East Hampton Town’s attorney, Jake Turner, has concluded that a complaint by neighbors of 370 and 372 Further Lane in Amagansett, where the properties’ new owners have planted a hedge and trees in an easement, is without merit as the plantings do not violate easements created in 1989 and respected until recently.
Six neighbors who own adjacent and nearby properties filed a “hybrid public nuisance action and petition” against the town and the properties’ new owners last summer, following the planting of a hedge that has grown “three rows deep,” according to their complaint.
The two parcels, purchased together last winter for $70 million in one of the largest real estate transactions of the year, are encumbered by four separate easements, including scenic and conservation easements, that were created when the parcels were first developed by Brian and Judith Little.
The lawsuit also refers to “unauthorized structures” that have been added to the easement, including an irrigation system, white stone markers along the property lines, some in duneland, and tall poles strung with ropes. The neighbors also allege that native soils were removed from an agricultural overlay district and new “fertilized soil” introduced. The neighbors hope to declare the plantings a public nuisance and impose punitive damages on the neighbors, their identities hidden by two limited liability companies, Further Lane EH L.L.C. and Further Lane Barn L.L.C.
“Planting a row of trees along the east border has diminished 25 percent of the value of my property,” one neighbor, Jonathan Sobel, wrote to the new owners. “Having an open farm field view along a border in East Hampton is even less available than the coveted ocean views.”
The owners’ plantings have “completely obliterated and enshrouded what was once the public’s scenic view of many acres of open farm fields from Further Lane in Amagansett to the Atlantic Ocean’s dunes,” the lawsuit reads. The neighbors fault the town and the planning board, which created the easements, for “official lassitude” in “failing to enforce applicable easements and law as well as protect and restore the public’s scenic view in perpetuity.”
At the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting on Monday, Councilman Tom Flight, the town board’s liaison to the committee, read a memo from Mr. Turner. The town investigated and researched the complaints, and regulatory staff determined that “violations did not exist,” Mr. Flight read. The town attorney’s office sought entry to the property to investigate firsthand but was denied, he said.
There is nothing in the filed easements that “expressly prohibits the plantings in question or the installation of an irrigation system, tall poles, or white stone markers complained about,” Mr. Flight read.
A conservation easement was entered into as a condition of zoning board of appeals approval to protect a portion of the property seaward of the residence from development, according to the memo. A revegetation plan was recently submitted and approved
by the Natural Resources Department, and the owners are in compliance, Mr. Flight read.
Agricultural easements “specifically allow agricultural operations including planting of trees and irrigation,” according to the memo, as well as “buildings and structures reasonably necessary for operations” being conducted on the premises. After consultation with the Building Department, “there are no records or knowledge of a property owner ever having to get a building permit or site plan approval for an irrigation system.”
Based on the language of the easements entered into by the Littles and the town, the memo concludes, “there are no prohibitions of the plantings or structures being complained about.”
Some of those attending the citizens advisory committee meeting were puzzled by the memo, which they said directly contradicts the language of the easements. “I’ll bring it back to them,” Mr. Flight said of their concerns, “but that’s what the attorney’s office, Natural Resources Department, and the Planning Department came back with.”
WITH REPORTING BY CHRISTOPHER GANGEMI
