Q&A: Jay Schneiderman Talks About Hampton Bays and How the Conversation Will Go From Here

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman says he has a soft spot for Hampton Bays — he’s long been looking to invest in the hamlet, where he rented for a time while his Southampton Village house was being renovated.

“I’ve been very interested,” he said in a recent conversation via Zoom. “My sister and I bid on a commercial property at one point, and we weren’t able to come to terms. And I’ve bid on a couple of residential properties personally, tried to purchase.”

The reason, he says: “I believe in the future of Hampton Bays.”

The town’s interest in the hamlet’s future has hit a rocky patch: Language included in a contract signed with the firm Nelson Pope Voorhis talked about “neutralizing” opponents by discrediting them, angering opponents of the proposed Downtown Overlay District. Town officials appeared horrified, apologized and quickly nixed that part of the contract, and NPV last week resigned from the project.

A Hampton Bays Civic Association conversation about the overlay district drew hundreds of people, but the discussion with town officials broke down into chaos, with no resolution.

Last week, Schneiderman talked about where the project will go next, and what the town has learned. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

You have talked about the situation with NPV’s contract, and you’ve taken responsibility, and you’ve apologized for it. The question I have is: Moving forward, where does that leave you, as far as the project is concerned? Are you worried about whether that could cripple the whole idea of having a conversation about what’s happening in Hampton Bays?

Well, community trust is essential for any planning effort. So, yes, of course I’m worried that the repugnant language that appeared in the contract will undermine public confidence, and it’ll be hard to build that consensus that’s necessary to revitalize downtown.

I mean, of course, that presumes that the public wants to revitalize downtown. And I’ve said that before — that’s really your starting point, to me, is current zoning. Look at the land use patterns that have unfolded under current zoning. Those are the types of things that will likely happen in the future.

And the types of developments that, since the 1970s, when the current zoning was put in place, have been more of your bigger-box type of stores. It could be the plaza by the movie theater, or [the former] Liggett’s — very different from the intersection of Ponquogue and Main Street.

So you have these two different development patterns, one sort of coming in from the outside and one sort of coming out from the center. And the one coming in from the outside, it really, to me, is not in line with what I think the community wants for its downtown. Downtown, you want more of that small-town, quaint shopping experience, more the boutique shops and the outdoor cafes.

So I think the two are at odds with each other, and if we don’t fix the zoning in a way that would allow that smaller-scale development, then I think that you’re going to lose the sense of place. Hampton Bays will be … you’ll drive through Hampton Bays without knowing you’re in a downtown or in a hamlet center, a Hamptons hamlet center. I mean, I think that is legitimately at risk.

So if we’re not able to develop community trust, then I think we’re sort of stuck where we are, and I think downtown will languish. I think it’s going to be tough to find people who will want to invest in downtown. And if they do, I think the community will not be happy with the resultant development.

So you want to continue the conversation?

I do. I want to see if we can find consensus, try to figure out what people agree on.

But there is a pragmatic sort of reality that will have to set in here, too. We can talk about all the things the community wants — a performing arts center, wide sidewalks, bike lanes, boutique shops, outdoor cafes. But if nobody’s going to build it because the economics don’t work, then it’ll be a lovely plan that sits on a shelf and gets dusty.

So I think at some point you do have to have conversations with investors and property owners and see if you can find things that the community desires that are also economically viable. I think that’s a ways off, but I think there is a place at the table for those who own property in the downtown area.

So I think right now, what I’m hearing, and this may be premature, but I think that for the most part people do want to see downtown revitalized, and they do want investment. They are concerned about the scale of that investment. They don’t want it to overly benefit an individual or company. They are concerned about additional population and how that might affect school taxes and traffic and those kinds of things.

They seem to want some kind of cultural aspects, like a performing arts center, somewhere, or a movie theater, because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose the current movie theater, which is a legitimate fear. They seem to be okay with sewage treatment. I think they understand that modern communities treat sanitary waste and that it’s good for the environment.

There is significant concern about the one spot that the town sort of galvanized around, which was near the cemetery. … So I’m willing absolutely to consider other properties. I have some in mind that could be more beneficial. I think there are actually a number of possible properties.

So if we consider the NPV contract as a sort of a stumble in this process, how does the town change its approach moving forward as to how it leads this conversation?

I think we have to start fresh. We have to engage the community in planning for its own future. It can’t be a sort of developer-driven plan that we then try to sell to the community. It’s got to be a community-driven plan that we sell to the developer.

So the community has to figure out what it wants. Where is this revitalization going to occur? What is it going to look like, feel like? How do we want Hampton Bays to look in the future?

