Split Over Upzoning

Does East Hampton Town have too much land zoned for commercial-industrial use - and how much does it need? The Town Board will have to answer those questions before deciding whether to follow through on the proposed upzoning of 140 parcels, including the shift of about 420 acres from commercial-industrial to residential zoning.

The town now has roughly 1,400 acres of developed and vacant land zoned for commercial-industrial use, about 1,030 of it in Wainscott. That is too much, according to some town officials and the Long Island Regional Planning Board. Others, such as the East Hampton Business Alliance and some targeted property owners, believe the loss of 420 acres of C-I land would not leave enough of it.

Mixed Response

At Friday's public hearing, the response was mixed. Eleven of the roughly 25 property owners and lawyers who spoke favored the townwide upzoning, though a few said the list of properties didn't go far enough.

The remainder criticized the list, drawn from the open space plan adopted by the Town Board a year ago. Most vehement were Donald Ferriss, whose family owns a 17-acre parcel on Accabonac Highway in Springs that is targeted to go from one to two-acre residential zoning, and three members of the Talmage family, whose 5.8-acre commercial lot on the railroad tracks in Wainscott would be upzoned to five-acre residential.

"Environmental Mugging"

Mr. Ferriss accused the town of "an environmental mugging" and "a sham to smokescreen the targeting of a handful of property owners." He said the proposed upzoning did not take into account that some properties could decrease in value and that their owners may not be able to afford the loss, an economic policy he likened to "Alan Greenspan on crack."

Noting that his family has owned that parcel for 43 years and has made no move in that time to develop it, he accused the town of trying to "confiscate" half. In a passionate and emphatic plea, he urged the Town Board to be "objective and responsive to a minority of its citizens who are under attack."

In Favor Of Upzoning

With the opposite view, Bill Fleming, an East Hampton attorney who made note of "all the high-priced legal talent in the room," said his clients - Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder and their daughters, Aerin and Jane, and Francis Fleetwood - favored the idea.

The Lauders, heirs to a cosmetics fortune, own 30 acres in five lots between Beach Lane and Wainscott Pond. Mr. Fleming said they like the idea of their land being taken into an agricultural district, believing it would increase in value.

Mr. Fleetwood, an architect who owns nearly 34 acres at Abram's Landing Road and Ocean View Lane in Amagansett, said in a statement read by his lawyer that he, too, thought the upzoning "made sense." His land would go from two to three-acre residential.

Talmages Protest

David and Jane Talmage own D.L. Talmage Inc., a contracting firm, with their son, Steve Talmage. They said they bought their commercial lot in 1983 as a place to someday expand the business, noting the lot is between the Town Airport and the railroad tracks, where "surely its best use is commercial-industrial," asserted the elder Mr. Talmage.

Mrs. Talmage criticized Supervisor Cathy Lester, quoted in The Star two weeks ago saying the upzoning would put targeted properties into more appropriate zones. "Maybe her tongue got caught up in the rhetoric," said Mrs. Talmage.

She went on to suggest the town would be better off without the Planning Department, which wrote the open space plan approved last year by the board. The department was abolished for a short time a decade ago by a Republican-controlled board, "and the town didn't go to ruin," she asserted.

Driving Prices Up

Her husband said the price of commercial land in East Hampton was too high "for a young person who wanted to stay in the area," and reducing its availability would only drive prices up.

Supervisor Lester took issue with a mailing from the East Hampton Business Alliance to its members, which claimed the upzoning of commercial-industrial land would leave "virtually no other place for businesses to relocate."

Studies by the Long Island Regional Planning Board said East Hampton Town, and Wainscott in particular, had a disproportionate amount of vacant commercial land compared with other towns, she said.

1,000 Acres Left

Supervisor Lester and Lisa Liquori, the town planning director, asserted that the upzonings would still leave about 1,000 acres of C-I property, including 642 in Wainscott, 251 in East Hampton, and 82 in Montauk.

"The Long Island Regional Planning Board said concerns about groundwater protection exist everywhere but in Hither Woods, and towns should limit commercial-industrial zoning to areas that are already improved. . . . The upzonings would still leave many other opportunities," said Ms. Lester.

