Consultants Detail Wainscott Hamlet Implementation Plan

A Wainscott business area overlay district could be formed to provide architectural and siting standards for the hamlet’s commercial district, consultants told the East Hampton Town Board at a July 2 presentation on a first phase of the Wainscott hamlet plan’s implementation.

Lisa Liquori, a consultant and former town planning director, said it is important to foster preservation of desirable characteristics while encouraging more efficient and economic arrangement of buildings, parking areas, circulation systems and utilities, and to establish guidelines for a facade grant program to encourage businesses to make exterior improvements to their buildings and standards to incentivize shared parking.

The blueprint for a future Wainscott is based on the hamlet plan that was adopted in 2019. A working group was convened and held a series of meetings in the winter and spring of 2022 to guide priorities for action.

It was described by consultants on July 2 as an aspirational vision. The plan, said Peter Flinker of Dodson & Flinker, focuses on the central-business and commercial-industrial zoning districts spanning around 4,000 linear feet between West Gate Road and Hedges Lane, “but it looks to put the larger plan in context as well.”

The implantation strategy is divided into categories of municipal improvements, improvements to Montauk Highway, regulatory changes and incentives, and options for reuse of the former sand pit area.

Municipal improvements, Flinker said, include design and development of a streetscape plan, improving municipal parking and evaluating advanced sewage treatment that would enable redevelopment. The streetscape plan itself is divided into several initiatives, including the burial of utility lines, installation of continuous accessible sidewalks, the planting of trees and creation of buffers with plantings, and maintenance strategies.

Burying power lines, he said, “allows you do other things like planting trees, reduces storm vulnerability, improves safety, and increases opportunities for landscaping.”

A cost estimate of at least $1.75 million was given, with additional expense for business owners to connect to their buildings. Around half of the buildings already have buried utilities to the street, “so it wouldn’t be everybody starting from scratch.” Decorative lighting might also be installed as part of a streetscape plan.

Presently, only about half of the business district has sidewalks, and many are not ADA-compliant or are in poor condition. Opportunities exist to connect pedestrian linkages to the surrounding streets and open spaces including Georgica Pond Park, Flinker said. All of this will require collaboration with landowners, the town, and the New York State Department of Transportation, starting with a more detailed survey, he said.

Based on feedback from the working group, “we don’t want to make this another downtown village center with a lot of hard surfaces,” Flinker said. “We want it to express the ‘beachy’ landscape of Wainscott: a lot of native species, a lot of soft spaces … and a sense of being part of the Wainscott environment and not trying to turn it into something else.”

Suggestions to that end include choosing the texture, color and materials of walkways to reflect that desired look, as well as seating adjacent to paths and gathering spaces, lighting and signage. In addition to the cost estimate for burial of power lines, $750,000 to $1.25 million was estimated for streetscape improvements.

The consultants offered a recommendation that individual parking lots at the western end of the district, which Flinker said are often “not very efficiently laid out,” be joined and shared by individual businesses but owned and maintained by the town.

“If you have separate designed and managed parking lots with multiple curb cuts and barriers between them, there’s a lot of leftover space that’s not serving any purpose,” he said.

A potential parking area between the HomeGoods store and Wainscott Northwest Road could include 200 spaces, 70 more than presently exist, while also allowing islands planted with trees, pedestrian connections, and existing buildings to expand. There are “issues that need to be worked through,” he said, “but this has been done in a lot of towns all over the Northeast, and the benefits are clear.”

Should the sand pit property be redeveloped, a large municipal lot could also be created to serve the eastern side of the business district. A roundabout could replace the stop light at the intersection of Montauk Highway and Wainscott Northwest Road to keep traffic moving, he said, though this would require further study.

Implementation of municipal parking on either side of the business district was estimated to cost around $525,000 for each, excluding land acquisition. Should municipal parking be established, bus stops could be relocated into those areas, removing them from the street.

Vin Corrado of LK Mclean Associates recommended a high-level feasibility study for sewage treatment, without which development is inhibited.

“The more successful downtowns on Long Island tend to have sewage treatment and municipal parking, which alleviates a lot of the burden on the individual property owner,” he said.

A comprehensive approach to reducing nitrogen loading and other impacts to groundwater and Georgica Pond is important, he said, to facilitate redevelopment of the hamlet center. The cost of a study was estimated at $25,000 to $35,000.

Corrado suggested a reduction of the speed limit on Montauk Highway from 40 to 30 mph, as it is in other business districts in the town. As a traffic calming strategy, he also suggested a reduction in the travel lane widths from 12 to 11 feet. These would require action by the state Department of Transportation.

“We’re recommending that the town provide incentives for new developments and redevelopments, existing uses that use shared parking, and that parking needs be evaluated on a business district-wide, coordinated approach,” Liquori said. Physical and regulatory arrangements could be developed to encourage shared parking, she said, “keeping in mind that shared parking will only be helpful if it’s within a reasonable walking distance to the intended use,” and that pavement, crosswalks and stop signs must be integrated into pedestrian walkways connecting shared parking areas with businesses. She suggested that some business owners participate in a pilot program.

Implementation of the hamlet plan requires buy-in by residents and businesses, Liquori said, and a facade improvement grant program would offer financial incentives to making visual improvements to building exteriors.

“We would recommend that all property owners in the Wainscott business overlay district or the central business district be eligible,” she said, estimating a cost of $75,000 to retain consultants to work with the town attorney and finance department to develop a mechanism and establish authority for the program, and draft guidelines for recommended design and improvement plans with the Planning Department.

With respect to the privately owned, 70.5-acre former sand pit site, a redevelopment application is pending before the Planning Board, but “we’re still moving forward” with conceptual plans for potential uses, Liquori said, should the town acquire the property.

Cleanup of any residual contamination must happen, she said, and more than half its acreage should be protected for active park or conservation use, and land allocated to municipal parking and possibly workforce housing and a transportation hub.

Existing business owners on the site should be incentivized to relocate heavy industry to the northern portion of the property, where a Long Island Rail Road station could also be added. Rezoning would be required to implement the recommendations.

The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, which will meet on Saturday, July 13, advocates for $5.5 million from a community benefits package paid to the town by developers of the South Fork Wind farm to be allocated to the hamlet plan’s implementation.

“We’ll be hearing from the folks in Wainscott,” Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez predicted, “on what their priorities are.” The wind farm community benefits package “will hopefully go a long way to getting a number of these things knocked off the list.”