Express Sessions: Anticipating Summer 2022 In Southampton And The Village's Future

To examine the challenges Southampton Village faces as it approaches another high season with unprecedented crowds expected, the Express News Group hosted “Southampton 2022: A Summer Like No Other” last week with a panel of local government, nonprofit and business leaders.

The panelists during the March 24 Express Sessions discussion at Union Sushi & Steak spoke to the evolving nature of the village and the difficulty that businesses and nonprofits alike have in finding employees who either live locally or will put up with a long commute.

Some panelists were also concerned about the current mood among village employees, particularly police officers, and whether the village is catering to wealthy visitors and newcomers at the expense of local families and longtime homeowners.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated many of the changes that have been happening in Southampton Village for years and exacerbated the affordable housing crisis. Few have experienced the challenges as acutely as the March 24 panelists, who each spend most of their waking hours in downtown Southampton.

“For a variety of reasons, you know, not the least of which is, hopefully, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, this summer could be really unprecedented in many ways here in Southampton Village,” Express News Group Co-Publisher Gavin Menu said as he introduced the discussion topic and panelists. He pointed out that, at the same time, many of the challenges of the last two years remain — namely, staffing issues. “Who owns a business and isn’t having trouble finding people to work?” he wondered.

The panelists included Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren, Southampton Arts Center Executive Director Tom Dunn, Topiaire Flower Shop and Topiare Candy Shop owner Erin Meaney, Golden Pear owner Keith Davis, and Plaza Cafe owner and chef Doug Gulija.

Joseph Shaw, the executive editor of the Express News Group, served as moderator.

Shaw said parts of summer are already being felt in the community and at businesses, which he said is good, although he qualified that assessment. “We have to acknowledge this is a growing stress on the community in many ways, too,” he said. “The size of the crowds that we get in the summers everywhere — but in Southampton Village in particular — are getting bigger and bigger.”

Warren, who is the owner of the Main Street retail shop Tenet, said that as the mayor and as a business owner, he agrees that the village is expecting one of the busiest summers on record. “That also comes with a number of challenges,” he added, naming the Department of Public Works and police department as two village departments that will be feeling that additional stress.

He was the first to raise the issue of the lack of affordable housing, which he said makes it difficult for businesses to find staff.

Davis noted that 2022 is Golden Pear’s 35th year on the corner of Main Street and Nugent Street. The cafe has a consistent, year-round staff, and in the summer he has added between eight and 12 employees from countries around the globe through the J-1 visa, he said. He has also hired local kids for the summer, he said, but in the last 10 years — with the exception of 2020 — the local kids don’t want to work there.

In 2022, Davis has his J-1 team back. The four-month visas, which he said have been “a godsend for more than 20 years,” were not available in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.

He also attracted three new assistant managers by scheduling start times after the morning “trade parade” traffic and by paying 25 percent more than establishments up-island.

Davis said Golden Pear will charge a little more to cover the cost of paying employees more. Other cost increases he faces are commodities such as strawberries and lettuce going up in price 5 to 10 percent due to rising diesel fuel prices. Avocados are 30 to 40 percent more expensive after cartels got involved in the avocado business and caused disruptions, he added.

Meaney said her flower business never closed during COVID but instead redesigned its business plan and started shipping orders. “I’m not at all concerned or worried, because we kind of haven’t stopped going full tilt for three years,” she said of the coming summer.

Meaney, who noted that she formerly led the Southampton Chamber of Commerce and is the daughter of former Mayor Bill Hattrick, said what saddens her is divisiveness in the village. She described “dissension in the ranks” among village employees, whom she praised. “They work tirelessly to create this beautiful village that so many people want to come see,” she said. “It’s famous — people want to come to the Hamptons.”

Meaney said she speaks to other locals who also feel sad. “I’m worried that before long, none of us is going to be left,” she said. “I dream, for the first time, about getting out of here, sometimes. … I never spoke like that when I was a kid.”

She would later add that she feels the village has lost its idyllic and old-fashioned feeling.

