Sag Harbor Historical Society Forum Focuses on Preservation

A group of about 20 people, including several veterans of the village’s regulatory boards, attended a preservation forum sponsored by the Sag Harbor Historical Society on Saturday at Christ Episcopal Church.

Building on two earlier gatherings, the March 11 event focused on questions participants had about the planning and development process in the village and what could be done to better protect the village’s historic character and charm.

Architect Randy Croxton served as moderator of the event, which had as its panel Jeanne Kane, the chairwoman of the village Zoning Board of Appeals; Will Sharp, the chairman of the Harbor Committee; and Larry Perrine, a member of the Planning Board. Steve Williams, the chairman of the village Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review, was unable to attend.

Reading from questions that were submitted beforehand, Croxton asked why the ZBA had to permit so many variances. The answer, replied Kane, is not so cut-and-dried.

Even though the village has uniform half-acre residential zoning, many lots are smaller than that and many preexisting houses violate required setbacks, she said. The ZBA tries to work with applicants to come to a reasonable compromise that allows them to expand or otherwise modernize their houses without infringing on their neighbors’ property rights, she said.

Another question focused on the height of buildings and why elevated foundations were allowed. Sharp responded that Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations require that houses in flood zones be elevated, but he suggested that continuing to build in flood-prone areas may ultimately be a fool’s errand, given climate change and rising sea levels.

“It’s getting obscenely expensive to accommodate some of these environmental issues,” he said. “Maybe the best thing to do is not allow building on some of these lots.”

Much of the perception that taller buildings are being allowed “is coming from the three tall buildings under construction on Water Street,” Perrine added, referring to the condominiums that developer Jay Bialsky is building there.

Another questioner, citing a trend toward taller hedges screening historic houses, asked whether the village could limit their height. Croxton described Sag Harbor as “the absolute inverse” of East Hampton and Southampton, where tall hedges are like the “burkas of mega-mansions that are never seen.”

But Kane said, although the code limits the height of fences or walls to 4 feet, it has no provision to control the height of shrubs or hedges. “The issue is, as we all know, these are living bushes and trees, and they all grow,” she said. It would require the Village Board to enact new rules limiting the height of hedges.

The discussion also touched on whether buildings considered “noncontributing” to the historic district are subjected to the same standards applied to the roughly 800 contributing buildings in the original historic district.

Zach Studenroth, the village’s historic consultant and the historical society’s vice president, said that while noncontributing structures are not held to the same standards, the ARB needs to keep in mind the impact changes to a noncontributing building could have on neighboring contributing structures. And Croxton said the ARB was charged with trying to maintain a sense of scale and character with any project in the historic district.

Anthony Brandt, the ARB’s former chairman, also weighed in.

He said the ARB should focus on preserving the small cottages on the side streets off Main Street because “they are what makes this village what it is.”

But they also are threatened, he added, because wealthy buyers “think they can buy one because it’s so cute and then double the size.”

Money, he concluded, was the biggest threat to the village’s historic character.

“You cannot fight the money after a while because there is just so much of it, far more than there should be in a little community like this, which was never a place for rich people except along Main Street,” he said.

The discussion touched on training volunteers to the village’s regulatory boards receive and how to better inform potential buyers that there are expectations that property owners will protect historic properties in the village.

Enforcement was also a concern, although the village now has a full-time code enforcement officer and fire marshal in Bruce Schiavoni, who Mayor Jim Larocca said, is often available on weekends.

Sharp said that part of the problem with enforcement is that the penalties for violations are not big enough. In Massachusetts, he said someone who demolished a historic building would face a two-year suspension of their building permit and be fined the total cost of rebuilding the building. “Until we have serious penalties, everyone is going to run that stop sign,” he said.