The Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee and the group Save Bridgehampton Main Street have finished conducting their own studies to measure the potential effects a planned CVS pharmacy would have on traffic and parking in the hamlet.
The groups raised about $8,000 to hire Steven Schneider, a Ronkonkoma-based traffic engineer, to study possible congestion and backed-up traffic at Montauk Highway, Lumber Lane, Ocean Road and the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike if a CVS were to go up at a vacant corner in that intersection.
On Tuesday, Mr. Schneider said the study was completed over the weekend and that his firm is currently evaluating the results, which are expected to be ready to report in a few weeks. He declined to offer an opinion about the intersection at this time.
In addition to studying traffic patterns in the area, Mr. Schneider was also tasked with evaluating the turning radiuses of large trucks at the entrances to the parking lot that would be designated for CVS customers, employees and deliveries.
“It’s going to be a terrible mess,” Nancy Walter-Yvertes, co-chair of the CAC, said about delivery trucks entering and exiting the lot. “They’re not going to make it.”
Ms. Walter-Yvertes added that the studies are “something the town should be doing” instead of residents, but that both citizens’ groups are confident the results will show Southampton Town officials the reality of a traffic and parking nightmare to come.
Leonard Davenport, of the steering committee for Save Bridgehampton Main Street, has stressed how troublesome traffic already is at the intersection and has said that it will only get worse if CVS comes into the picture. He added that BNB Ventures IV, the owner of the parcel at 2150 Montauk Highway, where the future pharmacy would be, is also in the process of conducting its own traffic and parking study.
Mr. Davenport said that CAC members have personally witnessed delivery trucks having difficulties maneuvering in the parking lot of a CVS in Southampton Village, something Bridgehampton’s residents foresee happening at a store in their hamlet as well.
Designs for the CVS were approved by the Southampton Town Planning Board in 2009. Last week, the company applied for a special exception permit that, if granted, would allow it to develop a 9,000-square-foot, two-story pharmacy-convenience store. The town code limits commercial storefronts to a maximum of 5,000 square feet but allows that limit to be exceed in certain cases with special exception permits approved by the Planning Board.
Alyssa Melillo on Aug 6, 2014