St. Peter Chapel Neighbors Should Be Allowed a Say in Cell Tower Settlement, Judge Says

Neighbors of the tiny St. Peter’s Chapel in Springs should be allowed to intervene in the settlement of a lawsuit between AT&T Wireless and East Hampton Town that would give the phone company the right to erect a cellular tower in some form at the Old Stone Highway chapel, a federal judge said earlier this month.

In a recommendation to the judge overseeing the lawsuit, federal Magistrate Judge Steven Locke agreed with the neighbors that their interests had not been represented by the town’s attorneys, who did not contest the lawsuit but instead moved directly into settlement negotiations with the phone company, which the neighbors were unfairly excluded from, the judge said.

Allowing the five homeowners to intervene in the settlement discussion will still be up to U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert, who had already accepted and signed the settlement agreement last February, before the neighbors sued to intervene in March.

Locke’s recommendation stood firmly by the neighbors’ right to be allowed a say in the settlement, arguing that they would be substantially “injured” by the settlement, because their property values would be affected, and that, beyond being allowed a voice in the settlement, they had been left with no opportunity to defend their rights since they were not parties to the lawsuit.

“The parties to the action do not adequately represent the proposed intervenors’ interests,” the judge said. “Plaintiff seeks to build a cell tower at the chapel. The defendants seek to act in the public interest and represent the interests of the town as a whole … rather than protecting the proposed intervenors’ specific property rights.”

The phone company first applied to the town to put a cellular tower at the St. Peter’s Chapel in 2015. The chapel is owned by St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton. St. Luke’s leadership have told neighbors that objected to the cellular proposal that the income from the cellular antenna leases is needed to fund maintenance on the 141-year-old chapel.

Neighbors say they have pleaded with St. Luke’s not to impose such an eyesore on them, but have been rebuffed.

The proposal went through various design phases, including concealing the cellular antennas in a steeple constructed atop the existing chapel or within a 50-foot stand-alone bell tower next to it, as AT&T’s lawyers sought to find a design that would be acceptable to the town Planning Board and neighbors.

The bell tower design ultimately was presented as the final plan and was denied by the East Hampton Town Planning Board in July 2020.

AT&T promptly sued the town, saying that the decision violated federal statutes that prevent municipalities from blocking necessary cellular infrastructure. The town made little, if any, effort to contest the lawsuit, and in late 2021 the Town Board unveiled the proposed settlement and agreed to sign it.

The settlement agreement allowed that the phone company could file a new application to the Planning Board for an unconcealed, 70-foot-tall monopole behind the chapel building on which to mount its antennas. The application would be reviewed by the Planning Board and other town regulatory boards. But if the monopole design was denied by any of boards, AT&T would automatically be granted the right to construct the stand-alone bell tower that the Planning Board had denied in the first place.

The town had entered into a somewhat similar settlement with AT&T in 2020 over a proposal to put a cellular antenna on an existing wind turbine at Iacono Farm on Long Lane. That settlement let the phone company propose a much taller tower on town-owned property nearby, but if the application had been denied the phone company would have had the right to proceed with the Iacono proposal.

When it announced the settlement agreement, Town Board members said that their attorneys had advised them that contesting the lawsuit would be a losing battle and that it would be better for the town to settle and give its planning and zoning boards the opportunity to decide which form of tower would be best suited for the chapel property.

The judge’s decision notes that the Chapel was deemed eligible early this year for inclusion on the New York State Register of Historic Places — something he notes was also not considered in the deliberations of the settlement agreement.