What’s on the horizon for Montauk in 2023? The December meeting of the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee laid out some markers for what residents of the hamlet might expect in the new year.
Councilman David Lys was on hand as the East Hampton Town Board’s liaison, and laid out some developments, along with some unresolved issues that continue to pop up at the C.A.C. meetings.
The hamlet is dealing with a couple of meta-unresolved issues, including a hotly debated proposed wastewater treatment plant in Hither Woods, but here are a few of the more prosaic matters of concern.
First, the unresolved issues: The advisory committee has been discussing new stop signs or other safety measures for the intersection of Eton Street and Emerson Avenue — the corner where the Hero Beach Club greets eastbound cars with a smiley face. That corner, which is a beach access point for both cars and pedestrians, is often covered in sand blown off the beach, and the question is, how to slow down traffic at the spot to make it safer for beach-bound hotel guests and others.
Since no one knows how many accidents have actually happened there, or how serious they were, any talk of installing stop signs, mirrors, or pedestrian rights of way has been tabled until the town board has some data to look at.
Also unresolved is what to do about the I.G.A. parking lot. Part of it is not a parking lot at all, but a one-way street with parking spots carved out on each side — a source of ongoing confusion for tourists. Mr. Lys offered the C.A.C. a number of options to solve a chronic problem: People driving the wrong way on the one-way street to get from the parking lot back to Main Street.
That discussion has also been tabled until the new year, following Mr. Lys’s lengthy presentation of various options, among them new “angled” parking spots.
Now for matters that have been settled: Montauk will be the first place in East Hampton Town to boast pickleball courts, two of them. And, much to the cautiously held delight of prickly tennis players who have been grumbling about the encroachment of the very popular game on their courts — fearing that two of the public courts would be commandeered by pickleball — they will instead be first come first served, with no reservations. (A tennis court can accommodate both games.)
Along with pickleball, the hamlet will get a new modular pissoir come May, in the dock area, replacing the West Lake bathroom, which is now closed.
Two road-improvement projects are also in the works, at the Rough Riders intersection near the Long Island Railroad Station, and at the Second House roundabout along Industrial Road.
The former is on schedule for spring; the latter is awaiting a final engineering plan that’s dependent on a State Department of Environmental Conservation permit. Mr. Lys said it would likely arrive in time for a solution before summer.
