Southampton Town To Create Park at Former Bel-Aire Cove Motel Site, Dropping Development Plans

Following widespread local opposition to new hotel condominiums or other boutique-hotel options springing up at the site of the former Bel-Aire Cove Motel on Shinnecock Road in Hampton Bays, the Southampton Town Board voted Tuesday night to reject two development proposals that came about through a request for proposals issued last year.

The decrepit motel situated on 1.47 acres on Penny Pond, which was bought by the town for $1.06 million in 2019, will now revert to public parkland once the facility is demolished, said Town Councilman Rick Martel in advance of the unanimous vote Tuesday night.

The vote represented a huge victory for Hampton Bays residents who decried the development opportunity put out for bid in 2022.

The board also approved a resolution Tuesday to pay LiRo Engineers LLC $57,000 to undertake asbestos removal at the old motel in advance of its demolition. That contract will run for two years with the option for an additional two years as needed.

In passing the resolutions, the town ended a long-running dispute between the board and multiple local civic organizations and Hampton Bays residents who flatly rejected a proposal, spearheaded by Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, that could have seen a luxury boutique hotel or other facility built at the Bel-Aire site as part of the Hampton Bays Waterfront Revitalization Plan.

Those groups included the Hampton Bays Civic Association, the Hampton Bays Citizens Advisory Committee, and the Hampton Bays Beautification Association.

The town considered the two proposals earlier this year via a work session meeting and subsequent public hearing in March that saw opponents come out in force against Schneiderman’s proposal. A lawsuit was directed at the town from three highly motivated residents, Mary Pazan, Liz Hook and Doreen Bartoldus, that sought to nullify the adoption of the Hampton Bays Waterfront Resort Revitalization Plan and the selection of the Bel-Aire Cove Motel property as the first urban renewal area targeted within the plan.

“I’m delighted with this news,” said Hook. “It’s been a long time in coming — we’ve been fighting this since 2018, and having gone through five years of fighting, I’m still a little hesitant to take a full victory lap until we see an actual passive park there.”

One of the proposals, from a company called GMRC Modular, called for 16 600-square-foot units in three single-story buildings. The other, from First Dunes Inc., sought to develop the site with 12 units of up to 1,200 square feet as a “condominium hotel,” with units sold to individual residents who would be able to rent the units when they weren’t otherwise occupied by the owners.

Both proposals came with all sorts of add-on features including pools, gazebos, pickleball courts, walking paths, new bulkhead, and a floating dock to provide tie-ups for small boats.

Residents — 2,000 of whom signed a petition decrying the Schneiderman-led development gambit — said they just wanted a passive-use park where they could, say, launch a kayak into the pond.

Schneiderman’s relentless pursuit of a development plan where the town would flip the property to a developer and keep it on the tax rolls has fallen by the wayside as he, too, voted in favor of rejecting the twin bids. The vote was undertaken without any discussion of the past, present, or potential future for the site.

In rejecting the two development bids, the Town Board resolution acknowledged the effort undertaken by the two applicants that came forward after the RFP was issued, “but finds that it is in the best interests of the town to cancel this RFP and reject all proposals for the purchase and private development of the property,” which is located at 20 Shinnecock Road, “as not being in the best interests of the town.”

“This action is consistent with the environmental concerns and the community input,” said Hampton Bays resident and ardent Bel-Aire redevelopment opponent Gayle Lombardi following the vote.