen additional parking spaces, were negligible, committee members felt, in the context of the several hundred patrons who routinely crowd the front of the restaurant. “It’s not the 60 or 90 people sitting, it’s the thousand people standing,” said Britton Bistrian.

    Cyril’s outmoded septic system is a critical component, said Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the committee’s liaison to the town board, citing the parcel’s close proximity to Napeague Harbor, and Kieran Brew, the chairman, pointed out that the western lot would be used for a new system.

    Cyril’s is located in a FEMA flood zone, noted Sheila Okin, the vice chairwoman, with a shallow depth of groundwater. “The sanitary flow will exceed what is allowable by the County Health Department,” she said.

    John Broderick voiced concern that Cyril’s might exploit the Lobster Roll precedent. “The precedent is an important issue,” he said. “They’re using [it.]” Of the restaurant’s numerous code violations, Mr. Broderick added, “There’s so little enforcement as it is. These are critical, egregious violations. At what point do those violations become a shutdown issue?”

    Ms. Overby reminded the committee that the town board might elect not to consider the proposal to rezone. In any event, she said, if the board does decide to take it up, there will be a hearing.

    Members pondered making a recommendation to the town board. “I really feel we should make a recommendation,” Ms. Okin said. “It’s serious.” But Ms. Overby responded that a recommendation at this juncture was premature.

    However ACAC members felt about the proposal, said Mr. Brew, “Cyril’s is not going away. We have to find a way to deal with it.”

    And whatever the town board decides, said Ms. Overby, “the gorilla in the room is, it’s still going to be a mess.” 

With reporting

by Christopher Walsh

    A month after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, devastating areas west of here but sparing the East End from the worst of it, officials in East Hampton and Southampton Towns are still debriefing, examining emergency plans and their efficacy.

    Both towns have reported satisfaction with the way their respective emergency operations centers dealt with public safety, evacuations, road closures, and the like. But the unavoidable knowledge of the storm’s havoc in the Rockaways and other hard-hit communities raises the question: What if?

    Two serious storms in two consecutive years — Tropical Storm Irene, followed by Sandy — and the scientific likelihood of increased similar storm activity here, coupled with eroded shores and sea-level rise, have created a push to examine the state of emergency preparedness and how to keep residents informed and protected.

    “You learn something from each one of these storms,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said Tuesday. He had just attended another review meeting of the various emergency responders earlier that day. “I asked the group this morning, ‘Pretend what happened at Breezy Point happened here. What do we have to improve?’ ”

    “The answer is, better announcements, better communication . . . [and] standardizing things that were just one-off,” he said. “I think the preventative things we did for the first time, such as building some berms in places of ingress, will be something we’ll do from now on.”

    Mr. Wilkinson said he and Highway Superintendent Stephen Lynch made the decision to place piles of sand, trucked in from sand-mining pits, in front of beach accesses in downtown Montauk, an effort he has called key to preventing flooding there. On the night of the hurricane, as water began to trickle across Napeague from a breach in the ocean dunes, the two also made the decision to have Mr. Lynch use heavy equipment to plug the breach, on state parkland, with sand. Mr. Wilkinson said that he called the governor’s office immediately afterward to report what had been done.

    The State Department of Environmental Conservation, which regulates work on beaches, allows local governments to take emergency action if the public’s safety is at risk, but is supposed to be notified immediately afterward. Mr. Wilkinson said the town had not involved the D.E.C., but defended what had been done, saying a permit was unnecessary because of the situation.

    He said he had been questioned by some about adding sand from elsewhere to the beach in Montauk. When the D.E.C. does issue a permit to add sand to a beach, it normally requires that the sand be “compatible” with the ecology of the area. “We’re trying to stop something here, as compared to an aesthetic — and it was an emergency,” he said.

    Other issues that came up and could be addressed in future emergency response plans, Mr. Wilkinson said, include providing fuel for town vehicles during a gas supply slowdown (supplies were obtained last month from local marinas), and providing for debris disposal at town brush dumps. Joining with East Hampton Village to cooperatively run an emergency operations center was a success during Sandy that would probably be continued in future storms, Mr. Wilkinson said. An on-call system that would enable the Police Department to call in traffic control officers for extra staffing, similar to one already in place for the Marine Patrol, could be added, he said.

