The sale of a vacant lot to the Town of East Hampton—using Community Preservation Fund revenue intended for the purchase and preservation of open space and farmland—isn’t unusual. The purchase of the property at 410 Old Stone Highway closed in May for $775,000.
The same goes for Southampton Town finalizing its $1.2 million deal to purchase 15 acres at 95 North Phillips Avenue in Speonk—better known as Serenity Estates, which was once eyed for subdivision and residential development.
Since the CPF was created in 1999, the fund has preserved more than 1,600 acres of vacant land in East Hampton and more than 1,100 acres in Southampton. Today, the two towns are scooping up what little vacant land remains.
The problem is finding a balance between preserving land and allowing adequate development to accommodate housing needs, particularly for working- and middle-class residents. Also, the vacant land still generates tax revenue for municipalities—assuming the owner is keeping up with tax bills—and that revenue disappears when it is preserved and removed from the tax rolls.
Environmentalists counter that preserved land is much cheaper for municipalities, because with development comes a host of costs: utilities, roads, emergency services, schools.
Lee Koppelman issued numerous reports while he was executive director of the Long Island Regional Planning Council from the 1960s to the early 2000s—one of which analyzed the potential for East Hampton and Southampton to significantly grow their residential neighborhoods.
In 1999, he said there were potentially 2,500 more residential building lots available in East Hampton. The town listened to that recommendation with its own Planning Department report in 2004, which eyed the possibility of adding 1,774 new units to residential districts. However, it has proved to be difficult to act on, because about one-third of the vacant land in East Hampton is already protected open space, agricultural or wetlands, Dr. Koppelman said. Southampton Town is in a similar boat.
“By and large, both of those towns have been strong supporters of the environments within their communities. My recommendations have generally been followed, in large part by Suffolk County, in terms of protecting and ensuring clean water, because the limiting factor on land use is our water supply. The more development, [the greater] potential of harming our sole-source aquifer,” Dr. Koppelman said in a June interview, referring to the source of much of Long Island’s available drinking water, and which supplies water bodies that municipalities use for recreation and revenue.
Now, as a retired planner and Stony Brook University professor emeritus, the 91-year-old has reflected on his recommendations and said towns are still struggling to strike a balance. “It is a constant battle that goes on in terms of land use,” he said.
With a considerable push from local leadership and community activism, a state initiative to protect open space came to fruition in 1999 with the creation of the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund—a 2 percent tax on real estate trades in East Hampton, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Southampton and Southold, which allowed the five East End towns to collect money to be used to preserve farmland and open space, and to create parks. In 2016, voters approved a referendum to expand the use of CPF dollars to address water quality issues, too. Now, up to 20 percent of revenue can be used for water quality initiatives. The fund is set to continue through 2050.
Scott Wilson is the East Hampton Town director of land acquisition and management, and handles all CPF purchases for the town. He said properties are assessed on a case-by-case basis by an advisory board that grades and ranks the properties for their best uses. East Hampton Town does have an affordable housing overlay that can be limiting to where housing would be deemed appropriate—including apartments above commercial space. Mr. Wilson said CPF dollars are best used to protect watersheds.
“We have certain criteria within the law that we review each property under,” Mr. Wilson said. “The Town Board, who listens to residents complain about housing on a regular basis, is always cognizant. Each property, we look at if it’s appropriate or not for housing. A lot of the lots that we are actually acquiring are properties that already have wetlands and certainly wouldn’t be appropriate for affordable housing. A lot of them are even single building lots. The days of acquiring 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-acre parcels where you can do a number of things on, are past.”
He added that if the town continues to operate diligently then there is not necessarily a conflict between preserving open space and building affordable housing—both needs could be sufficiently served.
“But it’s not that they are all environmentally concerned,” Dr. Koppelman said. “They want to keep out the growth, because with new growth—unless it’s luxury housing—every new house usually doesn’t pay its own weight, and taxes have to increase. Southampton and East Hampton’s stroke of luck has been the rich movie people who have been building the mega-mansions, which pay a good deal of taxes. Of course, if you are a working person, it’s a different story.”
The workforce largely comes from outside of the South Fork region, the “trade parade” of commuters, landscaping, plumbing and other services that make the drive into the area every day. They choose not to live here because of the exorbitant cost of living, he added.