And maybe an even more fundamental question: Who is Hampton Bays? Who are we? Are we a summer community? A year-round community? Blue collar community? Do we want young people to live in our community?

Who are we building this for? Are we building it for people to come in and spend money in downtown Hampton Bays who are tourists? Are we building it for people who live within Hampton Bays? Is it part of the experience of being in Hampton Bays? Does it create a sense of place?

I mean, I think those are all sort of baseline questions that haven’t really been answered.

People don’t seem to want the population to increase, but there probably is some trade-off there and there could be some shifting of density so that the overall population isn’t increasing, it’s just you’re concentrating it more into an area that’s more walkable so that people don’t have to drive as much. You can walk to the train station, you can walk to shops. A lot of young people want to live in places like that, that are very walkable, with recreational opportunities, very bikeable.

So, yeah, I think that we have to figure out who this is for. I think it’s sort of a frank conversation that has to be had, and I think in small groups. I think it’s really starting from scratch and having it come from the community.

Listening rather than ...

Listening. A lot of listening. But then also reconciling the community vision with the practical reality of the property owner side. A great plan that isn’t practical, that no one’s going to invest in? We’re no better off after that.

And so I really do think that the property owners have to be part of the conversation at some point. Maybe not initially, but they have to come in at some point and say what they would be willing to do. If the numbers don’t work, we can’t ask them to lose money. They’re always going to take a risk. But they’re not going to just spend money knowing they’re going to lose money.

You mentioned the developer involved, Alfred Caiola, who has amassed some properties. What’s his role been in this conversation with the town? It’s sort of a double-edged sword, isn’t it? You have a developer you can work with to actually make something happen — but it also means the developer has to have some say in what gets accomplished. It can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Right. So, I mean, in this case, we do have an individual who has purchased quite a number of properties north of Montauk Highway, between Montauk Highway and the park. … And he is not the only property owner north of the highway. He is somebody who has long connections to Hampton Bays. He has a family compound in Hampton Bays. His brother lives here. Other relatives of his are in Hampton Bays. And he’s a very successful person.

In my conversations with him, I mean, it certainly sounds like he wants to do something really wonderful in Hampton Bays, that he wants to do something that really enhances the experience in Hampton Bays, even if it’s not profitable to him, which is kind of interesting.

It is kind of nice when you sit down with your maps and your planning to not have to deal with seven or eight different property owners when you’re trying to create new roads that maybe cross through properties and buildings that are connected to each other. One property owner could always hold out and hold an entire project up.

So from a planning perspective, it can be helpful. But I understand the community concerns about potentially enriching one individual or one person trying to dictate the process because they own so much property.

So I think that Mr. Caiola needs to talk with community members. He needs to demystify himself, come out from … I really don’t want to say “come out from the shadows” — I don’t think he’s really in the shadows — but he’s been kind of quiet. And I think he needs to say, “Look, I do own these properties. I believe in the future in Hampton Bays. I want to do something really great here that I think the community would love, and let’s see if we can figure it out.”

The Rechlers did something similar with Canoe Place Inn. They got involved with the community conversation about restoring the old hotel, and there was a give-and-take. And not everybody seemed to want the hotel revitalized, rebuilt. It was extremely expensive to do that. The only way it was going to work for the Rechlers was if they could get some increased density on the other side of the canal on another property they own, where the boathouses are.

And, this is prior to me, but they reached the agreement. Not everybody was happy with it, and it wasn’t everything everybody envisioned, but ultimately people now do seem to enjoy coming into town. Maybe they think the density on the canal on the east side is maybe a little high, but they look at the hotel building and I think they feel good that there’s this beautiful facility that’s greeting them as they come into town.

It’s very hard to get everybody to agree on anything, even in a family. So the best you can do is try to build a consensus.

And that’s why it’s sort of a challenging moment — because of that regrettable, unfortunate and repugnant language that appeared in that consultant agreement. We have to now get the community to again believe that we have the community’s best interest at heart, which — I’ve spent my adult life in public service. It’s always been about engaging the community and planning for its future.

I was as outraged as anyone in seeing that language. So it does make things more challenging now.

So I mean, there’s nothing in it where anyone in town government to try to benefit the developer. We want the community happy, we want the community to support us. … Our motivation is to earn community trust, work with the community to plan for its future, and then give them the tools that they need to help them realize the future that they want.

I’m willing to put the time in. I’m not ready to give up and say, “You know what? It’s your downtown. You like it the way it is? I’ve got other things to focus on.”

You say it’s going to be a challenge, and certainly it was to begin with. It’s more of a challenge now. Why is this so important to you, to do this in Hampton Bays?

