Here To Stay

With the arrival of Memorial Day weekend, and the beginning of the end of the pandemic, the South Fork is about to enter a moment where the significant changes of the past year will become impossible to ignore. The summer of 2021 will provide clear evidence both of the region’s blessings, and of the related blight.

Last week, the Express News Group held the latest of its virtual conversation series “Getting Real with East End Real Estate,” gathering a panel from the local real estate community to discuss, in this edition, an idea that, coincidentally, The New York Times had just written about that past weekend. It’s the notion that houses on the East End are no longer second homes or vacation homes — with the pandemic, and the acceptance of “work from home” in particular — homes here are now considered “co-primary” residences.

The Times quoted Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel, a real estate appraisal and consulting firm that studies the East End market along with many others, who earlier had coined the phrase “co-primary,” which captures the more intense uses beyond the “Memorial Day to Labor Day” of decades back. For years, part-time residents eschewed rentals to invest in buying homes here and began using them throughout the year. The COVID-19 disaster made those homes places to escape dense urban living, and new buyers flocked to find refuge.

In the virtual conversation, most agreed with the idea of an increasing “co-primary” role for local properties, though Cee Scott Brown of Compass noted, “All the folks that we’ve been dealing with are moving out here, and they are not just co-primary — it’s primary.”

Whatever the terminology, it’s clear that the region’s long history as a summer resort is evolving. That change began years ago, but the combination of virus and virtual has injected jet fuel into the engine. “The season” is about to arrive, but the truth is that so many people have been here for months. The bursting at the seams is no longer a summer issue. It’s just the standard now.

As the panel noted, the impact on infrastructure will be immense: not just the electric grid, which is already taxed, and the water supply, which is finite, but the roads, parking, schools, sewers. Every one of those is already an issue, and this new reality will hasten a decline. These are issues that take a generation and a fortune to solve, if solutions exist at all.

But if this is part of an evolution away from a seasonal community and toward neighborhoods filled with primary and co-primary residences, there are other changes that will bring. “Quality of life” is a watchword that has driven development for years — but what if those qualities demanded by residents change? What if, rather than just clean beaches, nice restaurants and a concert now and then, property owners start wanting more conveniences and services that are part of everyday life, year round? At what point does a resort transform into a suburb?

There are other considerations. Take Jay Bialsky’s glass-fronted condos on Sag Harbor’s waterfront, currently on the market for $25 million each. Mr. Bialsky, who will live in one of the three, described them to the Times as “urban living in the center of Sag Harbor.” That’s going to appeal to New York City transplants who want to stay here for real life and not just repose. But “urban living” is not a phrase you will find in any planning guidelines here.

Still, Mr. Bialsky got approval for his “people aquariums” overlooking Steinbeck Park from village regulatory boards. As more people try to bring the city to the East End, it will be incumbent on those boards to “hold the line,” as one panelist put it.

On the other hand, as Mr. Brown pointed out at last week’s panel, the Bialsky condos are not the first modern architecture on the South Fork, and there’s always been an allowance for change, and for individuality. How much? The next decade might increasingly answer that question.

The bigger infrastructure impact will be on human capital: The affordable housing crisis that existed before looks like the good old days. As property values soar, there’s even more incentive for long-term residents to cash in and move away. But they won’t leave behind dwellings within the budget of a new generation of volunteer firefighters, teachers and nurses. That, in turn, will be felt on local roads, every single day, year round. Yes, it can get worse.

It’s not all bad. Marc Heskell of Saunders & Associates noted that the arrival of new year-round homeowners has been healthy, and those people have brought talents and a dedication to civic involvement. It can be overly pessimistic to see this period of incredible success in only the worst terms.

One fact remains: Memorial Day used to be when people began their temporary visits. They’re now here to stay. And so are the challenges.