The growing problem is that voters encourage the preservation of open space “for the wrong reasons,” Dr. Koppelman said—namely, to keep people, and therefore development, out. He added that this “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY, movement approach is common on the South Fork.
“There is always a tension between economic development and land preservation,” said Richard Guardino, Dr. Koppelman’s successor at the regional planning council and a former Hempstead Town supervisor. “If you look at Long Island’s landscape, two-thirds are already covered with pavement, buildings and other structures. So, in order to preserve the environment and quality of life [on the East End], they thought it was important that there be open space.”
It’s especially important to consider the environmental implications of conserving open space, he said. The regional planning council is currently working on a nitrogen action plan to remediate pollution from cesspools and aging septic systems—the leading cause of nitrogen pollution on Long Island’s sole-source aquifer and waterways.
“The theory behind it is less development, more open space—the open space actually helps filter the water, and there is not as much sewage going right into our aquifer,” Mr. Guardino said.
As far as what land is best to declare as open space, he said it depends on its location, such as stretches of land along the state’s highway system. Mr. Guardino pointed to pockets of development, especially around transportation hubs in municipalities, like in Ronkonkoma, that re-purpose already developed or industrial land rather than paving over open space.
“It creates a vibrant neighborhood that older people and younger people can both appreciate … such as areas in the thriving East Hampton Village, the thriving Montauk village, Sag Harbor as well. This whole idea of suburban sprawl taking over virgin land and converting it into development—people are moving away from that,” Mr. Guardino said.
Some feel that more needs to be done to ensure CPF purchases are in that same vein, including Diana Weir, Southampton Town’s director of housing and community development.
“The CPF was created to purchase sensitive land that would hurt the aquifer or our bodies of water [if developed on],” Ms. Weir said. “Buying land to just take the money off the development rolls was not the intent. … It was called the ‘Community Preservation Fund,’ not the ‘Stop Development Fund.’”
Towns do look to use CPF revenues quickly to prevent “contractors from building mansions” on vacant land, Ms. Weir said. But the former East Hampton Town councilwoman said their haste could be a bad thing: CPF purchases have significantly reduced the amount of developable land for much-needed affordable housing projects. What land is left is sold higher now than ever before.
Instead, the towns need to better balance the land available for workforce housing and open space, Ms. Weir said.
“The land is everything. The cost of land is everything. And when you have an entity buying up land for millions of dollars, it’s a case of supply and demand,” Ms. Weir said. “When the supply goes down, the demand goes up, and thereby the prices go up. And there is not much land left.”
New York Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. is working on a possible solution that could make its way through the State Legislature in the next year. Eying areas where infrastructure, public transportation and downtowns already exist, Mr. Thiele has drafted a bill—similar to the legislation that spurred the CPF—that will add an additional tax to raise revenue for municipalities to rehab housing and provide down payment assistance for first-time home buyers.
“Land is a finite commodity, no matter how you slice it,” Mr. Thiele said. “At the same time, we want affordable housing, you also want clean water, and want to maintain our agricultural heritage. With a good comprehensive plan, which Southampton and East Hampton towns already have, you can do both.”
After the recession in 2008, there was a considerable decline in home values and prices while inventory built up on the East End, he said. Now, inventory is low, and prices have ballooned.
While there are restrictions in Southampton and East Hampton towns that require sellers of affordable housing properties to sell to other affordable housing buyers, which keeps the units in inventory instead of listing the property on the open market for a much higher price, it’s not to say it doesn’t happen anyway as properties are improved.
The goal of Mr. Thiele’s bill is to subsidize housing to make the limited housing stock and accessory apartments more affordable, instead of creating a need for new development. At the same time, when opportunity strikes, the towns should act.
“We need to identify areas—like where the state gave funding for an affordable housing site in Amagansett,” Mr. Thiele said, referring to the state granting the Town of East Hampton $7 million for a 37-unit affordable housing complex for low- to moderate-income families and individuals in May.
“But you cannot build your way out of the affordable housing crisis on the East End,” he added. “You cannot sustain that level of density that’s created by our schools, our highway department and our source of drinking water. On top of that, it’s difficult to keep [land] for affordable housing.”
on Jul 13, 2018