“It may be naive of me to think that it can still be that way,” she said. “But I see village employees pruning and taking such care of our park — and I know that it’s at the tutelage of the mayor’s office that a lot of great things get done — but I know there’s a lot of division, and I feel like people are being divided, the 1 percent and the 99 percent.”

Local families feel like their kids can’t live in Southampton anymore, according to Meaney. “My kids can’t afford to have a house here,” she said. “They never will, unless something incredible happens.”

Meaney suggested that there are people who have come to Southampton from New York who have “taken over” and are working “behind the curtains” to dictate what happens. “I don’t think that they are people that can make the decisions about the police department and about the village employees,” she said.

Gulija said he agrees with Meaney and that Southampton has become more of a “resort.”

“I’m also at a point where I don’t see myself staying here much longer,” he said. “It’s not as much fun to run a business. I love to cook, so that keeps me going. But being a part of something that I think is changing, and so unlike what I grew up in, is sad in a lot of ways.”

Warren encouraged Meaney, Gulija and others to participate in the drafting process for the village’s new comprehensive master plan, which is going on now, and to share their ideas for the village’s future.

“One thing that we pride ourselves on in the village is that we provide really a high level of customer service, whether it’s the village residents, stakeholders, business owners,” Warren said. “And any single person who walks in the Village Hall, we do exactly what they ask, and people do applaud us on getting the job done.”

He said what’s happening in the village is happening on the national level as well: Housing price inflation is causing people to move, and they are priced out of ever returning.

“A lot of people — year-round residents, people that I know and like very much — for whatever reason have sold their homes, and they have moved out and left the village,” the mayor said. “And at this point, unless you get really lucky, there’s really nothing to buy here anymore. And we haven’t addressed that affordable housing issue.”

He said the village’s sewer district plan will be critical to help fix the workforce and affordable housing shortage while also providing housing for artists, more mixed-use buildings, and more theaters and restaurants. “Things like that, that are critical to any downtown,” he said.

Regarding divisiveness in the village, Warren said the local level is experiencing the same change in the tone and tenor of politics that’s been seen on the national level in the last 20 years. As for the mood of village employees, he said he believes police officers and other village employees really enjoy coming to work.

“When you come to Village Hall to get your beach pass, you’ll see everyone’s very happy to be there and the service level has improved,” he said.

Meaney was not swayed by any of the mayor’s comments.

“I can’t help but feel like there’s some underhandedness going on that will affect the business district long term,” she said. “I’m going to keep putting my pretty plants outside and keep trying to attract people to shop, and I do, but I will give no credit to the municipality for making that happen.”

Warren suggested that had the 2000 comprehensive master plan been followed, many of the changes in the village that have upset locals could have been avoided.

Shaw pointed out that the plan expressly stated that the goal was to take care of residents and part-time homeowners — and not resort visitors or day-trippers. “Tourists were not the focus of what this plan was meant to do,” he said. “It was meant to take care of people who live in the village, people who own property in the village.”

Shaw wondered if the village needs to recognize that things have changed and make some new priorities.

Warren said residents and part-time homeowners are still the focus. “I don’t think that many business owners would say that day-trippers are their number one source of revenue, or any resident would say that that is something that’s their number one favorite thing about the village,” he said.

The most important thing to do now is to provide more opportunities for families to live in the village, the mayor said. He noted that areas that had been zoned for multi-family use under the old master plan were later converted to single-family use. “We lost a lot of housing inventory,” he said.

The new master plan can help the village prepare for the possibility that the Community Housing Fund passes, according to the mayor. That fund, if adopted by Southampton Town voters, will provide a new revenue stream for affordable housing initiatives.

Davis said the taxpayer with a $10 million house and $35,000 annual property tax bill should be listened to more than the day-tripper who comes out, spends a few hundred dollars and goes back home.

Meaney was concerned that people come in, buy a big home and feel that they can then tell everyone how it’s going to be because they have the biggest house and most money.

“You’ve got to be respectful of this little place,” she said. “It was our little place a long time ago, and you came here because you love the way we were.”

Ian Duke, the proprietor of Union Sushi & Steak, told the panel that the opinions of the people who live in the surrounding areas and spend most of their lives working in the village matter too.

