One year after the East Hampton Town Board held a public hearing on a management plan for a proposed pocket park adjacent to Amagansett’s municipal parking lot, the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee considered plans for the two-acre site last week, as did the town’s nature preserve committee.
The land was a dairy farm from 1905 to 1959. Herb Field bought the land in 1964, and the town acquired it in 2016, most of the funding coming from the community preservation fund.
At the citizens advisory committee’s Dec. 8 meeting, Rona Klopman, the chairwoman, read a November letter to The Star in which the writer, Mia Plitt, noted an abundance of public playgrounds, none of them part of a school, on a recent trip to the Boston area. “It really struck me how few comparable public playgrounds we have here,” Ms. Plitt wrote. “Many of the best playgrounds in our town are located on school grounds, which means they’re off limits to the public during school hours — when many parents of young children are looking for somewhere to go. . . . I hope our town can prioritize creating or upgrading public playgrounds that are open to all residents, every day of the week.”
Michael Jordan, co-chairman of the nature preserve committee, told the citizens committee that, while plans call for a portion of the property to be set aside for additional parking, “what we’re looking at here would be to have an area where there would be playground equipment,” some of it handicapped-accessible, as would be a trail around the property. Some kind of shelter would also be constructed, he said. “The plan would be planting some trees, but also, it would be a while before any trees are grown up, so a shelter would be helpful in the summer to get into some shade.”
Councilman David Lys, the town board’s liaison to the nature preserve committee, said a first phase toward establishing the park and additional parking would be to accept a proposal for engineering services. That would inform as to “what we can do as far as parking,” including Americans With Disabilities Act-compliant access and a connection to the existing municipal parking lot, and possibly additional lighting.
“Right now, the area is overgrown, a large amount of trees are on there,” Mr. Lys said. “And then visualize what you want to see there as a playground that would be welcoming to all.”
Tom Field, son of the late Herb Field, reiterated a request that there be an eight-foot fence on the property line between the proposed playground and his property. “I just don’t want people coming over there into my yard just to pick up a ball or something like that.” Also, “it would give me some privacy because that terrain shoots uphill, and I have absolutely no privacy with a six-foot fence.” An eight-foot fence is written into the management plan, Mr. Lys said.
Jaine Mehring asked that additional parking not be created until the need has been established, citing the recent expansion of the municipal lot. “We also had a little conversation about, would it be viable even just to put three small affordable dwelling units in that municipal space,” she said. Also, while she supports the construction of a playground, “there are also some mature and valuable trees, and it would be nice before you go clear-cutting it to think about where that playground is going to be. It would be nice to have some mature trees that exist, perhaps providing some shade around the area.”
“That’s also discussed in the management plan,” Mr. Lys said of the trees.
The plan was briefly discussed at the nature preserve committee’s meeting last Thursday, Mr. Jordan said. “It’ll be moving forward,” he said. “It’s just a question of an engineering study. We should be able to start with that relatively soon.”
A handicapped-accessible trail “would probably mean an asphalt trail,” he said. “I don’t think anyone balked at that.”
Ahead of these actions, though, “we may need to survey it to get exactly where the property line is from the owner behind, so we know exactly where the town property ends.”
