Defies School: Offers $60,000 More For Lot

A neighbor of the Amagansett School wants to buy a vacant lot the school is eyeing for future expansion, "just to keep it empty," and is willing to pay far more, he said on Monday, than the price agreed to by the school.

The district had envisioned a bus turnaround and a parking lot on the property, at least initially. The neighbor, Murray Smith of Meeting House Lane, told the school's long-range planning committee he had no objections to the district's using a portion of the land for the bus loop, and would be willing to grant the school an easement for that purpose.

A parking lot, however, would not be acceptable, said Mr. Smith, whose house is next to the vacant tract.

Option To Buy

The district has an option, expiring in late December, to purchase the property for $165,000 from the heirs of the late State Senator MacNeil Mitchell, contingent upon taxpayer approval. A referendum is expected to be held later this fall.

The Mitchell family has promised to sell him the land if the district purchase falls through, Mr. Smith said. He offered $225,000, he said.

"I just want to keep the residential area - an area which has been considered as an historic area - residential, without a yellow bus route," the neighbor said. A parking lot will bring traffic and noise, he said, as well as affect the aesthetics of the lane.

Opposition

The school's plan has raised concerns not only from neighbors but also from the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee.

"We are very opposed to having a parking lot there," Sylvia Overby, a representative of the group, told committee members Monday.

A parking lot, she said, even gated, as proposed, would eventually be discovered and used by beachgoers and, perhaps, Amagansett Farmers Market customers.

"I don't want to feel that I'm living in an area where we pave everything because our cars are more important to us than the people who live here," said Ms. Overby.

Bus Loop

Mr. Smith had gone to a board meeting on Sept. 2 to express his dismay. He said then he had been trying to buy the property for a year and a half.

"What if I bought it and gave you an easement so you could put a loop in there, so we don't have buses going out onto a residential street?" he asked.

Mr. Smith attended the meeting with his wife, Susan, and a friend, Mike Raffel, who lives on the Smith property and who offered committee members a rough sketch showing how a bus loop could be fit into space toward the rear of the school. An existing handball wall, fuel tank, and two small storage buildings would have to be moved.

The Smiths, said Mr. Raffel, were already affected by noise from nighttime and weekend use of the school's basketball and racquetball courts, as well as occasional vandalism.

Future Needs

Committee members agreed to review the plan, while insisting that the district should own the property itself. What it might be needed for in the future - for example, a new library, a basketball court, more classrooms - is the real question.

"I think the school has to control its own destiny at this point," said Rick Slater, a School Board member and co-chair of the committee.

"I think it's inexcusable for us not to control that property even if we don't do a thing with it for 10 years," said Jon Edelbaum, another committee member. He noted the steady growth rate of the district, the lack of adjoining open space, and the opportunity to obtain the vacant property at a "reasonable" cost.

Phase Three

"You don't understand," said Mr. Smith, a special events coordinator who ran the Vuitton Classic Car festival that was scheduled to be held in Sag Harbor last year until protests canceled it. "I'm not in this for the money. . . . I live here and I love it. You're wrecking my environment."

The property purchase is considered phase three of a five-phase long-range plan, which includes building an addition onto the school for classes. Two modular classrooms accommodate the overflow right now.

"It's not as if I'm being anti-school," said Mr. Smith yesterday. "I'd like to work this out. But they're not prepared at the moment to give any guarantees, therefore I have to oppose it."

He added that if he owned the lot, he would give the district the right of first refusal if he ever sold it.

Traffic Problems

In a six-page letter sent to the School Board last week, Mr. Smith offered to help the school achieve such goals as building a library. But, he said, in the case of a "car park or bus depot . . . it will be all of our duties to try to protect ourselves from such an insensitive intrusion on our lives."

The next meeting of the committee, which is open to the public, will be at 9 a.m. on Monday at the school's Miankoma Lane house.