    In addition, Mr. Wilkinson said, “I think that we’re going to ensure that we have the staff . . . local volunteers,” to make sure the Montauk Playhouse can be opened as an evacuation shelter. Last month, the Red Cross, which provides shelter staffing, determined that it could only open one shelter within the town, at East Hampton High School. Mr. Wilkinson asked members of the Montauk Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary to staff the playhouse, which is equipped with supplies, but they declined.

    Both Southampton and East Hampton employed a “code red” system, which can be used to send pre-recorded alerts to residents, such as a warning to evacuate flood-prone areas.

    Southampton had a dedicated, and powered, phone number for residents to obtain storm-related info, and to call in reports of problems and the like, said Lt. Lawrence Schurek of the Southampton Town Police Department, who acted as the department’s liaison and emergency operations coordinator.

    He said he carefully tracked the weather and “put out updates constantly . . . beginning a good week before the storm,” including press releases addressing storm preparedness, providing information regarding shelters that could accommodate people with special needs, pet owners, and others, and informing the public about possible mandatory or suggested evacuations. That information was also relayed to Southampton Town Hall, he said, where it was put on the town Web site and announced in regular radio addresses by Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst. “We put out a lot of information to the public, and still are doing that,” the lieutenant said.

     In East Hampton Town, Johnson Nordlinger, Supervisor Wilkinson’s assistant, said in the days after the storm that press releases were not being sent out, but that she was fielding calls with inquiries from residents. The Town Hall offices were without power for several days, although a generator was set up to power areas of the old town hall where some staff were relocated.

    No official statement was made about closing town offices, according to employees, who said they reported to work on Oct. 29, the day of the storm, and the next day, though they were without power, lights, and access to computerized town records.

    Some information was posted on East Hampton’s Web site — for instance, on late Saturday afternoon, Nov. 3, notice was posted that the town was opening a warming center at the American Legion in Amagansett, where residents without power could bring their own bedding to spend that night. A notice about the open hours at the town brush dump, and the suspension of drop-off fees for residents, was also posted.

    “We go to [radio station] WLNG as much as possible,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “I think I was there a couple of times a day.” And, he said, he provided information to East Hampton’s Patch.com Web site, “because it’s instant.” 

    In the future, he said, public service announcements could be aired, well before any storm, to make sure the public knows what to expect and provide specific tips, such as keeping a battery-operated radio on hand.

    Lieutenant Schurek said that Southampton has a written “broad-based emergency procedures guide.” The “disaster preparedness checklist” lays out in detail the roles and responsibilities of town, county, and state agencies and personnel before a storm, during the emergency operations stage, and in a “post-event recovery stage.”

    “It’s all pretty well coordinated,” Lieutenant Schurek said. “The list is so long; I think we accomplished most of it.” But, he said, not everything goes by the list. “We have a lot of briefings,” he said. “We have to make decisions.”

    In East Hampton, Mr. Wilkinson said, Ed Michels, head of the town’s Marine Patrol, provides “incident management training” to town department heads, laying out “who’s going to do what and what are the protocols for doing it.”

    Whether East Hampton has a written plan equivalent to that of Southampton, Mr. Wilkinson was unsure, but, he said, activities are overseen by Bruce Bates, the town’s emergency preparedness coordinator. Some decisions, Mr. Wilkinson said, such as piling up the sand, are made on the fly.

    In conjunction with the county and several other communities, East Hampton does have an “All Hazards Mitigation Plan,” which assesses the town’s vulnerability to various disasters and provides a blueprint for how to minimize their danger. It is unclear whether that plan informs what is done when a storm or other disaster threatens, or whether the town is pursuing its long-range goals, such as acquiring or relocating structures in areas prone to repeated damage or implementing projects that would help mitigate a storm’s impact on the environment, such as beach nourishment or creating wetlands. However, a number of the objectives mirror those in the town’s comprehensive plan and Local Waterfront Revitalization Program plan.

    Other documents that inform emergency plans include the National Weather Service’s Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes, or SLOSH, maps, which estimate storm surge heights and winds for predicted storms, and are used to determine what areas should be evacuated. Evacuation orders or recommendations are carried out, in both towns, by volunteer firefighters who go door to door.

