In Tuckahoe, Land Pegged For Affordable Housing Remains Vacant 10 Years Later

As Southampton Town’s housing task force scours the town for more properties that might be usable for affordable housing developments, $3.5 million worth of land that the town purchased nearly a decade ago, with affordable housing in mind, remains unused.

In 2005 the Town Board approved the expenditure of $3.5 million from a dedicated affordable housing fund to purchase about 4.7 acres of land off Moses Lane in Tuckahoe from the Press family, part of a large chunk of property the family was planning to subdivide for development. Two of the three lots the town bought, about a half-acre in size each, are single and separate and developable, but a third lot, some 3.6 acres, has still never been subdivided from the rest of the Press family’s land. It sits vacant, still encumbered for use to create affordable housing, with an uncertain future.

“Even though it was bought, it was never legally subdivided by Press,” town Planning and Development Administrator Kyle Collins said. “There’s kind of a funky situation on the property that complicated the subdivision, which is just getting started now, actually. There’s some old buildings, one straddles the lot line, so they have to go to the [Zoning Board of Appeals], there’s some discussion of what part of the cost of that the town should incur since we are partners with Mr. Press now.

“They will have to apply to the Health Department, he continued. “Lots of stuff. That’s why it’s been hanging out there for the last 10 years or so.”

At least one and probably both of the smaller lots, which are on the south side of Moses Lane, conform with the area’s half-acre zoning designation and could be developed in their current state, though the smaller of the two is oddly shaped and wedged between the merging of two roadways.

Mr. Collins said the town has not recently looked at whether those lots could be built on immediately or discussed, at least recently, how they might be put toward creating more affordable housing. The town has used several such small, single-house lots in the last year to create homes that can be sold to individuals chosen by lottery for less than $200,000 because the cost of land is removed from the equation.

How the larger chunk might ultimately be used, once it is usable, is completely up in the air. Mr. Collins said that for an affordable housing development, the town code would allow, as of right, a 50-percent increase in density on the property, meaning that six houses on the 3.6-acre lot could become nine without any modifications necessary.

Using a planned development district proposal, which allows the town to change the zoning, could ramp up the density substantially. The Sandy Hollow Cove PDD approved last month allows 28 apartments in three buildings on just 2.6 acres, also in Tuckahoe.

Former town supervisor Patrick Heaney said in a recent conversation that when the Moses Lane properties were purchased, the town was already anticipating the development of the now dead Tuckahoe Main Street project. It was planned to be a mix of residential and commercial development and would employ a waste treatment system that the town had hoped a multi-family development on Moses Lane could tie into. That project has since been withdrawn, replaced by a new PDD proposal that eliminates the residential component.

Opponents of the Sandy Hollow Cove proposal frequently asked during public hearings why the town wasn’t putting the development, or any development, on the Moses Lane land. Board members were mum at the time but have since said that, in light of the Sandy Hollow approval, the Moses Lane land is now cast in a new light.

“There are some concerns about the environment and wetlands there and there’s been some talk of switching it for some other property,” Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said. “It’s now in an area that is going to be within a very short distance of [Sandy Hollow Cove] and in the same school district. It is something that the housing task force is going to be looking at.”

Town housing efforts have long searched for ways to create more moderately priced living accommodations east of the Shinnecock Canal, where land values have pushed most regular homes out of the reach of middle-income working families. Officials have also said they are sensitive to the potential impacts on school districts and the tax bills they create and must therefore spread subsidized efforts to create housing as far and wide as possible.

If the town chooses not to seek another increased-density development on the Moses Lane properties, the land could be in a legal limbo. Because it was purchased with funds marked specifically for affordable housing it could not be turned over to some other use by the town.

Town Attorney Tiffany Scarlato said she wasn’t sure whether municipal laws or the details of the original purchase of the property would allow the town to sell the lots and put the money toward affordable housing developments elsewhere.

“We’d have to research whether they could surplus it and reimburse the fund or rededicate the money,” she said. “It’s not something we’ve done before.”

Housing Authority Executive Director Curtis Highsmith said that the Housing Authority is hoping the property’s status will be settled soon, as the property is something that he sees figuring prominently in their future plans, in whatever form.

“We have had discussions but nothing has been decided yet,” he said. “We are very hopeful that it is something that will be more actively looked at shortly.”