Environmentalists Continue To Push For Southampton Town To Repeal PDD Law

Environmentalists continue to push for Southampton Town to repeal legislation that enables planned development districts, or PDDs—a zoning mechanism that can allow more intense development in exchange for community benefits—even as the town contemplates a moratorium on PDDs to allow a reevaluation of the rules surrounding their use.

Richard Amper, executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, and Robert DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End, argue that repealing the town’s PDD law altogether would be more viable than a moratorium and rewrite.

“At some point, you realize that the thing doesn’t work,” Mr. DeLuca said of the current legislation. “If you look at how many of these PDDs have sprung up over the year … obviously, the developers feel like they’re on to something.”

Proposed by Town Councilman John Bouvier, the one-year moratorium would mean the Town Board would stop reviewing and accepting new applications for PDDs. While the moratorium is in place, town officials would evaluate the PDD legislation, looking in particular at the rules surrounding the community benefit requirement.

According to the current law, open space, affordable housing, parks, day care, elder care or “specific physical, social or cultural amenities” are all acceptable community benefits. Developers also can essentially pay out of the benefits—for example, by giving a certain amount of money to the town instead of providing affordable housing units.

The moratorium would not apply to PDD applications that have already passed the public hearing stage of pre-application review—meaning that The Hills at Southampton proposal in East Quogue, Gateway in Bridgehampton, and the Townhouses in Water Mill all would be exempt. Several who spoke at a public hearing on the proposed moratorium on April 12 suggested that ought to be reconsidered.

Mr. Amper and Mr. DeLuca supported a push in October to repeal the PDD law, an effort at least partially inspired by town officials’ willingness to entertain the application for The Hills, a golf course and resort community that would go on a large tract of environmentally sensitive land in East Quogue. Then-Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said at the time that she had no intention of repealing the law, which was last modified in 2011 under her guidance, and that she would not support a one-year moratorium on new PDD applications.

With the public hearing phase of the process completed, the Town Board now is waiting for a 30-day written comment period on the moratorium to end before it voting on whether to adopt it.

Mr. Amper and Mr. DeLuca have said that the town already has the authority to reject any PDD application if it wishes to—something Councilwoman Christine Scalera has noted when arguing against the proposed moratorium.

“Why do you need to have a moratorium on PDDs [when it doesn’t] cover the problematic ones that have already been approved or are in the pipeline—and ... you don’t have to entertain [new applications] at all?” Mr. Amper said. “What the Town Board seems to be saying is, ‘We need to be studying it more,’ or ‘We have to be impartial.’ The answer is no—they were elected to make decisions.

“We think PDDs represent ‘let’s make a deal’ planning. Planning is supposed to tell the community what can be built where,” he continued. “When you invite builders to come in and tell you what they’d like to do, then the planning process is all about the developers and what they want, and is less about what is in the interest of the people.”

Bridgehampton Gateway touts affordable housing units as its benefit, while The Hills includes a slew of purported benefits, such as a new $200,000 playground at East Quogue Elementary School, a $700,000 donation to the single-school district’s capital reserve fund, upgraded septic systems for East Quogue residents, shellfish in Shinnecock Bay, and the dedication of 4 acres of land to the Suffolk County Water Authority.

If the town does allow more PDDs, Mr. DeLuca said there should be more oversight of developers to ensure that they follow through with the benefits they said they would provide, and any conditions to which they agreed.

“If you had two PDDs in the town, I could be persuaded that you know enough about them. The more the number of PDDs expands … the town has to have somebody who’s responsible for overseeing all of those conditions,” Mr. DeLuca said. “You just do not have the resources,” he continued. “The more you have, the more you have to keep track of.”

Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman said he would not consider repealing the PDD law until it has been reviewed. He said that, when executed properly and carefully, PDDs can offer better options than some current zoning—for example, he said, the proposed Gateway would be a better use of the property across from the Bridgehampton Commons than highway business, the current permitted use. Mr. Schneiderman said he also likes that affordable housing is included in the proposal.

But in addition to further sharpening the community benefit portion of the law, Mr. Schneiderman said, he wants to tweak the number of Town Board votes required to even begin evaluating a PDD application. Only three votes are required to consider an application, while four of the Town Board’s five votes are required for approval.

“If you look at the amount of time we spend just on the vote to consider … I would rather just simply say, ‘We’re not going to even evaluate it in that respect,’” the supervisor said. “To me, that is the largest flaw in the law. I think if there’s only three votes to consider … that may send a message that, at the end of the day, it’s not going to have the four votes it needs.”

Comments at the public hearing focused on whether the PDD law should be repealed, rather than repaired, and on the fact that “certain properties should be in the moratorium that aren’t,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “They all fell into the category that it doesn’t go far enough.

“I’m not sure yet whether the moratorium will lead to a repeal of the law—it might,” he continued. “It would at least lead to major revision.

“I’d rather send a clear message: Don’t even bother to ask for the next year,” the supervisor said.
“I think that’s a much stronger statement.”