Sagaponack Wants Wolffer Houses Kept Out Of Sight

The Sagaponack Village Board and the estate of the late Christian Wölffer are sparring over how four residential lots on a 12-acre portion of the family’s winery should be arranged.

The family is proposing to cluster four lots of approximately an acre and a half each on about half of the property, and dedicate the other half to open space, as required by town law.

The estate has asked to be allowed to cluster the homes at the eastern end of the property and keep the preserved open space to the west, where a narrow portion of the parcel runs along Sagaponack Road. That arrangement would leave the new housing lots surrounded by open space, with the winery vineyards on one side and the preserved field on the other. It would also mean that the new houses would not be built adjacent to the home of Mr. Wölffer’s widow, Naomi Wölffer.

Michael Walsh, an attorney for the Wölffer estate, said that the arrangement of the houses on the eastern portion would preserve the open field along Sagaponack Road, a feature favored by land preservation strategies, so as to preserve vistas for the general public.

But board members said that pushing the houses to the eastern portion of the parcel would actually destroy another vista seen by a great many more people: one looking north across the expanse of the Wölffer property from Montauk Highway. The parcel rises to crest at its eastern end and, board members noted, the houses would be clearly visible and interrupt what is an otherwise pastoral view across the winery land. And the vista benefit from keeping the land open along Sagaponack Road would be minimal because of the small window into the land afforded by the narrow road frontage.

“I’m more for this plan with the houses on the road—the viewshed is so narrow here anyway, you can’t see any agricultural land here,” Village Trustee Lisa Duryea Thayer said. “From the highway, I think we would see this high spot.”

Mayor Don Louchheim said that by clustering the houses along the western end, the board could permanently protect the vista from the rare stretch of Montauk Highway that is surrounded on both sides by open agricultural lands. “I understand that, from Mrs. Wölffer’s point of view, having the lots in the back would be a great advantage,” he said. “But that’s not really what our charge is.”

Mr. Walsh noted that the board should perhaps have the interests of the landowners at heart somewhat, and pointed out that the Wölffer estate has preserved more than 125 acres of its land as open space.