I drove by the site the following day; construction was already underway on what will be a blocky, two-story, white monolith on what had been a vacant lot alongside Montauk Highway just east of the I.G.A. and Balsam Farms shop. Chris Gangemi on our reporting staff checked with a source in town government who said the ambitious restaurant addition had been given the needed permits without any big issues blocking the way.
Pulling back from this restaurant and the looming overdevelopment of Montauk in general, East Hampton’s rapidly changing landscape could be the story of the decade.
Without any meaningful increase in road capacity, wastewater policy, or other necessary infrastructure, as well as land-use regulations, East Hampton is just seeing the start of a massive building boom that threatens to overwhelm its hard-won sense of place. As my late mother used to point out, the battle for preservation of our way of life is now fought on individual pieces of land.
On my way out to Montauk from Lazy Point I passed a spot on Napeague Meadow Road where a work crew is grinding pitch pines cut down in the effort to contain the southern pine beetle’s devastation. Where the trees had already been removed, the contours of long-hidden low dunes emerged.
Changes are moving quickly beyond the pine forest. Deer have eliminated the woodland understory. A receding natural shoreline is being replaced with expensive mountains of trucked-in sand. Modest commercial buildings are being slicked up and made bigger. Small houses on small lots are knocked down and replaced with the maximum allowed. The darkness of the sky at night is steadily diminished.
A longstanding tension exists between the desires of the people who live here and those for whom East Hampton is a playing field on which the prizes are monetary gain and self-aggrandizement. At this point, who will win in the end is anyone’s guess.