EXPRESS SESSIONS: Officials, Business Owners Discuss Future Of East Hampton Village

A little over a month after wresting control of East Hampton Village in a hotly contested and expensive election, Mayor Jerry Larson and his NewTown Party team have already made true on a pledge to implement early changes to the village landscape — increasing parking times throughout East Hampton and launching a successful farmers market in the Reutershan parking lot on Sundays.

And, by most accounts, residents and business owners love it.

“In the past month, parking has been addressed, the beaches stayed open later, signs removed, promotions happened, there’s a farmer’s market — things were realigned,” said Village Board member Chris Minardi, a member of the mayor’s party who took office in September. “The village has gotten power washed. I mean, we have the attitude and the drive to get some things done.

“And it’s been receptive, great. Everyone’s, like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you can just make changes like that,’ and everyone’s been really happy.”

Mr. Minardi’s statements came during an Express Sessions event, “A Tale of Two Villages, Part 1: A New Vision for East Hampton Village,” which was held virtually, via the Zoom platform, on October 22. The forum was intended to give the elected officials and members of the village’s business community a chance to share their vision for the future of the village and its Main Street. Part 2, involving Southampton Village, will be held November 5.

In addition to Mayor Larson and Mr. Minardi, the panel included Village Engineer Drew Bennett, Babette’s Restaurant owner Barbara Layton, and commercial business owner Robert Rattenni.

The conversation was moderated by Executive Editor Joseph P. Shaw. Invited guests included Westhampton Beach Village Mayor Maria Moore, who shared her board’s recent experience with a Main Street revitalization project and an upcoming sewer project, and real estate attorney Adam Miller from the Adam Miller Group.

Mayor Larson, Mr. Minardi and Sandra Melendez were elected to the Village Board this fall on a platform of change, promising to quicken the pace of local government and promote measures more favorable to village businesses.

For Mr. Rattenni, that was a welcome change.

“I think the exciting thing for myself and other people I’ve spoken to here in the community is the willingness now to try things,” he said. “For the last 20-plus years, we’ve been [unable to convince] the previous administration to try things. … I never felt that the village was so large and cumbersome, that if we tried something, and it didn’t work, that we could always go back or we could adjust and change.”

“Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing,” Ms. Layton added, referring to the board’s efforts to keep businesses like her restaurant afloat in the wake of the pandemic. “And I think we’re all really excited. And I think the job that’s being done so far is fabulous.

“I think, without getting into specifics, I think the most important thing right now is that we realize that we’re all in this together. And I think we need to agree on the fact that it’s going to take cooperation and collaboration to move forward.”

Since taking office, the new board majority extended beach hours into the fall, recognizing the influx of residents that resulted from the pandemic, resumed holding in-person board meetings to foster a sense of normalcy, extended the legal parking time in village lots from two hours to three for the winter — a precursor to move to an overhaul of the village’s parking plan, through the use of a paid app in which people could pay to extend parking times rather than force them to move their cars when their time allotment ran out — and re-instituted the farmers market.

The farmers market will run in the southeast corner of the parking lot through the end of the year. Mayor Larson said the market has been a success and is drawing people into the village in huge, but safe, numbers. Those patrons then shop in local stores and patronize village businesses.

“I have to say, if you haven’t been out on Sunday to the farmers market, it’s just incredible,” he said. “The reason we did it in the back parking lot was basically because that is really where our mom-and-pop stores are left, and the idea was to bring more business to the mom-and-pop stores, and it has really been working. I’ve been in every store, and they’ve all told me they’ve seen an increase in sales during the time frame that the farmers market is in session.”

The mayor said that he and other village officials are constantly tweaking the plans for the market, noting that the hands-on effort is indicative of how he and the new board majority hope to accomplish their goals in the village.

“It’s a small village, and you don’t need all this red tape and nonsense,” he said. “I’m out there on Sunday morning, and Sandra Melendez is out there all day making sure that this is working well. … We’re out there every day trying to make it better for our business owners and our residents.”

Mr. Minardi agreed. “We moved it around a little bit every week, we changed it. It seems to be evolving,” he said. “And that’s just a small example of, we get a good idea, then we try to make it better every week.”

Adjusting to the three-hour parking was a direct response to lost business as a result of the pandemic, Mayor Larson said.

“When we took office in September, with the COVID and the complaints we’ve been hearing from the store owners, we decided to immediately allow for three-hour parking to help the store owners cope with the COVID crisis. So we thought that was important,” he said.

He hopes to implement the larger plan this spring, he said, as a response to prior administrations that were unwilling to address what he said was ongoing complaints about parking, particularly from organizations hosting events in the village that last longer than two hours, but found officials unresponsive to pleas to find ways to extend parking limits during those events.

“We’ve been working with these parking vendors,” the mayor said. “We’ve been working with our enforcement end of the parking system, and it’s really going to come together. And I think it’s going to be a terrific program that we’ll be able to keep our two-hour parking, but then offer a friendly way to stay a little longer, like paying.”

