As a new East Hampton Village comprehensive plan nears completion, the public will have an opportunity to offer opinions at a meeting tomorrow evening at 6 in the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street.
For the most part, comprehensive plans are more vision statements than action plans. However, in one key aspect, the near-final draft is notably specific and deserves close attention.
Residents should take note and attend or participate online. This is especially important because Mayor Jerry Larsen, who is mounting an aggressive campaign to wrest the Democratic nomination from Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, is among the key figures in the updated village plan. The proposed changes and outcomes provide a glimpse at how Mr. Larsen would approach the town’s top job if he is successful in November.
One of the first things that jumps out on reading the most recent draft is how little attention it pays to regulations on residential property. Instead, the focus is overwhelmingly on increasing commercial growth. But little detail is provided for the existing commercial center along Main Street and Newtown Lane; the meat of the plan is what the authors refer to as the Gingerbread Commercial District. Read closely, the draft plan comes off largely as a massive redevelopment scheme for the roughly wedge-shaped area from Toilsome Lane widening out to include the properties between Railroad Avenue and Gingerbread Lanes and encompassing those on Lumber Lane. And what is envisioned would bring big changes to the village.
Relatively less space in the draft is given to other concerns. These include creating more parking, clustering houses in new subdivisions, a residential lawn watering schedule, protecting trees, exterior lighting, and composting — mostly boilerplate stuff. Somewhat more attention is paid to sewage treatment. A single treatment plant or smaller, on-site systems would allow for more restaurants and coffee shops, as well as residences, it says. At present, the addition of new housing units is kept in check by state and county health regulations. Sewage treatment’s most significant effect would be to make second-floor apartments feasible where they are all but precluded now. This is framed as providing work-force housing; how successful that might be is an open question and the track record for such things is not good.
Much of the substance of the draft comes back to the idea of “seeking a more-vibrant downtown,” but why and who asked for this remain unstated.
This far into the process it is odd that what is presented is a Pandora’s box of vague language concerning commercial development and the village center. “Update the table of uses to better guide appropriate development,” it says without mentioning much in the way of specifics. The draft plan’s authors sum it up this way: “As new types of uses emerge, a comprehensive update to the use table will be an important tool.” Okay, but what this would look like in practice is left unstated. The exception is the detail with which the newly defined Gingerbread Commercial District is presented.
It is obvious that big money is in play. When planners use the word “underutilized” it pays to listen closely. Current zoning for the Gingerbread-Railroad Avenue area is mostly classed as manufacturing, which allows for residential and light industrial uses such as warehouses, repair garages, service trades, and utility facilities. Instead, the area “could be redeveloped to attract local retailers to the market and provide opportunities for mixed-use development” — and provide a windfall for property owners. In an analysis cited in the draft, as much as 43 percent of the village’s new-construction square footage could be in this relatively small area. The village might even sweeten the pot by offering “density bonuses for provision of sewer infrastructure or other community benefits.”
Not discussed in the comprehensive plan draft is how the envisioned growth would be in the best interest of village residents and taxpayers themselves. For all its talk about new shops and apartments, how all that would benefit the people who live, work, and vote in the village is never made clear.