The gas ball lot. Adam Potter’s parking lot. According to Google, the Bridge Street Gravel Lot.
Whatever you call the parking area at the corner of Bridge Street and Long Island Avenue in Sag Harbor Village, it’s closed. There is no timeline for when it will reopen. That means approximately 93 parking spots have been suddenly removed from the village in the height of the summer season.
The closure was explained in a letter last week from Alex Kriegsman, who is representing Mr. Potter’s 11 Bridge Street L.L.C., which is the tenant leasing the lot from National Grid. The village, in turn, is the subtenant of the property, having signed a three-year lease with Mr. Potter in March 2024 and paying $52,500 a year to the developer to keep it open to the public.
And Mr. Potter has an application before the village’s planning board for a long-controversial project to build a housing development adjacent to the lot.
“It has come to our attention that despite our client’s request, the village has failed to perform the initial maintenance required by the sublease agreement,” Mr. Kriegsman wrote. “It has also come to our attention that dangerous conditions are existing on the premises, including irregular and dangerous concrete forms and lack of adequate lighting.”
“I don’t know what the end game is,” Mayor Tom Gardella said last week. He said he hoped the lot would be open by the end of the month. “We didn’t put the chain on the lot. We’re working with counsel to get it reopened.”
“The village rejects your claim that maintenance is required at this time,” Liz Vail, the village attorney, said in reply to Mr. Kriegsman, adding that if work were conducted, it would need to go to bid.
“You are prohibited by law from engaging private firms outside of this process without adhering to the requisite legal restrictions municipalities must comply with in hiring and paying such parties,” she wrote. “Therefore, the village shall not indemnify National Grid and/or 11 Bridge Street, L.L.C., for work conducted on site illegally and clearly outside of the parameters of the lease agreement. The village is prohibited from paying for any work conducted outside of these provisions of law and cannot reimburse you for any bills incurred.”
Adding another potential delay for the reopening of the lot, Ms. Vail said that prior notice of any work would need to be given to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. As a Superfund site, the lot is under a restrictive site management plan.
“You are hereby on notice that you must open the parking lot immediately and return possession to the village,” she concluded.
A week after she sent her email, the lot was still closed, with the first weekend of August and its crowds looming.
“As I explained to you on our phone call, we were hoping to have had the maintenance completed in short order,” was Mr. Kriegsman’s response to Ms. Vail on Monday. “And it might have been finished by today. But now that you are asserting that maintenance is prohibited without D.E.C. approval, we will need to examine that and determine whether we agree before proceeding.”
