A management plan for a new pocket park in Amagansett, featuring recreation and meeting spaces, had a public hearing before the East Hampton Town Board on Nov. 21, with scant participation from the community. Only one speaker showed up to offer thoughts on the proposal.
Most of the two-acre park, destined for a parcel of land adjacent to the municipal parking lot behind Main Street, was cleared and operated as a dairy farm, with cows and milk deliveries, from 1905 until 1959. Herb Field bought the land in 1964, and the town acquired it in April 2023, using the Community Preservation Fund. The park, now overgrown, is as yet unnamed; the Field family has asked that Herbert’s name not be used for it.
Its key features, according to the draft management plan, will be a handicap-accessible multiuse trail, a possible playground, and a concrete chess table. The plot will be mowed and invasive species removed. A split-rail fence will separate the parcel from adjacent farm fields. Access will be through the parking lot. Benches, picnic tables, a shade shelter and a “mounded sitting area” are all possibilities.
The sole speaker from the hamlet, Jaine Mehring, who is a member of the town’s zoning board of appeals, made clear she was speaking only for herself as she asked the board to reconsider the clearing plan.
“Nearly 100 percent of this C.P.F. parcel needs to be cleared, regraded, basically stripped of everything,” she said. However, having walked the property, she said she’d identified native species that should be preserved. Indeed, the town’s Department of Land Management had identified two species of oak, red maple, and black locust trees in the management plan, along with many invasive plants.
“Having trees as your source of shade and wildlife habitat is very consistent with the park use,” Ms. Mehring said. “We really need trees.” While she was happy to see invasives go, she suggested they be replaced, specifically with oak trees, a keystone species known to support many species of caterpillar. Planting trees, especially oaks, would support nesting birds by providing food for their young. In fact, birdwatching was listed as a permitted use of the park.
Ms. Mehring also took issue with an item of the management plan that noted the town’s right to add over half an acre more parking on the lot. She suggested the town might instead explore using the land for affordable housing. “What a great place to have some affordable housing,” she said. “Low-scale, right in the middle of a commercial district.”
