Government

Expect delays on Route 114 between East Hampton and Sag Harbor from Monday through Friday, July 26, as New York State creates new turning lanes at Goodfriend Drive. 

A new zoning concept introduced at Tuesday's East Hampton Town Board work session would allow local businesses to house their workers in a multiunit development, with the employers owning the units and renting them to the employees.

In a press release Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the beginning of construction on the Sunrise Wind project, the largest offshore wind project in New York State, to be located 30 miles east of Montauk.

In a little over a year, East Hampton Town's Zoning Code Amendment Working Group has walked a tightrope between business interests, builders, real estate people, and others who fear over-restrictive zoning, and those who want the code strengthened to preserve what they say is a town that is quickly losing, or has already lost, its character. In the process of deciding what to change, compromise has begun to emerge.

John Avlon and Representative Nick LaLota, who are opponents in New York's First Congressional District race, called for unity and de-escalation of political hostilities in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.

Sartiano's, the ultra-upscale Italian restaurant owned by Scott Sartiano, owner of the private membership club Zero Bond in New York, is now taking reservations at the Hedges Inn for its new 80-seat summer pop-up. East Hampton Village officials are keeping a watchful eye on it, even appealing to the State Liquor Authority to question the establishment's liquor license.

Former President Donald J. Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, Pa., early Saturday evening. Shortly after the shooting, Representative Nick LaLota, a Republican who in January endorsed President Trump, and his opponent in the First Congressional District race, John Avlon, a Democrat, released statements.

Owners of four properties on Soundview Drive in Montauk found little support for their request to have the East Hampton Town Board grant a code change that would have made it easier for them to armor their properties with coastal erosion structures.

“For existing rooms in existing houses” was the common refrain at the Sag Harbor Village Board meeting Tuesday night, when a resolution allowing short-term room rentals in owner-occupied residences was unanimously approved.

Lt. Chelsea Tierney of the East Hampton Town police talked with the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee on the subject of e-bikes, which may replace gas-powered leaf blowers as the summer’s number-one irritants. There are rules for e-bikes, though many riders (and their parents) seem not to know them.

Faced with the daunting task of implementing the Wainscott hamlet plan adopted by the East Hampton Town Board in 2019, a trio of consultants advised the board to focus on the relatively easy stuff — things like burying the lines, installing sidewalks, and planting street trees — along Montauk Highway from West Gate Road to Hedges Lane.

The East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board granted a rare height variance to Bobby Flay, the celebrity chef and cookbook author, for a 7,405-square-foot barn he plans to reconstruct on his Stony Hill Road property in Amagansett.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has authorized East Hampton Town to remove, or "alienate," two acres of nature preserve from its parkland holdings with the hope that Suffolk County will further explore placing a roundabout at the East Hampton intersection where North Main Street meets Three Mile Harbor and Springs-Fireplace Roads. 

Members of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee grappled at their meeting Monday night with the fact that the long-planned dredging of the Montauk Inlet will in all likelihood be delayed still longer.

Fireworks came early Monday to a packed Sag Harbor work session on the seemingly mundane topic of local development corporations. The meeting featured yelling among members of the village board and yelling from the audience at the board. A resolution to disband a committee failed on a split vote before Mayor Thomas Gardella resigned from the same committee, allowing another trustee to take his place, and there was seemingly unending public comment — all questioning the need for a Sag Harbor Improvement Corporation.

Former Representative Tim Bishop has endorsed Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni in his bid to represent the First District in the New York State Assembly — Fred Thiele’s seat.

On Saturday, two days after President Biden and former President Trump met in Atlanta for the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, the president and Jill Biden were in East Hampton for a fund-raiser at the home of Barry and Lizanne Rosenstein, co-hosted by several high-powered business executives and celebrities, all the while hearing calls from prominent members of the Democratic Party to step aside and let someone else lead the ticket.

Legislation passed by East Hampton Village last month prohibits operations between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. at “late-night restaurant clubs,” which are defined as “a membership or subscription-based social, dining, and beverage venue, establishment, or association” on a membership, subscription, or dues-based system.

What was originally estimated to be a $2.4-million wastewater treatment project at the Montauk Shores Condominiums has swelled to $5.4 million, leading the community’s management to borrow money to make up the difference.

With his Tuesday primary victory in New York’s First Congressional District, John Avlon of Sag Harbor will now face first-term Republican Representative Nick LaLota in the November election.

Searching for a fix to prevent speeding vehicles from flying into the Hedges Inn at the 90-degree turn where Woods Lane meets East Hampton’s Main Street, the village board contemplated a large metal net at its meeting on Friday.

“There was a concerted effort to cut out all comment on this,” Aidan Corish, a Sag Harbor Village trustee, said of a barely averted vote to create a local development corporation at the June village board meeting. “It’s disturbing. We were one vote away from basically giving over financial borrowing authority to an unelected board in perpetuity.”

President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, are coming to town. An “afternoon reception” with the Bidens is to take place on Saturday in East Hampton, though its exact time and location is being kept under wraps for guests only.

John Avlon, who quickly rose to the top in a field of Democratic congressional contenders that numbered half a dozen just a few months ago, is the winner of Tuesday's primary in New York's First Congressional District, besting the second-time candidate Nancy Goroff.

On Friday, voters in the Village of Sagaponack rallied to steer their board of trustees in a new direction. Two challengers, David McMillan Jr. and Mark Landis, were elected, ousting the incumbents, Marilyn Clark and Lisa Duryea Thayer.

Long Pond in Bridgehampton, Poxabogue Pond in Sagaponack, Mill Pond in Water Mill, and Agawam Lake in Southampton were confirmed this week. It was also discovered earlier this month in Wainscott Pond.

A public hearing last week on Adam Potter’s planned development of a 64,429-square-foot, mixed-use building on Bridge Street in Sag Harbor Village brought out many critics.

At an East Hampton Town Board work session full of safety information for pedestrians, cyclists, and fire-pit lovers, the presentation that drew the most interest from the board was one on e-bikes, given by Lt. Chelsea Tierney of the East Hampton Town Police Department. “The biggest thing is that people just don’t know the laws,” she told the board.

In a rare case of the Town of East Hampton removing an illegally built accessory structure, it took out a wooden walkway that connected a house on South Emerson Avenue in Montauk to the beach. According to the director of code enforcement, it was built without a permit and crossed over an easement seeded with beach grass meant to help prevent erosion.

The Suffolk County Department of Public Works has three main objectives for the turnpike: improving pedestrian safety, repairing the pavement of the road itself, including asphalt resurfacing, and repairing and adding new drainage systems to improve the flooding conditions.