Express Sessions: Southampton Village Board Members See Bright Future For Village

The future of Southampton Village is bright, according to members of the Village Board, who are currently undertaking the development of an updated master plan for the village.

That plan will consider how best to bring a sewer system to the business district, and develop a vision for a vibrant downtown business district — through increased outdoor activities, partnerships with local arts organizations, and retooling parking restrictions.

The board — led by Mayor Jesse Warren, who secured majority control of the board with the recent election of members Gina Arresta and Joseph McLoughlin — is poised to move forward with a new vision, in spite of setbacks caused by the all-encompassing pandemic. The majority members said they were eager to work with their colleagues, board members Andrew Pilaro and Mark Parash, to make the village shine, leaving political rifts in the past.

“I think if we … come together working in a bipartisan way to figure out these issues that we all care about, we all have a mutual agreement to see this succeed. I think we all want to see it happen,” Mr. McLoughlin said at a virtual Express Sessions forum on November 5, “A Tale of Two Villages, Part 2: Southampton Village Looks to the Future.” It featured all five board members and followed a similar forum with East Hampton Village officials two weeks prior.

“So I think, with this board that we have now, we have the momentum and the time to really say, okay, we’re going to do new a new master plan after 20 years,” he added. “Great. So let’s actually put it in place, let’s engage some private money, let’s engage with people who want to give back.”

The forum was held via the Zoom platform and was moderated by Express News Group Executive Editor Joseph P. Shaw.

In addition to the Village Board members, Southampton Arts Center Director Tom Dunn made a brief appearance to talk about the role of the arts community in the village, and about a recent project to install artwork in the windows of vacant stores in the business district as a beautification effort.

Village officials have been discussing the need for a sewer system to service the business district for more than a decade, but little action has been taken, primarily due to the cost. But the current leaders say it’s time to move forward.

“It’s no longer a conversation about ‘is a sewer a good idea,’” Mayor Warren said. “It’s, maybe, how we’re going to finance that sewer. Because the sewer is key, in my opinion, in many other people’s opinion, not only to unlocking the growth and the vibrancy of our downtown but also for environmental needs as well.”

One possible solution, he said, at least as a first step, would be to partner with Stony Brook Southampton Hospital to use its treatment plant, which has available capacity. “So we have existing infrastructure at the hospital,” he said. “We don’t own it, the hospital owns it, so we can partner with them.”

Additionally, the village is also looking at partnering with a third party, which would come in and build a sewer district and then lease it back to the village.

While there was some discussion among the board members about what the best option would be, they all agreed that a sewer district must be a first step for revitalizing the downtown.

The advantages of a sewer district in the business district would be the ability to add more restaurants and bars — referred to as “wet uses” — and additional housing, perhaps above stores, all of which would be seen as adding to the vibrancy of the village.

But what shape should a revitalized downtown take? Mr. Shaw asked. “I’m asking all five of you: Is there a village that you have in mind as an example moving forward?”

“I don’t think we want to be another village,” Mr. Parash replied. “I think we want to create our own identity. … Personally, I don’t see it wise to emulate another village. I think we can take pieces from other villages that have been successful in adapting.”

Mr. Warren noted that Southampton Village is unique, in that, unlike other villages and business districts on the East End, there is no traffic through the middle of the village.

“Southampton Village is uniquely situated where we have our own downtown that’s outside of any highway,” he said. “So we have an amazing nucleus to work from.”

The mayor added that village officials should also look to the past when developing a model for its future.

“The irony and the blessing here is that we can actually look to Southampton Village for inspiration toward our future,” he said. “If you walk into Village Hall, there’s all these pictures from a century ago, and it turns out that Southampton Village is exactly what we want to be. … I think the best inspiration for the future is actually looking to the past, and so there’s no village that we’d want to be more than our own village.”

One vision shared for the future of the village is a more walkable downtown, filled with outdoor activities to help it become more of a destination for visitors.

The village made headlines this summer — both positive and negative — for an experiment during the pandemic, “Southampton in the Streets,” in which portions of Main Street and Jobs Lane were closed to traffic and restaurants were encouraged to seat outdoor diners at tables in the closed-off areas.

