Express Sessions Explores Sag Harbor's Green Spaces

Protecting Sag Harbor’s enviable number of green spaces while maximizing their use was the topic of the most recent Express Sessions event, which was held on Thursday, May 11.

A panel consisting of landscape architect Ed Hollander, Sag Harbor Mayor Jim Larocca, Planning Board Chairman John Shaka, and Linley Pennebaker Hagen, a member of the Mashashimuet Park Board, was guided through the discussion by moderator Joseph P. Shaw, the executive editor of the Express News Group, which hosted the panel discussion at the American Hotel.

Larocca, who has long been a promoter of John Steinbeck Waterfront Park, which will have its formal opening at 11 a.m. on Thursday, May 25, said that the village’s waterfront had gone through a series of changes over the centuries that saw it transformed from an agricultural and whaling port into a recreational one. The park, he said, was a model for how the village should address the future of its waterfront.

He said many communities have faced the challenge of revitalizing a waterfront that had been designed for an earlier economy. In Sag Harbor, the economy has transitioned into one that is based on “tourism, recreation, and the arts,” he said. “ Every one of those identities argues for turning the village back toward the waterfront as a scenic attraction.”

Larocca said he was continuing to lobby Southampton Town to use the Community Preservation Fund to purchase the building at 2 Main Street. He added he would support its purchase of the neighboring Water Street Shops building, which had been eyed as a future home of Bay Street Theater before those plans were dropped late last year, to expand the park even more.

“I think any commercial development of any consequence on that site would be a sad development for the village,” he said. “I don’t think there is anything commercial we need in that space that’s as important as opening up the waterfront.”

Hollander, who volunteered his services to design both Steinbeck Park and Long Wharf, said the recent renovation of the wharf was done in the same spirit, with the idea of making it a more inviting place for the public.

“Where Long Wharf went from a place for cars to a place for people is the beginning of a story of transforming the waterfront and the public spaces in Sag Harbor to a new use and trying to make something that is pedestrian-friendly, as spaces for people, as opposed to spaces for cars or industry,” he said.

Larocca added that “the idea was to bring parklike elements to a commercial wharf — but it is still a commercial wharf.” He said docking and mooring fees represented the second-largest source of revenue, next to property taxes, for the village, which is in the process of extending its transient docks there.

Shaka said he would expand the definition of public spaces to include the water surrounding the village. “That has to be considered part of the public domain,” he said, adding that protecting water quality was an important responsibility of the village.

Shaka also said any discussion of public spaces should also include “the fabric that links these parks together, the streets, the sidewalks.”

Hollander shared some of Shaka’s views, pointing out that places like Oakland Cemetery were among the village’s first green spaces, and that others, including the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum grounds, should not be overlooked.

“There are a lot of other grounds here we don’t think of as parks,” he said. “We shouldn’t think of open space as segregated areas. It’s the ribbons of green that connect all these things together.”

Judging by the murmurs from the audience, many people, as Pennebaker-Hagen said, were not aware that Otter Pond was part of Mashashimuet Park. It was purchased by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, who had the houses that once surrounded it moved elsewhere.

She explained the 65-acre park is owned by a private, nonprofit organization that runs it for the benefit of the village without any village financial support.

“It’s kind of confusing, but that’s the way Sag Harbor is,” she said.

Besides the athletic fields, whose upkeep is paid for by the Sag Harbor School District, the park has a sprawling playground, tennis courts, and access to the Long Pond Greenbelt from its trails.

“It’s a jewel for the community, and we want to try to keep it that way,” she said.

With the school district asking voters to approve the purchase of property on Marsden Street this week, a plan to have the school district underwrite a long-term capital project to improve fields at the park is on hold.

However, School Board President Sandi Kruel said the district and the park board remain on good terms. “We will always need Mashashimuet Park,” she said of the district’s need for athletic fields. “There will never not be a need. It is a joint effort that we have. We need them and they need us.”

Both Pennebaker-Hagen and Kruel said they were optimistic that Southampton Town would be able to work out a deal to use the CPF to purchase development rights from the park to help it finance long-term improvements.

The conversation also turned to Cilli Farm, a 9-acre parcel off Long Island Avenue preserved by a three-way partnership of the village, town, and Suffolk County.

“I think it is a true opportunity for the village,” said Hollander, who admitted the property, is “kind of derelict” now. He said it could be used for walking trails, a community garden, as a place to capture stormwater runoff, and a number of other uses.

“The one thing I’ve learned having lived in Sag Harbor 30 years is to get all the best ideas that people have in the village — you cannot do them all — but how could this area be used to the greatest benefit?”

Asked if there were any plans for Cilli Farm, Larocca said there had been a proposal put forth by Drew Harvey of Sag Harbor to install exercise stations along a trail, but Larocca said the biggest problem was that the county controls the property and the town and village “don’t have a full voice” in its management.

The panel agreed that Marine Park, absent perhaps additional shade trees, was being used well. It will become home this summer to the weekly Sag Harbor Community Band concerts, which used to be held in front of the American Legion building across the street until Police Chief Austin J. McGuire raised safety concerns about allowing concertgoers to sit in the middle of Bay Street during the performances.

Shaka said the village also needs to pay attention to Havens Beach, the village’s only public bathing beach and a property that is used for fire department carnivals and a dog park. The problem is the park was once marshland that collected runoff from a large part of the village. Today, that runoff is polluted, and it runs in a ditch, untreated, straight down the hillside into the bay, except for a sponge filtration system near the beach.

“It’s an amazing place for swimming, boating, and sailing,” Shaka said. “The potential for environmental remediation is huge there.”

Hollander agreed. “It’s a great place, it’s worth a fortune, it’s irreplaceable, and it doesn’t get the love it deserves,” he said. Although it has issues with pollution, “it would not be difficult to remediate.”

But Hollander pointed out with all the number of green spaces in Sag Harbor, “I don’t think any mayor or any administration can focus on all of them at any one time.”

“It’s an opportunity for the community to come together with the Planning Board and the next administration to talk about what could happen there and what could happen at Cilli Farm,” he added.

Indeed, there were questions about the status of Steinbeck Park. April Gornik, citing the recent laying down of nearly an acre of sod, asked if there would be an effort to include plants that would appeal to pollinators.

“I always consider the birds, the bees, and the butterflies as valuable a user group as the people who are going to be in any of our spaces,” responded Hollander.

He said rain gardens had been planted with goldenrod, milkweed, and other plants that attract butterflies. Ten recently planted native red oak trees would provide a food source for caterpillars, which, in turn become butterflies, he said.

Hollander added that some of the turf could be replaced with other plants as additional work is undertaken.

Chris Tice asked if the village had a system in place for long-term planning, suggesting that it seemed as if many proposals had been developed independently and on a piecemeal basis by various wings of the village government.

Larocca responded that the Planning Board and Trustee Bob Plumb had been assigned the task of coordinating a project aimed at identifying long-term planning needs for the village, and that Trustee Ed Haye was working on a long-term capital plan to help the village plan for major expenses.

The mayor said the work would be continual. “An ideal plan is a process that never finishes,” he said.