Ms. Layton noted that the parking problem has long been a thorn in her side, and the same for other business owners.

“It hasn’t been business friendly at all over the years,” she said. “I mean, how many times have we had diners come in, they’ve had a great time, great experience, only to go back out and have tickets on their cars. Coming back to me and saying, ‘My God, what kind of village is this? You guys are not friendly. You’re not open.’

“It’s been really challenging for sure. It really has.”

The mayor plans to use the added revenue from the parking plan to fund other village projects — primarily implementing a long-discussed idea to bring a new sewer system to the village. Sewers would allow for business expansion, expanded wet uses like restaurants and additional housing in the village center.

Mr. Bennett offered an update on the village’s sewer initiative, noting that discussions went back as far as a Comprehensive Plan in 2002, a Hook Pond Water Quality study in 2015, and then, finally, the village hiring the consulting firm of Nelson and Pope in 2019 to conduct a sewer district feasibility study. The firm hopes to release a report by year’s end.

“The board will review that,” he said. “Typically, the next steps are what they call a map and a plan phase, which would be made available to the board and the public for public input, and then the village would, if they find it reasonable in terms of potential benefits and financial impacts, they then seek state approval, and then they begin formal preparations, design plans and specifications, they seek funding. They put it out to bid, they construct it, and then they turn it on — basically, start it up.

“So there’s a number of steps that are ahead of us, there’s been a number of steps that have been completed. A big point there will come a decision point at the end of this year when this first study is issued.”

Mr. Larson said the system he envisions for the village would cost between $15 million and $20 million, which, again, he expects to pay for with parking revenue.

“Our plan is to create the paid parking system,” he said. “And I anticipate that revenue will be enough to pay a bond, to create the sewer system that we have proposed. The one that we have on the table right now is probably somewhere between $15 million and $20 million. So if we bond that over a number of years, I think the revenue we’re going to make from parking we’ll pay for that.”

Mayor Moore, from Westhampton Beach, whose own village is undertaking a sewer project this year on its Main Street, tying into a sewer plant at nearby Francis Gabreski Airport, noted that the project has included years of planning, and urged her East Hampton counterparts to take that into consideration. She said her board’s impetus in following through with the project was a desire to be able to grow the Main Street business district.

“I was looking at other villages when I first got elected, like Sag Harbor to Greenport, and I thought, what makes them different?” she said. “Why are they a destination? And it seemed, it was just the restaurants that they had. It all always came back to the sewers. Well, they have sewers and you don’t, and we can’t do what they’re doing. So that’s why I felt, and the board that we have now is great, and we all have the same vision and commitment to getting it done.”

Mayor Larson noted that any sewer project would take four to five years to come to fruition, and said the board was eager to get started.

“So I think the longer we kick this can down the street, the longer it’s going to take,” he said. “So I think we’ve got to get going on this. And we have a plan to get the parking in place this spring, so we can start generating the revenue at the same time we’re working on this.”

Ms. Layton said she was encouraged by the possibilities a sewer system would bring to local business owners.

“It’s one of the ways that we can just bring more of a life force to this community,” she said, “say like Westhampton, like Sag Harbor. Not to mimic them completely, but it really gives us some wiggle room to expand in moderation that doesn’t affect the quality of life for residents, but really creates a thriving community of businesses in the village.”

A sewer system and the benefits it would bring — like an increased number of restaurants — would be welcome by the business community as they would increase foot traffic, Mr. Rattenni said.

“Sag Harbor is currently the fair-haired child, and everyone’s in love with it and it’s a wonderful village,” he said. “But the biggest difference between Sag Harbor Village and East Hampton or Southampton Village, is the number of food establishments where people congregate, and that is a driving force to get people into a community.”

Mr. Miller noted that the population of the village has increased in recent months due to the pandemic, and one of the things he is hearing from the new transplants is that they want a vital downtown area.

“People are spending more time here, and what is it that they want?” he asked. “I think what they want is a walking village.

“For example, I live a mile outside the village and I often wanted to just drive around and get a cup of coffee, walk with my daughters, have lunch, dinner, outside, walk with my dogs so that the dogs become accustomed to people.

“And, quite honestly, East Hampton has not been a destination for me, despite the fact that I only live a mile outside the village, because the vibrancy, in my opinion, over the last 10, 15 years has been somewhat lost.”

Mayor Larson said he hopes to bring it back. “I think people just want a clean village,” he said, “that’s vibrant that you can walk around and really enjoy yourself. And, you know, Sag Habor’s probably the closest model I can think of that has all of those qualities. So they created that beautiful boardwalk down by their boats. Well, we don’t have boats, obviously, but we have beautiful beaches, so a beautiful beach area. And then you come into a beautiful shopping area and restaurants that’s really, I think, sums it up for me. That’s what I’d like to see.”