“I don’t see why we have to have a comprehensive master plan that eliminates that,” he said. “... Why can’t we include both? Why can’t we look at ways that incorporate everybody?”

Warren encouraged anyone with ties to the village to give their input on the master plan.

Gulija joked he is “the oldest line cook in the Hamptons right now,” due to staffing shortages at the Plaza Cafe.

“Thank God I love what I do,” he said. “I’d be in trouble, because, financially, the last two years have been challenging. COVID was a challenge for us. But we got through it.”

He shared that he lost 60 percent of his business last year, because he cut back rather than hiring “warm bodies.” He only wanted staff members who were willing to go through a training program and “live up to our standards.”

He took the Plaza Cafe off the reservations website OpenTable and stopped answering the phone, he said. ​​“We set up just what we can handle that lived up to our standards — and that’s all we took.”

Things seem to be getting better, and visas certainly help, Gulija said. He named housing as key to the staffing problem. “I did purchase a house in the village to house my sous chef,” he said. “I had to. I would have lost him, and then I would have really been in trouble.”

He added that he ran into roadblocks putting other people into the house and that he doesn’t understand why it is so difficult in the village to be able to rent out space to J-9 visa students.

“Overall, I’m looking forward to a good year,” Gulija said. “I think it’s going to be much better, and I hope I’m not working 60 hours a week.”

From the nonprofit side of the village, Dunn noted that 2022 is the Southampton Arts Center’s 10th season. “Our growth has been exponential,” he said. “We started in 2013 with 50 offerings over four months, and then our peak in 2019, we offered 250 programs across 12 months and we reached 50,000 people.”

Southampton Arts Center obviously contracted in 2020 he said, but he pointed out that the arts center had been fortunate to persevere when 13 percent of nonprofits closed and never reopened.

“We are intentionally actually looking to do a little bit less than we’ve done historically,” Dunn said of 2022. “I think 250 programs was too much for an organization as small as mine. So we are intentionally trying to be a little more thoughtful, a little more specific. We’re going to do slightly less and of a higher quality, a little more focused, this coming year.”

With only three full-time employees, the arts center doesn’t have the staffing issues that his colleagues on the panel do, Dunn said, but it does feel the housing circumstances when trying to bring in artists during the summer. It also has affected the art center’s search for a new artistic director. “The reality of someone relocating to this region on a single income is extraordinarily difficult, prohibitively so,” he said.

Dunn said the arts center is “tremendously excited” about the return of summer. “We really never kind of went away,” he added. “It was maybe just smaller and safer in scale during the pandemic.”

Regarding the burgeoning Southampton Village Arts District, which the arts center is an anchor of, Dunn said it is critical to the village’s sustainability. “The creative and the experience economy will continue to propel this village,” he said.

He cited an Americans for the Arts study that found that when patrons purchase a ticket at the arts center, they spend another $31.47 outside of the facility. “I’m very pleased to know that the work that we’re doing, the audiences that we’re attracting are driving business to the local economy.”

In addition to the nonprofit sector’s contributions to the arts district — such as the Southampton African American Museum, the Southampton Cultural Center, the Peter Marino Arts Foundation and the Southampton History Museum — he pointed to the private galleries that have come to the village downtown since the pandemic began: Phillips, Christie’s, Hauser & Wirth, etc.

“There is a true cultural renaissance happening in the Village of Southampton that I think sets this community apart,” Dunn said.

Warren emphasized that the village’s comprehensive master plan, which is being updated for the first time since 2000, will include an expanding arts district inclusive of Jobs Lane and Hill Street.

The village granted an easement to the Peter Marino Arts Foundation to accommodate beautification plans, Warren said, and has reached out to other arts institutions and has encouraged them to come to the village.

“We think that this is a great thing for the village,” Warren said, “and we would like to build on a lot of this momentum.”

The village has even partnered with a nonprofit organization to pursue keeping the movie theater on Hill Street as an arts and cultural center, the mayor added.

“The Village of Southampton is a very amazing place,” Davis observed. “We have so many assets here. It’s beautiful, bucolic, the ocean beaches, the bays, the landscaping — it’s an incredible place. But without the arts, it doesn’t have that same flavor and that same feel.”