Sag Harbor Will Petition Public Service Commission To Rehear Gas Ball Parking Lease

Sag Harbor Village Board members on Tuesday said they were not ready to throw in the towel on the loss of the lease for the National Grid gas ball parking lot to developer Adam Potter, and have hired attorney John Dax of the New York City law firm, Hodgson Russ LLP, to ask the state Public Service Commission to rehear the matter.

The commission, in a 5-2 decision on July 21, awarded a 99-year lease to the site, which contains about 100 parking spaces currently used by the village for long-term parking, to Potter’s 11 Bridge Street LLC.

Potter agreed to pay KeySpan approximately $5.4 million over the life of the lease, including $400,000 up front. The village offered $1.5 million.

After the PSC’s decision was released, both Mayor Tom Gardella and Potter said the two sides would work together to try to hammer out a deal that would allow the public to continue to use the lot after Potter’s lease goes into effect on September 15.

On Tuesday, however, Gardella said that for now, Potter only had offered the village a one-year deal.

“We need a long-term solution,” he said. “We shouldn’t be kicking the can down the road.”

Trustee Ed Haye, who is an attorney, said the village’s case would not be an easy one to make. “It’s an uphill battle to ask the deciding body to reconsider its decision and expect a different result,” he said.

“I don’t know exactly how he will argue it,” Gardella said of Dax’s filing. “But he’s got some points about how they didn’t take certain things into consideration when they made their decision.”

Gardella added that two members of the commission had sided with the village. “All we have to do is convince two more,” he said.

The village’s request needs to be filed by August 21, a month after the PSC’s original decision.