Springs Residents Ask For Crandall-Norfolk To Be Declared A Nature Preserve

The residents of a Springs neighborhood who banded together to mount fierce opposition last summer to a proposal by East Hampton Town officials to put a 185-foot-tall cell tower on a parcel of town-owned land in their midst are now lobbying the town to designate the land a nature preserve, ensuring that it will never again be earmarked for some other use.

The residents have implored the town for months to preserve the 7 acres of land they call the Crandal-Norfolk Woodlands, for the streets it lays between, but which has long been know to residents of the streets that spur off Forth Pond Boulevard as “The Pit” — seemingly because of its long-abandoned use as a sand mine decades ago.

Last month, the town Nature Preserve Committee recommended that the town make the property a preserve, and on Tuesday evening the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee pledged to throw its weight behind the proposal as well, with a letter to the Town Board endorsing the preservation.

“If any community in this hamlet deserves open space, it’s that one,” said Irwin Levy, who is also one of the members of the Nature Preserve Committee, noting that the neighborhood is on the edge of a commercial zone, a busy thoroughfare and a bar.

The property is somewhat unique in that it is a large, wholly undeveloped tract that the town did not acquire using Community Preservation Fund revenues, which means its potential uses are not limited by anti-development guidelines.

Town officials had long thought the land was preserved open space until last year when they embarked on a desperate search to identify a suitable location for a new cell tower that could help ease chronic communications failures for residents and emergency responders. The land, it turned out, had come into town ownership in a hodge-podge manner and was not encumbered.

The proposal to put a 185-foot-tall cell tower, which would be topped with both town communications equipment and the cellular antennas from several service providers, spurred a torrent of criticism from the neighborhood that frequently strayed into ugly personal attacks, wild accusations of political corruption and arguments that the objectionable infrastructure would be better suited in another nearby neighborhood.

Ultimately, the uproar spurred a new effort to look at an existing tower site within a nearby Girl Scouts camp that had been written off as unfeasible and the Crandall-Norfolk proposal was shelved.

But the neighbors have said that the land should be protected from future threat of any sort of “active” use.

“The streets around it — Lincoln, Crandall and Norfolk are very narrow, so anything other than a preserve would create havoc right away,” Margaret Garcetti told the Springs CAC on Tuesday. “It’s really not friendly for anything other than what it’s been.”

“There’s been a lot conversation about what goes on in those woods — unsavory comments — but the truth is, I live right there and it’s a beautiful place. Families go in there with their kids. Years ago, there were some other activities, like ATVs, but there’s nothing like that in a long time.”

At a Town Board work session on August 2, neighbors implored the Town Board to schedule a public hearing to place the land on the town’s nature preserve list, as opposed to holding it in reserve for some unknown future use or for an open park.

“My neighbors fully understand the difference between a nature preserve and a managed park or recreational area,” Alex Rodriguez said at the time. “Our neighborhood does not need or want basketball courts, we do not need or want tennis courts or running or walking tracks. We want the place to be a nature preserve.”