A 1940s-era fisherman’s shack that overlooks Fort Pond Bay in Montauk will remain standing after the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals approved a nearly 50-percent expansion of the structure last week, despite its proximity to wetlands.
The 889-square-foot house, owned by Christopher Poli and Laura Michaels, will gain 448 square feet. Because the addition is within 100 feet of wetlands, the project required a natural resources special permit.
When a structure in East Hampton is expanded by more than 50 percent, it’s considered a “substantial reconstruction,” a matter that was raised by the town’s Planning Department in its analysis of the application.
“To that, I say a 50-percent gross-floor-area addition to a very small house is a very small addition,” said Joel Halsey of Lighthouse Land Planning, speaking for the owners at the July 29 Z.B.A. meeting. “When all is said and done, this will be a modest 1,348-square-foot house.”
He told the board that while the cottage is not a historic structure, Mr. Poli “would like to keep this small bit of Montauk in Montauk, and not inside a landfill.”
However, the board took a hard line through the course of that meeting, questioning the cottage’s recent history, and asking Mr. Poli to relocate it farther from the wetlands.
“The Planning Department’s opinion to demolish the structure that the property owner wants to keep and build a much larger structure in a conforming location is unreasonable. It doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Halsey countered.
The owners offered to place 27 percent of the property into a scenic easement and revegetate a portion of the lawn and a wide path to the water. The Z.B.A. ultimately agreed that these measures were adequate mitigation.
“I think the application got off on the wrong foot because we had an approval and our approval was ignored,” said Ed Johann, a member of the Z.B.A., at the Aug. 5 meeting.
The little house has a big history in front of the Z.B.A.
In 2018, Mr. Poli received a stop-work order for making improvements without a building permit.
By 2019, the board had approved roof changes and unauthorized decking, with covenants prohibiting enclosure or a second floor.
Mr. Poli received approval again from the Z.B.A. in 2023 to move the small house 75 feet away from the wetlands, and more than double its size. However, despite assurances from their lawyer, Andy Hammer, that the cottage could withstand a relocation, an engineer later concluded the structure should not be moved.
The work was never completed and the approval expired.
Instead, in 2024, Mr. Poli added a 600-square-foot detached garage within the building envelope where the cottage was supposed to move (he required no approval from the Z.B.A. for the garage) with a one-bedroom accessory dwelling unit above it for the couple’s daughter.
“I have my doubts about the whole history of moving the house, not moving the house,” said Mr. Johann. “I would have been far more skeptical of this application if it hadn’t been for a couple of other factors.”
The fact that there was now an A.D.U. on the lot in a town that is struggling to find affordable housing, helped. The revegetation of a lawn, which will now be part of an easement, and the narrowing of a path to the water, which will be revegetated down to four feet in width, was an environmental benefit, he said.
“It would have been better to retreat and move this as the Planning Department suggested,” said Roy Dalene, the chairman of the Z.B.A. But he too was swayed by the addition of the A.D.U. where the owner’s daughter now lives.
He looked at it from the perspective of the natural resources special permit standards. “I think it does fit into the first standard of ours, ‘Does the benefit to the applicant outweigh the detriment to the town?’ And I do think this does fall into that.”
