It walks like a duck. It swims like a duck. It quacks like a duck. But no duck here, promise.
It's Este, a quiet little rule-abiding 39-seater restaurant, with a curious maximum occupancy of 450 or so, and lots of bathrooms (15), currently under construction just past the Montauk I.G.A.
The restaurant received approval from the East Hampton Town Planning Board in November, but a contingent of Montauk residents emailed that board this week requesting a stop-work order be issued after new documents came to light including investor financial models that they say reveal "material discrepancies between what was represented to the planning board and what is being designed."
Marley Dominquez, a managing partner at Enduring Hospitality Group, which also owns the adjacent hotel, Offshore Montauk, was in front of the board last week to explain the differences.
It all began after an even earlier investment packet was leaked to The Star, leading to an April 2 article.
Mr. Dominguez tried to discredit the packet, which he took responsibility for, as just something he made "in less than an hour" for a friend searching for a wedding venue. He later repurposed it as an investor packet and he said it was leaked to the paper by a competitor.
It showed plans that differed starkly from those approved by the planning board. Differences included a rooftop deck boasting room for 250 and a "large D.J. venue" that would be "similar to the Surf Lodge," a place Mr. Dominguez told the board he emulated.
"One of my favorite venues in the world 15 years ago was the Surf Lodge," he said. "You walked in, it was 50 to 75 people, super casual, great like low-key background music, and that was it. I would like to bring something like that back, where it's not shoulder-to-shoulder, where it's a more relaxed environment."
The April 2 article brought residents with questions to the next Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. New information shared with The Star claims that the committee's chairwoman, Diane Hausman, past owner of the former Sands Motel (now Offshore Montauk), retains an interest in the venture in the form of common shares.
The same documents name the five-member board of Enduring Hospitality: Sieva Kozinsky, Xavier Helgesen, Mr. Dominguez, Craig Burns, and Shaun Gilbert.
In early April, Tina Vavilis LaGarenne, the town's planning director, started pulling files. She found discrepancies between what the planning board approved, the building permit, and the restaurant's application to the New York State Liquor Authority.
More bathrooms. More seating. More couches.
The application to the S.L.A. identified Este as a restaurant with a D.J., live music, dancing, third-party promoters, and security personnel on hand.
Mr. Dominguez said the application was presented that way to cover special events, of which he expected "99 percent" to be weddings despite the mention of "brand buyouts" in his investor packet.
"The number of bathrooms now provided" — the board approved 11, Enduring upped them to 15 — "is consistent with a bar use and not a restaurant use," Ms. Vavilis LaGarenne explained to the board.
Meanwhile, Este's representatives have maintained they would have a maximum of seven employees. There are only 20 parking spaces, leaving only 13 for patrons. The planning director is concerned any more activity would quickly overwhelm the lot's parking capacity.
"I questioned that in the original application," said Louis Cortese, a planning board member. "How could they operate this restaurant with only seven people."
Mr. Dominguez explained there would be ordering kiosks. "On the weekends in the summer, we have maybe three staff on site," he said. "It's more of a light touch." All three floors wouldn't be open at once. The middle floor could be omakase style, but he said the details hadn't been worked out yet.
"Nothing has changed in terms of the way we intend to operate the property," he assured the board, though he admitted he hadn't spent much time on the interior design of the restaurant (seats that look like restaurant seats on the building permit "were meant to be little lounge seats" in the restaurant's attempt to "extend the season") and overlooked how adding bathrooms might change the sanitary calculations.
"Frankly, I didn't understand any ramifications of it at all," he said. "I don't understand that calculation. I never even looked at it in my life."
"My understanding was that you've been developing restaurants and the like for resorts for a little while," said Jennifer Fowkes, the vice chairwoman of the board.
"Developing, yes. Restaurants, not really," Mr. Dominguez said.
"So, you didn't have any knowledge of the wastewater calculations or anything like that, especially in a place like Montauk?" she asked skeptically. "Okay."
Mr. Dominguez also indicated surprise when Bruce Siska, a planning board member, asked Ms. Vavilis LaGarenne if the town fire marshal had determined a maximum occupancy yet.
"Not formally," she said. "But I do have an estimate. It's like 450. It's significant."
"I'm surprised by that number, to be honest with you," said Mr. Dominguez.
Yet the investor packet he created boasted room for 455.
"You can still let 250 people in," Mr. Cortese said. "They could be there listening to music, drinking, not there for dinner, and it would be more valuable to you because you'd be making more money doing that than serving two, three, or four seatings at the restaurant per day, per night."
"I don't think it would be more valuable to me, honestly," Mr. Dominguez said. He argued the adjacent hotel, also owned by his investor group, is worth far more than the restaurant. "I wouldn't want to do anything that risks the guest experience on that property."
"The Surf Lodge is rooms too, but okay," said Ed Krug, the chairman of the board.
"This has caused a firestorm of comments on social media," he continued. "It's all over the place. People in Montauk are very sensitive to this after having a lot of bad experiences. People say they're going to do one thing and do another."
"We are bound to protect the people who live in the hamlets of East Hampton Town," he added. "I would like to see this revert to the original plan and we'd like to add conditions of approval that specify all the stuff that we've been talking about."
Mr. Krug explained that he had dined at many 40-seat restaurants with two all-gender bathrooms to serve everybody. He feared when Este was sold, someone might see it as an opportunity to open a club.
"I thought if we operated as a club we would be shut down," Mr. Dominguez said. "The thought of that never crossed my mind."
"We received information from different sources," Mr. Cortese said. "The Star article, the S.L.A. application, the building permit. All of that information wasn't speculation or third-party derived. That was information that you created. And all of that info points to an establishment that is more akin to a Studio 54 than a modest Nick and Toni's restaurant." He wanted to know what assurances Mr. Dominguez could give the board.
Mr. Dominguez's lawyer, Richard Whelan, stepped in with an answer. "Let the place operate," he said. The angst, he said, was coming from the materials, which he minimized as "fluff."
The Planning Department recommended Mr. Dominguez modify his application, provide a noise analysis of music emanating from the roof deck and a generator that wasn't on the approved plans, detail the hours of each floor, and work with the Planning Department to develop new conditions that would solidify its use as a restaurant.
"We have a pathway to establishing that it's not a nightclub," Mr. Krug said. "Come up with conditions so that the people in this town understand there is no possibility for this to become anything other than what you first purported it was going to be."
After the modifications are received and the conditions reviewed, it would be up to the planning board whether another public hearing would be held.
