A managing partner in the group that owns the Offshore Montauk hotel and the Este restaurant that is under construction may have assuaged some concerns when he addressed the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee this week, but skepticism clearly lingered among a segment of the large crowd that gathered at the Montauk Library on Monday.
Marley Dominguez, a managing partner at Enduring Hospitality Group, reiterated previous comments that an investment packet obtained by The Star in March was a hastily-composed document filled with obsolete information that had been prepared for a would-be investor and included the caveat that “a lot of this is inaccurate and just stuff I put together really, really quick.” The would-be investor, he said, never contacted him again, and Mr. Dominguez later learned that “he’s a very large investor in a competing property.”
Further, an online petition calling for revocation of all approvals and permits for Este is “significantly inaccurate in most ways,” he said, “where a pretty simple Google search, or just looking at the plans, would clarify that that information is just incorrect.”
“Montauk’s groundwater and our community are at risk,” the petition at change.org begins. “We, the people, started this petition asking the East Hampton Town Planning Board to stop this project until we get real answers — full environmental and traffic studies, honest disclosure of who actually owns this project, and a real explanation for how a venue can claim a 450-person public assembly with only 39 seats and 12 parking spaces approved. This doesn’t add up. Is this a restaurant or a nightclub?" The petition had 513 signatures as of Tuesday night.
With an attorney, Richard Whalen, also speaking on his behalf, Mr. Dominguez insisted that the hotel is "the core of our investment and I don't want loud music affecting our guests that are right next door” that the restaurant’s second level would be closed for most of the day and thus many of the establishment’s toilets inaccessible -- the number of toilets provoking suspicion that ownership plans to accommodate many more patrons than the restaurant's 39 seats would imply -- and that “I don't think the ‘pack people in as much as you possibly can’ is a sustainable long-term business model.”
The petition, Mr. Whalen said, “states that the applicant is seeking a certificate of occupancy for a 450-person-occupancy space. To start with, C. of O.’s do not list occupancy. Occupancy limits are set by the fire marshal based on the formula in the state fire code. . . . No one knows until it's done, until the furniture's there, and the fire marshal comes and they actually do measurements.”
Second, he said, the petition cites 12 parking spaces when the actual number is 20, which complies with East Hampton Town Code. "They're not going to run a nightclub," Mr. Whalen said. “If they were to run a nightclub, I’m sure the town will prosecute them and shut them down. It’s a restaurant.”
The petition, Mr. Whalen noted, is also critical of Diane Hausman, the citizens committee's chairwoman “who sold the Sands Motel” now Offshore Montauk -— “to the development entity." It states that Ms. Hausman "is not a disinterested former owner. She holds a structured financial stake — a seller note in equity form — with a direct material interest in this project’s approval and completion.” One attendee of Monday's meeting called for her resignation, citing "a conflict of interest that she did not disclose" at a prior meeting.”
Ms. Hausman, Mr. Whalen said, “is not a municipal employee. She is not paid by the town. . . . Being the chair of the C.A.C. doesn't count,” so there is no required disclosure of ownership interest. Ms. Hausman did not attend Monday’s meeting.
Mr. Dominguez told the gathering that the plan for the restaurant's second floor is "Omakase style, more intimate seating, just for dinner only. . . . At almost no point will all three floors" -- the third being the rooftop -- "be open."
As for the notion that he plans a Surf Lodge-type venue, bringing to mind the crowds that have caused no small amount of irritation among the hamlet's year-round residents, Mr. Dominguez repeated remarks made to the planning board on May 20. "That was taken out of context," he said of the sentiment expressed in the investment packet. Fifteen years ago, "when I would go to Surf Lodge, there were 50 people there. It was low-key. It was very good music, beautiful sunsets. That's what I like."
"But that started with 50 people," one man said, "and look what it is now. You're starting at 39 seats."
"That's not of interest to me," Mr. Dominguez said of the explosive growth in popularity of the Surf Lodge. There would "absolutely not" be live music daily, he said, though "we will have some live music at certain times," citing the recent Montauk Music Festival, which "every restaurant in town" hosted in some form.
The project is fully permitted, Mr. Whalen said, including by the planning board, the Building Department, the Suffolk County Health Department, and the State Department of Transportation, which had to approve a change to the driveway's configuration.
An innovative/alternative septic system approved by the Health Department is being installed, Mr. Whalen said in response to concerns expressed about the property's impact on downtown Montauk's infrastructure and water quality.
Some in the room expressed the opinion that, regardless of the venue's compliance or noncompliance with regulations, the town would not shut down or prosecute an establishment operating outside the boundaries of what has been permitted. But "the town board is actively engaged in looking for compliance," said Councilman David Lys, the town board's liaison to the committee, who several times asked that decorum be maintained. "If the individual on this application -- or any other one, it could be your home or your business -- goes outside what the approvals are and outside the town code, the town could actively enforce that, and we will request that."
Mr. Dominguez and Mr. Whalen may have eased some residents' concerns about "the lure of money, of having a firehose of cash-spewing people who like to drink on the weekends who are coming in by limos and buses for the sole purpose of drinking at all of the establishments in Montauk," as one attendee put it. This, he said, "is destroying our community. . . . It takes decades to get out bad actors," he continued, describing venues and the activity therein as "just a continuous erosion of what makes this place what we want it to be."
