According to a prospectus mailed anonymously to The Star, a hulking and effectively three-story monstrosity of a restaurant, bar, and outdoor music space is being built in Montauk. Not so, if you ask the Planning Department. And therein lies another example of the town’s broken land-use management.
What East Hampton Town says it approved at 666 Montauk Highway and what it seems the property developers intend are two very different things. What the truth is and how this came to be should be a top priority. From what I have heard so far, the town is holding to a wait-and-see stance.
I’ve never been able to understand why Town Hall is so intent on crapping on Montauk’s actual residents. I can’t imagine that the people who actually live there and pay taxes there really want yet another overblown, loud party palace anywhere, even downtown.
It all started with the Surf Lodge, of course.
Once the modest Lakeside Inn, the property on Fort Pond in Montauk changed hands in about 2008, opening around Memorial Day that year. By July 4, what its designer described as “elegant, clean, and comfortable” and “connecting with the spirit of Montauk and the surf culture” had already pissed off a lot of people. A hand-lettered sign complaining about the Surf Lodge appeared briefly alongside Route 27. It was stolen after just a few days; suspicion fell on the Surf Lodge management. Town officials took a hands-off approach and waited until after Labor Day to drop a handful of zoning code violation citations on its ownership.
Unbelievably, the kid-gloves treatment of the Surf Lodge almost 20 years ago is playing out again, with the town saying that it will wait to see if the new restaurant operates beyond what planners approved. How did that work out at the old Lakeside Inn?
“Build it and they will cave,” still seems the best strategy for those seeking to slip around pesky restrictions in East Hampton’s town code. Maybe, just for once, the town should apply the same level of scrutiny to these mega-projects as it does to some homeowner’s desire to add a small deck or place a hot tub in the backyard.