Southampton Town Directs $5 Million To Preserving Marshlands in Western Shinnecock Bay

The Town of Southampton will dedicate nearly $5 million from the Community Preservation Fund to the purchase of waterfront land on Quiogue and in Quogue this fall to enhance wetlands buffers along western Shinnecock Bay and its tributaries.

The town already has approved the purchase of a $3.8 acre parcel of wetlands on Dune Road in Quogue and is poised to approve a second purchase of an additional 3.6 acres in the same stretch of bayfront marshlands that will preserve a beloved walking path from the road to the waterfront.

On the north side of the bay, the town is also in line to purchase a 2-acre estate on Quantuck Creek that will be razed, and the land will be allowed to return to a natural state of wetlands.

The estate is divided into three parcels, owned by different members of the same family, who have agreed to sell the land to the town for a combined total of $2.7 million.

As a condition of the sale, the family will pay to raze a large house and other structures that are currently on the land.

The property has some 150 feet of shoreline along Quantuck Creek, on the creek’s western shoreline just to the north of the bridge where Montauk Highway passes over the creek. Community Preservation Fund Director Jacqueline Fenlon said that the removal of the house and lawn will help bolster the wetlands buffer to the creek.

The property is developable, Fenlon said, and could have been subdivided into multiple new building lots or had a much larger home built in place of the existing one, like the adjacent properties now have.

The town has been working with the property’s owners on a purchase agreement for more than two years, Fenlon said.

Along the barrier island at the south side of the bay, the two purchases the town has in the pipeline will “complete the puzzle” of an already broad swath of preserved wetlands.

The town will pay Stuart and Linda Schlesinger $2 million for the narrow 3.6-acre parcel they own, stretching from Dune Road to the waterfront.

The northern end of the Schlesinger property is where the Quogue Boardwalk reaches the water after meandering north from the roadway, through the marshlands to the bay.

“It really is a lovely walk — I took my kids there,” Fenlon told Town Board members. “This parcel is that last remaining link to preserve the entire walkway and the majority of the wetlands in this area. This would complete the puzzle.”

The property is surrounded by wetlands parcels that have already been preserved by the town, Suffolk County and the Village of Quogue — interrupted only by a single large house that juts into the marsh. The town approved the purchase of a similarly sized — but much cheaper — parcel just two lots over earlier this month. Evan Lanier agreed to sell that 3.8-acre parcel for just $140,000.

“So this whole area will be preserved for coastal resilience, wetlands marsh areas, all very important stuff in Shinnecock Bay west,” Fenlon said.

The Town Board unanimously approved the purchase of the land from the Schlesingers at its October 28 meeting.

“If you zoomed out a little bit more,” Councilman Rick Martel said, “you’d see how much has really been preserved in that area.”