While it attracted some negative attention from the state for perceived social distancing violations, the board members said those concerns were addressed and that the experiment was, in fact, a success.

Efforts to keep the village vibrant in the face of an unprecedented time were a challenge, Mr. Parash said, but their success was something to be proud of.

“So, to be honest, we got smacked in the face,” he said, “restaurants, businesses, village government. I mean, when I think back about that time, wearing my hat as a business owner, and going, well, I’m shut down March 17 — what do I have to do? We have to adapt. We have to learn how to deal with this again. … I was really proud of the board, because we did maneuver through a lot of obstacles.”

And if there was a silver lining to the pandemic, it provided the village the opportunity to test out outdoor dining and outdoor events in general, which had been discussed by previous administrations, but never undertaken.

Looking forward, the board members said they would like to plan similar events in the future, once the pandemic clears.

“If there was a glass half full,” the mayor added, “it has also shown us that some of the things that we thought about such as opening up our streets and making them more pedestrian friendly and doing more outdoor activities, these are all things that we can bring to life.”

While the summer events were primarily geared toward the restaurants, many shops did not benefit, they noted, in some cases because of employment issues — stores simply didn’t have the labor force, because of the pandemic, to stay open later during the events.

Ms. Arresta added that parking also became an issue for some people during the events, which she would like to address in any future events.

“The other part of the problem that I heard feedback from closing of the streets, which is a nice idea,” she said. “It would have been nicer if more things were open, or there were more events happening to warrant the closing of the streets. It was, really, it was for a few restaurants, and it was new, and a lot of people said to me, who were older, that they felt like they were shut out because they couldn’t walk from a back parking lot all the way to Main Street.”

Mr. Pilaro added that many store owners were concerned that it wouldn’t be “viable” to extend their hours, hoping people would come in before or after dining, but it turned out that business owners who tried it saw success.

“It wasn’t going to be worthwhile for them to be open, to spend money on the staffing to ramp up to have people there staying open until whatever time they thought they would need to be open until. But I do know that some of the shops that eventually did do it, they saw that it worked,” he said.

Those issues aside, Mr. Parash said that the summer events have spawned a momentum to create more outdoor affairs. “Why can’t we look at doing outdoor art exhibits on the streets?” he said. “Why can’t we incorporate theaters, plays, acts, interactive on the streets? Why can’t we do something and start thinking about looking at movies on Main? Anything like that.

“We did find out that some of the people are really comfortable being spaced out, being outside. And I think, what can we do? I think we can start looking at that. We incorporate the arts into the downtown district, dining, arts, music, all these things that touch all the senses of residents, visitors, consumers.”

Mr. Warren added that the village should “take inspiration from the old county fair.”

Mr. Pilaro added that future events next summer might be better planned to attract more people, noting that officials were hamstrung this summer due to fears about attracting too many people during the pandemic.

“I don’t know that if we’re in a post-COVID world next year, next summer, that we have to do it every weekend like we did it,” he said. “But if we could selectively choose some weekends and create events around it, that would allow us to have the people come in …

“And I think one of the reasons that we were a little concerned, especially after the first week, is we didn’t, as a board, we certainly were not able to want or encourage people to come out and hang out in the streets and gather, because that was absolutely, 100 percent against the governor’s mandate of social distancing and all of that.

“So, again, in a post-COVID world, maybe that is something that this board would say, okay, a couple of weekends this summer, let’s have a street festival, a state fair on Main Street and Jobs Lane, as the mayor suggested. So there are definitely good ideas, but the process has to be looked at.”

Mr. Dunn, from the Southampton Arts Center, said that while the institution didn’t benefit directly from the outdoor events this summer, the village benefited as a whole, and so, in turn, did the center.

“That didn’t drive revenue for us,” he said, “but we know that when we activate our front steps, it’s benefiting our neighbors at the same time. So we’re all in this together.

“When we succeed, our neighbors are going to succeed, and the village as a whole are going to succeed also.”