She and Ms. Liquori also noted the Wainscott properties were all inside a water recharge district, created to protect the groundwater aquifer beneath it, and that commercial development could pose more of a danger to the aquifer than houses.

Mistakenly Included

But, 1,000 acres was "not enough to plan for future generations," said Sherry Wolfe, the Business Alliance executive director.

Ms. Wolfe said the alliance agreed with the Planning Board members who suggested last week the town should designate one acre of land as commercial-industrial for every acre it upzones to residential.

Pat Mansir, the Planning Board's chairwoman, Henry Clifford, a former Planning Board member, and Robert DeLuca, president of Group for the South Fork, agreed on one point, that the land along the railroad tracks in Wainscott was best suited for commercial development.

Ms. Mansir said it had been "a mistake" to include that neighborhood in the water recharge district, and a disappearing middle class was in need of affordable land for small business. She also questioned Ms. Liquori's statement that about 1,000 acres of commercial land would be left in Wainscott; that included 600 acres at the Town Airport not available for development, she said.

Not Good For Workshops

Ms. Liquori asserted that the bulk of the commercial land proposed to be upzoned was in large, as-yet undivided parcels, and as such "are not really available to the local businessman." A good part of the rest did not abut a public road, likewise making it unattractive for workshops.

"We could see a lot of applications in this area that do not meet the goal of affordable workspaces and do not protect the groundwater," she said.

Stuart Berman, agent for the owners of the largest block of land proposed to be upzoned, said he too thought the town had taken too broad a brush to the commercial district in Wainscott. His clients - the estate of Imre Rosenthal, Richard Brockman and his mother, Elizabeth Brockman, and the estate of Jolie Hammer - own 321 acres between north Wainscott and Northwest Woods. Of that, 203 acres would go from commercial to residential.

"Zoning is not the way to protect groundwater," asserted Mr. Berman.

While Mr. DeLuca of the Group for the South Fork agreed the board should rethink its plan for north Wainscott, he said that "everything north of the power lines should be preserved" and that he supported upzoning in general as a means to control development.

Michael Bottini, a planner for the Group and a recent appointee to the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee, also said he strongly favored the upzonings. But in Springs, Mr. Bottini said, the properties on the list did not include some that, if upzoned, would help maintain what is left of the hamlet's rural character.

In the same vein, he urged the Town Trustees to consider designating as parkland a large swath of land they own between the houses at Lazy Point and Napeague State Park to the south. It is now zoned for houses.

Sag Harbor Snubbed?

Mr. Bottini went on to say that there may be still too many half-acre vacant lots left in Springs and Montauk, where the drinking water supply is problematic. The county, he noted, requires at least one-acre zoning in areas where there is no public water.

Carol Morrison and Dorothy Disken, both members of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, also stressed Montauk's water problem, each asserting that upzoning would lower density, which would alleviate "the significant burden on the aquifers" there, as Ms. Disken put it.

Peter Davies, chairman of the Coalition of Neighbors for the Preservation of Sag Harbor, and representatives of several property owners' associations that are members of CONPOSH, addressed the board on a more general theme, asserting that Sag Harbor and its environs were left out of the drafting of the open space plan.

Too Pricy For Foxes

They were concerned with protecting groundwater, controlling traffic, preserving a "green buffer" around Sag Harbor, and avoiding the cre ation of a "village-opolis" be tween that village and East Hampton, they said.

On a lighter note, Tom MacNiven, a real estate broker and chairman of the Town Open Space Advisory Committee, said he spoke only for himself, the red fox he saw every day on a run through north Wainscott, and her three cubs. Mr. MacNiven said the fox built her den on commercially zoned land without benefit of a permit, but she and her cubs would have to move because they couldn't afford the going rates - $250,000 for vacant commercial land, $450,000 for a workshop.

He noted the Town Industrial Park nearby contained a church, a drug rehab center, a school, a private tennis club, a television studio, and not much in the way of true commercial activity. The town needed "some new tools" for creating commercial centers and encouraging the development of affordable shops, he said.

Before deciding whether to follow through on the 140 separate proposals, Mr. MacNiven urged the town to set new goals and find new ways of meeting them.