Hampton Bays Pattern Book Tinkering Continues as Board Seeks To Assuage Critics of Redevelopment Guide

Southampton Town officials bowed to pressure from a small but vocal group of Hampton Bays residents who have bristled in recent weeks at the latest version of the “pattern book” envisioning a redeveloped downtown, asking town planning staff to remove any sort of dimensional references to building sizes in the suggested guidelines and even dropping graphics that showed what some said could be construed to be a new street connecting to Good Ground Park.

Removing dimensional references — most notably, a mention of building heights in sections not exceeding 50 feet in height — that can be addressed when specific zoning codes for the redevelopment are crafted in an uncertain future for the redevelopment aspirations but leaving broader parameters for the aesthetic of buildings and streetscapes would leave the pattern book’s guidance more design based.

“We’re taking out all the references to heights out of the pattern book,” Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara told residents on Tuesday night. “That will be addressed separately in whatever codes.”

Town Planning and Development Administrator Janice Scherer told the board, and residents, that following a discussion with the board on Thursday, she was making edits to the pattern book and would present the new version at a hearing in August.

Residents threw daggers at the lame duck version all the same.

“The main concern seems to be that this should be a book of architectural suggestions, not code,” Hampton Bays resident Bob Tyson said. “But the opening paragraph says ‘provides standards’ — one could interpret that standards are code.

“A good lawyer could say, ‘I looked at your book and I made a plan. It said these are the standards.’ That means anything in the book, either pictures or graphics, diagrams, anything that is written, can be interpreted as code.”

During the discussion last Thursday, July 18, at a Town Board work session, Councilman Michael Iasilli had voiced a similar sentiment — that the pattern book should be an architectural and aesthetic guide for future development to ensure that the character of the Hampton Bays downtown, such that it remains today, is preserved.

“My understanding of what this document is trying to do was … to provide recommendations preserving the community character,” he said. “We don’t want whatever development occurs to go outside the study. It’s about future development.”

The board also settled that some of the graphic renderings — drawings, not photographs — be altered or removed altogether, because they had led to so much consternation among hawks who have seen the pattern book as a slippery slope toward overdevelopment in the downtown.

One graphic had appeared to depict a new street connecting Montauk Highway to Good Ground Park. Town staff and board members said the vision was only for a roadway that would be blocked from vehicle access by retractable bollards, to allow it to be used for emergency vehicles, or in special circumstances to allow food trucks in or as a temporary egress for vehicles following heavily attended special events in the park.

“I think we should just remove [page] 101 since that highlights the road to the back,” Supervisor Maria Moore said. “I don’t think people trust the bollards. One of the speakers mentioned that the park was CPF property, and can you even put a road through to it?”

“We’re not putting a road through,” McNamara said. “We’re just trying to give you a way that if this parking lot is full for a concert or event and you’re getting everybody out rather than having everyone go out this one way, say, if you’re going to Riverhead, it would allow you to get out of the area.”

Critics have said the road should be a walking esplanade only.

Resident Gayle Lombardi, whose lawsuit against the town derailed a rezoning plan for the downtown intended to spur redevelopment, said that the town should abandon the piecemeal amending of the town’s comprehensive plan, which the pattern book would be another appendage to, and start anew from scratch.

She said the pattern book and the vision of redevelopment still threatens soaring density — and hundreds of new bedrooms with no eye toward what has been created just on the fringes.

“You should be looking at doing the comp plan over, because right now it is a bastardized version,” she said. “You’re doing everything in a vacuum. All these little silos.

“Adopt this as an architectural guidebook,” she added. “Extend it past the business district, east and west. Extend the sidewalks, bury the electric lines. There’s plenty you can do besides zoning.”