Hampton Road Property Owner Victorious in Lawsuit Against ZBA

A Hampton Road property owner who sued the Southampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals for denying his application to build a residence in an office district has won his case.

In a June 27 decision, State Supreme Court Justice George Nolan ordered the ZBA to grant the property owner, local real estate broker Christopher Burnside, the special exception use permit and lot coverage and floor area variances that he was denied last year.

Burnside has been the owner of the 0.72-acre property at 220 Hampton Road since 2017. He told the ZBA last year that he had put the property on the market as vacant land or a build-to-suit opportunity, but had no takers for three years so he was seeking a special exception use permit to build a single-family home there — where a house had stood before and part of the foundation remains.

According to Nolan’s five-page decision, a house was on the lot for many decades, but it was demolished in 2006. The property had been “split-zoned” between the Hampton Road office district, a commercial district, and a residential district.

The justice wrote that the prior owner, John Punnett, applied to the ZBA in 2007 to have the entire property brought into the Hampton Road office, or HRO, district. Once the ZBA granted its approval, Punnett applied to the Planning Board for a two-story, 3,960-square-foot office building with 20 parking spaces. The Planning Board approved the application, but Punnett never built the office building.

Burnside told the ZBA that in light of the COVID pandemic, there is no demand for office space in the village. He also explored options such as a cafe or car storage, but those were nonstarters with the Building Department. So he applied in January 2022 for a special exception use permit to build a residence there.

The board voted on April 28, 2022, to reject the request.

“It is undisputed that single-family dwellings are a permitted use in the HRO district,” Nolan wrote. He quoted from earlier court cases that found that when a special exception use is written into a zoning code, it is “tantamount to a legislative finding that the permitted use is in harmony with the general zoning plan and will not adversely affect the neighborhood,” and if the required conditions are met, a special exception use permit “must be granted unless there are reasonable grounds for denying it that are supported by substantial evidence.”

Nolan found that Burnside had met all of the relevant criteria for a permit except for “imprecise standards” requiring an applicant to show that a proposed development “is particularly suitable for the location in the community.”

“Further, the board’s conclusions were unsupported by any factual data or empirical evidence and, therefore, the board’s denial of the special exception permit was obligatory and capricious,” Nolan wrote.

There was no evidence to support the board’s findings that Burnside’s requested variances would produce undesirable changes in the character of the neighborhood or a detriment to nearby properties or that the variances would have an adverse environmental impact, he continued.

He also faulted the ZBA’s April 2022 decision for not addressing the “commercial/residential makeup” of the office district.