Dec 7, 2011 10:21 AM

Mr. Jacobs, however, dismissed the claim that the property was abandoned in an email this week, calling the issue “a fiction.” He said the affidavits Mr. Bruyn provided disprove the theory. He also added that the claim about the dining hall being abandoned was a false one.

“They ignore the affidavits we have submitted, where food service was observed in recent years,” Ms. Jacobs said. “They ignore the fact that the building, as it currently stands … is, in fact, a dining hall with a large kitchen, commercial oven, public bathrooms and a large dining hall with a central fireplace. They also ignore the legal reality that you cannot piecemeal an abandonment claim by alleging that this or that part of a business has been ‘abandoned’ simply because in the conduct of doing the business in recent years a particular facility within it might not have been fully used—though the dining hall was, in this case. If we accept their argument, is every restaurant in Southampton that doesn’t use a side room that once was used now considered to have ‘abandoned’ it?”

Concerns about Little Fresh Pond potentially being polluted as a result of the camp development have been raised consistently by neighbors at the meetings. Lucille Dunn, co-chairwoman of the North Sea Citizens Advisory Committee, addressed the ZBA last week and said she believed the camp would pollute the pond, stating that groundwater flows into the pond. Mr. Jacobs has protested that point, stressing that engineering studies he has commissioned point out that sewage actually flows away from the pond. He also added that the application calls for a reduction of sewage flow to 5,100 gallons a day—down from the more than 9,000 gallons of flow the property is currently permitted.

Regardless of which way the board votes in February, Mr. Grossman said he doesn’t see the ZBA’s ruling as the end of the line for the application. “This is going to [State] Supreme Court,” he predicted. “No matter what you do, this is going to Supreme Court. So I suspect that whatever we do will be subject to judicial review.”