    Speaking at a town board meeting on Nov. 15, Kathleen Cunningham, an East Hampton resident, said “throwing much more energy into planning” might be warranted. “We have an opportunity to be more prepared, and I think we should really step it up.”

    “There’s not enough of anything for a densely populated area,” she said, referring to the single Red Cross shelter here. “If this had come in August. . . .”

    “I know that we have an emergency plan in place, but we need to step up our reaction, to anticipate things that are maybe more catastrophic than we’re accustomed to,” Ms. Cunningham said.

    As an example, she said, “We really have to get people to have their emergency kits.” And, she added, “As a green energy advocate, we should think about how we can power things.” One idea, she said, in light of the inability for gas stations without power to pump gas, would be to obtain portable solar panels, which can power generators.

    “Some very serious conversations” have already begun, Mr. Wilkinson told her.

    “That’s one of the things that we want to set up,” Lieutenant Schurek said earlier this week. “We have shelter for 400, but what if we needed it for 4,000? We want to get all the things in place.”

 

    “Wary of Future, Professionals Leave China in Record Numbers” read the Oct. 31 headline in The New York Times. In opting to emigrate, Chinese professionals are seeking greater freedoms — of expression, of religion — and a more secure, stable future, which they feel is uncertain in their homeland.

    The article went on to say that “Chinese immigrants are driving real estate booms in places as varied as Midtown Manhattan, where some enterprising agents are learning Mandarin, to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which offers a route to a European Union passport.” Concurrently, the number of millionaires in China stands at 1.4 million, according to a June estimate by the Boston Consulting Group.

    Does this mean anything for the South Fork’s real estate industry? Maybe. But it’s wise to act now to position for the potential influx, said Judi Desiderio, chief executive officer of Town and Country Real Estate, based in East Hampton.

    James Gao, a Town and Country agent and a native of China, recently returned from Luxury Properties Showcase, a three-day trade show held earlier this month at Beijing’s Legendale Hotel that brought real estate agents and developers from multiple countries together with potential buyers.

    For affluent Chinese, buying and owning a house makes sense, said Mr. Gao. “Some friends in China have 10 or 20 different apartments, but the government limits their numbers,” he said. “And they don’t own it, they lease it from the government. Their kids won’t be able to own it. Buying and owning makes a lot more sense. Also, the U.S is safe and secure.” Mr. Gao cited the metropolitan area’s three international airports and the already sizable Chinese community in New York City as factors that should attract affluent Chinese to the South Fork.

    China would be the newest, though hardly the first, foreign country to which Town and Country is reaching out, said Ms. Desiderio. The addition of China, she said, only underscores the Hamptons’ global recognition and appeal, reflected in its stable of agents from Holland, Italy, Portugal, France, and Germany, as well as liaisons to prospective buyers in Russia and England.

    “We realized that we have quite a melting pot here at Town and Country,” she said. “James was the first to say he wanted to go to this real estate forum. People from all over the world were there. We see an opportunity there for him and for Town and Country.

    “If somebody’s coming from Germany, Japan, or China, they have to have someone on board that can speak the language,” she added. “Without an interpreter, that barrier can stop someone from moving forward.”

    Tania Valverde, an agent with Prudential Douglas Elliman in East Hampton, agreed. “Real estate and finances are very different in other countries,” Ms. Valverde, who speaks five languages (though not Mandarin or Cantonese), said. “We almost have to hold their hands or ‘baby sit’ much more than with American buyers.”

    While some of Manhattan’s highest-end real estate has been bought up by foreigners, particularly from countries, such as Russia, where vast fortunes have recently been accumulated, it does not necessarily follow that the market here is next in line. So far, Ms. Desiderio said, Town and Country officials are excited only by the potential Chinese immigrants may offer. “If there is going to be an international explosion in the Hamptons, I think it will happen after Manhattan realizes a big boom,” she said. “If that happens, once they become entrenched in Manhattan, they’ll discover what the Hamptons has to offer.”

