East Hampton Village Approves Rollback Of Basement Size Restrictions

The East Hampton Village Board has loosened restrictions on how large the basement of a home can be, rolling back a 2015 law that had limited basements to just 12 feet in depth and extending no farther than the footprint of the home.

After hearing no further objections to the proposal, beyond two letters in opposition from village residents, during a second public hearing session on the proposal at its November 19 meeting, the board voted unanimously — Trustee Rose Brown was absent — to amend the limitations, allowing basements to be up to 25 percent larger than the above-ground footprint and to be up to 15 feet deep.

The amended law will also not count the underground basement area in a property’s lot coverage total.

“This is, in my opinion, a very minimal rollback,” Trustee Chris Minardi said of the amendments before the vote. “In my experience on the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board, I have not seen very many of these applications in the past. I don’t think this is a big change.”

Mr. Minardi said that the villages of Sag Harbor, Southampton and North Haven do not impose such restrictions on basement footprints; Sagaponack Village does.

He said that since the same property line setbacks will apply to underground spaces as the above-ground structure, the size of basements will not “get out of control.”

The restrictions on basements had been adopted by a previous Village Board — which shared no members in common with the current board — over the strenuous objections of representatives of the real estate and construction industries. The board at the time, like their counterparts in Sagaponack, had voiced concerns over massive “dewatering” efforts and impacts on storm runoff from the sprawling undergound levels that extended far past the visible structures.

The board also approved a companion bill that amended limitations on window wells and egresses from basements.

Village consultant Billy Hajek likened not counting the underground area toward lot coverage limits to also not including underground utility components of a house, like the septic system.

“In the first draft the definition of a structure was anything above ground or below ground,” Hajek said. “But there’s a compelling argument that anything covered by grass shouldn’t count.”

Mr. Minardi concurred.

“If you can’t see it, it doesn’t count,” he said. “I don’t know why it was ever considered to be counted as coverage.”