So when I drive to Hampton Bays, I see what is, and I see what could be.

When I set out seven years ago to run for supervisor and I talked to a lot of people in Hampton Bays, and there was a lot of discontent with the way things were at the time. Property values were going down, property taxes were going up. And the more I got to know Hampton Bays — and I’ve been representing that area now for maybe 19 years, seven years as supervisor and 12 years as [Suffolk County] legislator — it is really one of the most beautiful places I know. I mean, it’s really special. When you come over the Ponquogue Bridge and see the little islands and the water glistening and maybe some boats out there, maybe some clammers out there, there’s something very serene and special about it.

I spent a lot of my life in Montauk. And Hampton Bays always sort of reminded me of Montauk. It was salt of the earth — it was hardworking, regular people. It was unpretentious. It had the fishermen, a lot of year-round people. And it just always felt like home to me. It’s the kind of place that I would choose to live in.

But when I get to downtown, there it feels like something went wrong. It has potential. It’s got a train station in the heart of downtown. But it doesn’t really serve the whole community to me.

You mean the downtown?

The downtown, right. I mean, it serves some of the community, but it doesn’t have the kind of foot traffic that you’d expect. It feels a lot different from the other downtowns out at the Hamptons. Whether it’s Montauk, which is very touristy, but Sag Harbor, Greenport and Southampton Village — all have a very distinct feel. Even Westhampton Beach, you know when you’re downtown. Hampton Bays, you can sort drive right through, and a lot of it feels just like the area outside of downtown. It doesn’t feel like you’re in a Hamptons-like downtown. … Its natural evolution was stymied, maybe by the zoning that was put in place. It could have gone a very different way. It could have ended up with a downtown that was more Hamptons-like.

But it doesn’t mean it can’t in the future. And the revitalization effort through the form-based code was sort of to allow those things that the public wanted but weren’t allowed under zoning. So it could evolve with these smaller-scale boutique type of shops and restaurants, wide sidewalks. Rather than having the parking along the main road and these big parking lots and everything set back, you could have the stores right up against the sidewalk, and then the parking behind it and connected together.

And we’ve talked before about having people who live downtown is part of that equation, too, so that you have foot traffic — not just people who are coming in, but people who live downtown make up part of that foot traffic.

Yeah. If you just did commercial, it wouldn’t be vibrant and commercial probably wouldn’t survive. You need some people wandering around, walking their dogs, shopping. And a lot of that is going to come from the people who live above those stores.

You had 500 people who turned out for the Civic Association conversation. There’s clearly a willingness for people to talk about the future of Hampton Bays and a real deep concern about what that future is.

I mean, that Civics meeting does show community engagement, that the community is very deeply interested in the future of Hampton Bays. And we may be not as far apart as it seemed at that meeting. There may be a lot of areas of commonality. I think most people agreed that we needed a … it’s a modern community — it needs sewage treatment. It’s good for the environment. Finding the spot is more the contentious issue.

And they agreed on the wide sidewalks and the vibrancy and the outdoor cafes and the bike paths and the performing arts center. The biggest areas of disagreement: placement of the sewage treatment plant, the scale of development, how tall things could be or how many stories, and how many people. Those seem to be the biggest issues, as well as concerns about traffic.

And I think the traffic issues really need to be addressed. In the original plan that was approved, there was this idea: highly walkable, highly walkable. In the current area between Montauk Highway and Good Ground Park, they were envisioning a whole bunch of new streets that were perpendicular to Montauk Highway, sort of creating these square blocks.

But when you do that, you end up with crosswalks and intersections on Montauk Highway. And Montauk Highway already doesn’t flow very well.

So I think that as we reapproach this issue, although we want it to be pedestrian friendly, we also have to figure out how to keep Montauk Highway moving. And that’s going to be one of the bigger challenges, and I don’t know that we’ll be able to have all these little blocks. I think we can focus on the area between Montauk Highway and Good Ground Park and make that extremely pedestrian friendly, almost like a pedestrian commons.

But the area where 7-Eleven is, the post office and the firehouse, that’s going to be more challenging in terms of the redevelopment of those properties, and it’s probably a long way off.

And that will become one of the questions too: What about green spaces? Are we going to fully develop it or are there going to be little pocket parks and things like that?

But I think people do want it family friendly. They want more things for people to do. So I’ve heard the idea of an ice rink come up a number of different times as something to do in the wintertime. And so I’ve been thinking about where could that go. Would that go in Good Ground Park or Maritime Park? Or maybe centrally located in downtown? But I think it’s important to get other people involved in that process.