    Raymond Smith, branch manager of Prudential Douglas Elliman’s East Hampton and Southampton offices, agreed that foreigners who buy luxury real estate in Manhattan will find their way east. “Nobody comes from Hong Kong to Southampton. They come to Manhattan first,” he said. “When they buy a multimillion-dollar apartment in Manhattan, people will tell them, ‘You’ve got to come out here.’ ”

    “We’re beginning to see that,” said Debra Reece, manager of the Bridgehampton branch of Sotheby’s International Realty. “Certainly, what we’ve seen in Manhattan is keen interest. That is now beginning to flow through to the Hamptons.” The real estate brokerage’s affiliation with Sotheby’s auction house, Ms. Reece said, provides a strong presence in, and allows outreach to, Hong Kong and other parts of China. Real estate agents attend Sotheby’s auction events, she explained, and meet prospective clients at private parties and other events as well.

    Prudential Douglas Elliman’s sizable presence in New York City, as well as Westchester County and Long Island, means a steady flow of international customers, Mr. Smith said. On its Web site, prospective buyers can search for agents by language spoken. A query on the site returned 39 Mandarin-speaking agents in and around the city.

    Sotheby’s real estate Web site, said Ms. Reece, functions in 16 languages and updates global currency exchange rates every three hours. “We reach out to people in their own language,” she said.

    In the Hamptons, Mr. Smith said, one of his agents is presently working with an Asian buyer, and a number of others have sold to Russian buyers. It makes sense, he said, that affluent Chinese would look to emigrate. “It’s a very oppressive regime,” he observed.

    Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s billionaires, Mr. Smith said, contains a large number of Asians. “They’re always going to want to invest in the U.S. — it’s always the safest place on earth. That’s why we’re selling penthouse apartments in Manhattan for $45, $50 million.”

    The conditions are ripe for a Chinese-fueled real estate boom on a local level. At the Luxury Properties Showcase, said Mr. Gao, many attendees inquired about the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Immigrant Investor Program. The program, known as EB-5, was created by Congress in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment.

    Foreign buyers, of course, would need a visa to immigrate to the U.S. “I’m just promoting the real estate,” Mr. Gao said. “Maybe for the next trip, I’ll hire a lawyer to go with me.”

    “It’s just a matter of time,” Ms. Reece predicted. “We anticipate we’re going to see more and more interest from the Chinese market in the Hamptons, just as we have seen in Manhattan.”

    On the night of Oct. 29 with the wind shrieking, Steve Kalimnios and one of his staff pointed the beam of a flashlight under the Royal Atlantic Resorts hotel. Hurricane Sandy was riding a full-moon tide landward at full gallop. For Mr. Kalimnios and owners of ocean and bayfront properties across Long Island, the nightmare storm that had always threatened from some distant future was on their doorstep, literally.

    “We made a decision that night,” Mr. Kalimnios said.  The building was shaking. The sea was under it all the way to the front wall. We shut down the [fresh]water, the electricity, and walked away saying it’s going in.”

    The building that accommodates thousands of visitors to Montauk each year did not go in, but for the second time in as many years, a storm laid bare its foundations, and those of neighboring hotels along downtown Montauk’s “motel row.” In fact, surge from both Irene and Sandy actually surrounded much of motel row.

    Mr. Kalimnios said on Friday that after the ironically named Sandy, he purchased 14,000 cubic yards of sand to pack under the foundation in an effort to stave off the surge from the predicted northeaster churning just a few days away. When the northeaster struck, the hotel owner ordered another 600 to 800 cubic yards to replace what it had taken.

    At $20 per cubic yard, the two storms cost the hotel nearly $300,000 in sand, not to mention repairs to the hotel itself, and not including the cost of a protective berm made of sand and concrete septic rings.

    The berm was approved by the State Department of Environmental Conservation as a “temporary” structure but without a deadline for its removal. It was not officially approved by the town board, and is technically in violation of the town ban on “hard” erosion control structures in the oceanfront zone.

    During an interview with Steve Kalimnios and his father, Tom, on Friday, the hotel owners insisted they were adamantly opposed to any kind of permanent hard structure such as a seawall, jetty, or revetment in front of their property.

    “A lot of these issues are clouded,” Steve Kalimnios said. “All the owners here are the biggest proponents of a soft solution,” he said, agreeing with coastal engineers that hard approaches cause scouring and, he said, ultimately the complete negation of beach. So what’s the fix?

    Mr. Kalimnios said he saw a two-phase approach. In the short term: the repeated shoring up of eroded sand that supports the hotel and the wood pilings it sits on.

