East Hampton Subsidized Housing Development Approved; Groundbreaking Could Be This Year

The East Hampton Town Planning Board last week signed off on the layout plans for East Hampton’s latest affordable housing project, a 16-home development on Pantigo Road, which a town official said could be under construction by this fall, with at least some of the houses ready to be moved into by next summer.

“I want to move forward with this, fast,” Town Councilman David Lys said this week, following the approval from the Planning Board. “I would like to see a groundbreaking by the fall. Get the road and the utilities in while we work on completing everything else. I’m hopeful we’ll have someone living there by early 2024. We need to get this thing moving.”

After months of review, the Planning Board unanimously approved the layout of 16 lots on about 7 acres of land at 395 Pantigo Road, just across from the intersection of Skimhampton Road.

The lots, arranged along a single drive ending in a cul-de-sac, will range from about 11,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet each, well below what would normally be buildable under town zoning were it not for the affordable housing overlay zone put on the property by the town to allow higher density of development and keep the underlying costs of each house down.

The homes will be sold to qualified buyers, chosen by lottery from town housing lists, who will then have to be approved for mortgages to cover the construction costs of the individual homes.

The town will retain ownership of all the land, however, with each house built on a lot leased to the homeowner for 99 years — an approach the town adopted to keep the publicly subsidized homes from growing in value so much as to be priced out of affordability, as has happened with some other developments.

With the same goal in mind, the homes to be built will be capped at 10 percent of the lot area for each parcel, meaning the structures will be capped in size at between about 1,100 and 1,700 square feet depending on the individual lot sizes. No swimming pools or permanent athletic courts will be permitted to be added to the properties, and each lot would be allowed just one accessory structure, with a maximum size of 600 square feet.

“I think this will end up being one of the best projects we have, because we’ve learned from the past,” Lys said of the project.

It will be the first time the town has advanced a new affordable housing project focused on single-family homes that will be sold to their new owners since the 24-home Green Hollow Woods subdivision development.

With the pitfalls of some of previous home-ownership projects by the town — which saw homes eventually sold on the open market as land prices soared and lost from the town’s affordable housing stock — Lys said he is hopeful the town can blueprint a new approach that can be copied in future projects.

“This will be 16 families, living within an easy commute of downtown business districts, walk to parks, bike to the beaches,” Lys said. “It’s going to be a nice place to live. It will be like building a brand new neighborhood.”

The town purchased the 12-acre property in 2020 for $2.5 million, split between the town general fund and the Community Preservation Fund. The remaining 5 acres not being used for the housing development will be left as wooded open space, buffering the development from the roadway and from existing homes to the north.

The town’s Housing Department, which is leading the project, is already working with utility providers, the Suffolk County Health Department and the State Department of Transportation on the infrastructure details, Lys said, so that the roadway and utility lines can be run into the property while the town tackles the construction planning.

The Town Board, he expects, will start working on a request for proposals to go out to potential construction contractors in September asking for plans and pricing for a package of differing home sizes that can be selected from by each buyer.

Like at Green Hollow Woods, the town expects to contract with a single builder who will provide several different build models in varying sizes and styles that the future homeowners will be able to choose from according to their means and needs.

The town has two other housing developments in the works — a 50-unit rental apartment complex currently under construction on Three Mile Harbor Road being built by the East Hampton Housing Authority, and an up to 60-unit rental apartment complex off Route 114 in Wainscott, which is still in the initial planning stages and has not yet been brought to the town’s regulatory boards for review.

The town also has eyes on other properties — including the former Sterns property off Pantigo Road, which has been proposed for private development by its owner — and is in the midst of planning for implementation of its community housing plan, utilizing revenues currently being accrued through a half-percent sales on tax on real estate sales and specifically earmarked for affordable housing projects.

“It’s an exciting time in the town for housing because there are so many projects in the process and on the horizon,” Lys said. “It should give some hope to those who are in need of housing and to the long-term sustainability of the town.”