Rowdy Hall Design Pitch Unravels Over Color Scheme in Amagansett

The struggle to find common ground on what the soon-to-be new Rowdy Hall restaurant and bar on Amagansett’s Main Street will look like came to loggerheads this week after the pub’s owners presented a new color scheme.

The town’s Architectural Review Board loved it.

The design showed a mostly pastel gray frontage of the now vacant building, with a solid black banner across the top emblazoned with the same gold lettering as the original Rowdy Hall in East Hampton Village.

It was the third aesthetic design the popular pub’s owners had presented to the ARB as they prepare to move from East Hampton to Amagansett later this year, and was drafted in response to the feedback from the ARB members that the two previous schemes were too far afield from the more muted palate of colors in the Amagansett historic district — which they are duty-bound to preserve.

“We are cognizant of all the time and energy and resources that you’ve gone through to make this presentation, and I would like to recommend that we approve this,” the board’s chairwoman, Kathleen Cunningham, said at the board’s meeting last week to her colleagues and one of Rowdy Hall’s owners, Mark Smith. “I think this works. It gives you the heads and all the things we like about the Rowdy Hall sign, but it’s not quite so pronounced a contrast to the other buildings in the community.”

Other board members nodded subtly in agreement beside her, seemingly accepting of the new proposal and ready to give it their imprimatur.

Smith, however, said that the restaurant’s owners did not intend the design to be one that they wanted granted approval.

Rather, he said, the mock-up had been a nod to the ARB’s input that they had submitted out of respect — but that they had hoped having seen the options, the board members would be more comfortable with a previous design: an all-black frontage, like the current Rowdy Hall building has, with the gold lettering.

“We did this out of respect to the board and your request to see another submission,” Smith said. “We didn’t necessarily like it, but I thought it would have been disrespectful to the board and the process to not submit anything and just come back with the others. But I state that [the all-black design] is our preference. I don’t know if that was considered.”

“It was considered,” Cunningham responded. “At this point, this is sort of how the process works. Applicants bring something in, the board responds and you get that feedback.”

The room behind Smith was uncharacteristically packed with observers for an ARB meeting — the bulk of the audience friends and supporters of the Rowdy team, who had drummed up public support with social media posts earlier in the week.

Cunnningham had thrown a bit of cold water on the cheerleaders at the start of the meeting, noting that the ARB does not hold formal public hearings and does not typically take public comment from individuals other than representatives of the applicants before them.

Smith, however, threw cold water back on what the board had thought was going to be a settled matter — one they were about to vote to approve. He asked to withdraw the new submission. His attorney, John Tarbet, asked the board to cast a vote immediately on the all-black design — which, if denied, would open the option of a legal challenge.

“I like the all-black, I like the way it looks down the village — but that’s not the criteria we apply, Mark,” Cunningham said. “We’re not allowed to put what we like — we have to follow these rules. The rules are that it’s a historic district, and the colors are supposed to be compatible within the context of the district.”

The town code specifically references historic districts and the traditional style of local hamlets, commanding that the ARB maintain appearances “compatible” with that — a standard that has sometimes been unevenly applied according to the judgment of the board’s evolving make up.

Smith nodded to a business up the street, Organic Crush, that has an orange awning with blue stripes. The building, however, is all white, board member Chip Rae noted.

The current facade of the building Rowdy is to occupy has three colors, Smith also noted — which board members have said they thought had been approved in error by a previous board, but still was less incongruous than the solid black frontage.

“Where in the code does it say you can’t use these colors?” Smith, who has co-owned restaurants in the town since the early 1990s and currently operates five, said, nodding to other color schemes around the hamlet.

“You said you liked the gray and black … can you explain why black is not in harmony, whereas black and gray is?” Tarbet interjected.

“The gray is softer,” Cunningham responded. “The entire black, it would be the only black building like that.”

Other board members grew irritated and said that if the business had not intended to proceed with the new submissions if granted, they were wasting the board’s time. Smith asked to be allowed to withdraw the submission or resubmit a new application offering only the black facade for approval.

“When this came in, I was, like, ‘Ah, yes!’ This looks so much better — I’m sure the board will approve this, this is going to work,’” Cunningham said. “This is why we have you on the agenda, because you submitted something new.

“I understand from your letter that this was your third preference, and I get that, but I didn’t understand that to mean that you’re going to withdraw it because you only want the black one. That’s what’s confusing me. We had done this twice, and there was a lot of push-back on the black and the red and everything else.”

“You could say that of the three that were submitted we do like and approve the black and gold — that was the hope,” Smith said.

After sparring with the board’s legal counsel, Assistant Town Attorney David McMaster, over whether the board could simply vote to approve the third design over the objection of the owners or take a vote immediately on the all-black design, the board resolved to table the application and let the Rowdy representatives reconsider their application.

The company announced on social media this week that the East Hampton Village location will remain open “until further notice” while they work out the details of the transition to the new location.

Tarbet called the ARB’s refusal to vote “a disgrace.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t come to a more mutually satisfactory position,” Cunningham concluded as the audience filed out.