Neighbors Redouble Efforts To Halt Atlantic Golf Club's Plans For Worker Housing

Neighbors of the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton have launched a two-pronged offensive against the Southampton Town Planning Board’s approval last month of the club’s proposed 16-bedroom staff housing building on a site just off Scuttle Hole Road, overlooking Shorts Pond.

Last week, they filed suit, challenging the Planning Board’s site plan approval for, among other things, allowing Atlantic’s representatives to submit environmental reports after the public hearing on the application had been closed and refusing to allow opponents an opportunity to comment on that information.

And last Thursday, Brian Matthews, the East Hampton attorney representing the neighbors, appeared before the Town Zoning Board of Appeals to challenge the determination of Dennis O’Rourke, then the town’s chief building inspector, who concluded last June that staff housing was an acceptable accessory use at a private golf club. That ruling paved the way for the Planning Board to consider the application, without requiring the club to seek variances from the ZBA.

Neighbors have charged that the dormitory-style building will block views of Shorts Pond — one of the most scenic vistas along Scuttle Hole — and possibly pollute the groundwater leading to it. Plus, they say, the housing would create an overly intensive use too close to their homes, with the building just 40 feet away from the property line of MaryAnn Gabriele, who lives next door.

For its part, Atlantic has countered that it is providing much-needed staff housing and placing it in the only feasible site on its 200-plus-acre site.

“Any business owner understands the need to attract and retain help seasonally and year-round and the need for them to have a place to live,” Matthews said. “But you can’t circumvent the law.”

While Matthews said it seemed clear from the outset that the club’s “intention was to place the sole burden” of the development on neighbors and the public, the club’s president, Dennis Suskind, insisted, “We located it in the absolute best place we could for the neighborhood. I would have loved to put it somewhere else, but there is no other place.”

It will likely take several months before the matter is resolved. The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, is initially on the February 24 calendar for the plaintiffs’ request for a judgment annulling the Planning Board’s decision.

Meanwhile, Wayne Bruyn, the attorney for the golf club, told the ZBA last Thursday that he had only received a copy of Matthews’s submission that morning. He requested a month to prepare his own written response. The ZBA, in turn, said it would impose a March 28 deadline on all comments and would be prepared to make its decision on whether the building inspector had overstepped his bounds when it meets on April 21.

In his argument before the ZBA last week, Matthews said it was clear the building inspector erred. He said the town code only allows staff housing for two types of businesses: a farm or restaurant.

While existing staff housing at Atlantic dates to the 1970s when the property was a farm, there was no way the current use could be construed as being related to farming, he said. Similarly, he said, although the golf club has an on-site restaurant, that was itself a secondary use.

Matthews said an apartment-like building like that proposed for the staff housing was illegal in the residentially zoned neighborhood and added that even if an accessory building of that size were legal, it would not be allowed to have bedrooms and kitchen facilities.

The question, he said, comes down to whether or not the building inspector can have “a use and or a structure that is prohibited under the local zoning code simply by classifying it as an accessory use. We think that the law is clear that the building inspector is not vested with such unfettered discretion or authority.”

Matthews conceded that several other golf clubs in town have staff housing, citing the Bridge in Noyac, the Southampton Golf Club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, and the National Golf Links of America.

“It is of absolutely no importance if other golf courses throughout the town may perhaps have been allowed to construct new employee housing,” he said. “This board is not required to duplicate previous errors.”

Matthews said the club still had options if it wanted to build staff housing, saying it could either apply for a variance from the ZBA or ask the Town Board to amend the code and allow golf courses to offer on-site housing.

Several other speakers joined Matthews in criticizing the Planning Board approval.

Pam Harwood of the Bridgehampton Civic Association, which was created over frustration that the former Citizens Advisory Committee was not allowed to weigh in on planning and zoning issues, said a 2004 Bridgehampton hamlet study called for the preservation of scenic vistas along Scuttle Hole Road and suggested that part of the reason that golf courses are taxed at a lower rate is because they are expected to preserve open space and vistas.

She also pointed out that when the club wanted to build another structure in 2018, the state Department of Environmental Conservation noted that Shorts Pond was a documented breeding area for endangered tiger salamanders.

Emil Braun, a neighbor, questioned how the Planning Board went about reviewing the application.

“The way they went around things to this point has been extremely sketchy and suspect,” he said. “That has cast a real pall on the Town of Southampton that requires serious investigation.”

Chuck Bowman, an environmental consultant for the neighbors, also raised concerns about the way the Planning Board handled the club’s application.

“In my experience of 40 years, I’ve never seen it where the public hearing is closed and the applicant is allowed to submit all sorts of information, and the public is not allowed to comment,” he said. “I find that troubling.”

So did Matthews, who said he felt the Planning Board was in a rush to approve the application. “While the board held work sessions and accepted new material including groundwater and surface water studies in December, the neighbors and our experts were not allowed to weigh in,” he said. “We were shut out of the process.”

Suskind rejected the notion that the process was rushed or the neighbors’ concerns ignored. “Everything we are proposing is a matter of right,” he said, adding that he had spoken to Gabriele, the closest neighbor, to go over the plans, and that she had never offered any objections.

For the 30 years it has been open, the club has been a good neighbor, contributing to local charities and fundraisers, and trying to be good stewards of the land, he said.

Suskind said the staff housing would be supervised to make sure residents do not cause disturbances, and he said it would have a modern wastewater system to make sure the pond would not be polluted.

He said he found it ironic that the same neighbors who have decried the application for spoiling the view, had planted trees and shrubs in front of their own houses, blocking the view.

“We could put trees across our whole property,” he said. “But we didn’t — and we aren’t going to.”