    He described the second, long-term solution as the creation of a special erosion-control tax district in cooperation with East Hampton Town. The district would include as many businesses in downtown Montauk as come to believe that the perpetual replenishment of ocean beach is the only alternative for reasons both physical and economic.

    He said the tax district would underpin loans from the town for beach maintenance, but if the cost were too large, if not enough businesses included themselves in the district, maintaining a soft solution would not happen and the result would be catastrophic.

    “The people not directly impacted think it’s someone else’s problem,” a belief he said Sandy might have altered. “People think we’re looking for a handout,” Steve Kalimnios said. He believes that if nothing is done, the loss of motel row would be followed by the loss of Montauk’s downtown.

    Mr. Kalimnios stressed the importance of his and surrounding businesses to Montauk’s economic engine, and he bristled at being “vilified” as not being environmentally conscious. “We make our living on Montauk’s natural beauty. This is our lives.”  

    His two hotels, the Royal Atlantic Beach Resorts and the Royal Atlantic East Condos, service 40,000 to 50,000 visitors each year, he said, with an economic multiplier (his guests going to restaurants, charter boats, shops, etc.) at 10 times beyond his own revenues. He said motel row had to be the last line of defense. “After we’re gone, money will have to be spent if Montauk is to survive, but it’s hard to persuade people,” he said, even people with businesses in the downtown area who have heretofore not accepted their vulnerable position.        

    Hurricane Sandy succeeded in forcing official recognition of global warming and sea-level rise from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and has added credence to the position held by scientists and coastal engineers that retreat, even forced retreat, from vulnerable areas is the only real solution.

    In yesterday’s New York Times, Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon is quoted as saying the nation’s flood insurance program, $18 billion in debt after Hurricane Katrina, had already received 115,000 claims from Sandy. The program is allowing people and businesses to rebuild in vulnerable places, he said, which, in turn, is “going to end up creating more victims and costing more money in the future.”

    Mr. Kalimnios said that although he had benefited from federal and supplemental private insurance (the latter premium increased by 20 percent last year), he did not know if he could expect federal help if his hotel had to be rebuilt after some future storm.

    On the other hand, there is no place to retreat to, he said, and raising his hotel, a vertical form of retreat seen by some as another option, “won’t work.” Nor does it solve the underlying problem, he said: the continual erosion of Montauk’s once-broad beach. The beach not only protects the downtown flood plain, he said, but is the reason people vacation there, the fuel of the economic engine.

    “At some point you have to defend the line. Retreat is not an option unless you close Montauk. No town center, that’s the retreat,” Mr. Kalimnios said.

    Jeremy Samuelson is the executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, an environmental group that faulted Mr. Kalimnios for using concrete septic rings to build his berm, and faulted the town for allowing it to be built, despite the state’s approval. Beyond the short-term issues, Mr. Samuelson said, Sandy had once again shown official reluctance to face a future with a rising sea and more frequent and damaging storms.

    He criticized Supervisor Bill Wilkinson for failing to take advantage of a $200,000 Department of State grant aimed at creating a “post-storm” plan when it was available. “After every storm there is this moment with people saying, ‘We should do something,’ but then we operate in panic mode, not even following the plan we’ve got, even though we know what’s going on. We have a reactionary policy.”

    Mr. Samuelson said the Kalimnios plan of perpetual beach nourishment would not work. “We advocated for tax districts in the past. The problem is it’s too little too late.” He said that places like Breezy Point in Queens and Cape Hatteras proved that manufactured shorelines fail. “You can pump trillions of cubic yards onto the beach and spend yourself into a hole. I’m not saying take away the hotels, but something has to give here. What it is should be determined by open public process that addresses the needs of all stakeholders.”

    Mr. Samuelson said coastal communities need a post-storm recovery plan. “The shape of the coast is going to change dramatically. Sandy wasn’t even a Category 1 storm. How are we going to handle that change? We can be active in managing it, or hang on the vestigial notion that we can stand against the tide. A plan works best when all the stakeholders are at the table.”

    Mr. Kalimnios and Mr. Samuelson were among many who spoke about the overall issue of a post-storm recovery plan at a town board meeting Tuesday. A separate story on that meeting appears elsewhere in today’s paper.