Stakeholders Frustrated Over Lack Of Progress On Concer House Reconstruction In Southampton

After months of forward progress and momentum, the effort to reconstruct the homestead of formerly enslaved Southampton resident Pyrrhus Concer, and to build a museum honoring his legacy, has been stalled — and stakeholders in the project are expressing their frustration.

Brenda Simmons, founder of the Pyrrhus Concer Action Committee, has been leading the effort to see the project through to fruition, alongside Dr. Georgette Grier-Key, the executive director of the Eastville Historical Society and the design committee chair for the project, who serves as the other lead point person on the committee with Ms. Simmons.

Mr. Concer’s legacy is culturally significant when it comes to the history of Southampton Village, but his story has not been given the honor and attention it deserves.

The property at 51 Pond Lane, on Lake Agawam, was the home of Mr. Concer, who worked as a whale steerer on The Manhattan, a whaling ship that rescued 22 Japanese sailors in 1845. When they brought the rescued sailors safely home, Mr. Concer and the crew became the first Americans to visit Japan, and Mr. Concer is believed to have been the first Black man to visit Japan at the time.

Mr. Concer continued to lead an impressive life when he returned to the United States, becoming a landowner — something uncommon at that time for Black men — starting an education fund at the First Presbyterian Church that still exists today, and founding and operating the first-ever Agawam Ferry.

He overcame an unimaginably difficult start in life, being sold into slavery at the age of 5 and then spending his formative years working aboard whaling ships. There is a statue of Mr. Concer in Japan, and his legacy and memory are honored in that country to this day.

But in his hometown, efforts to honor him have hit roadblocks for nearly a decade. The village failed to put the home on the historical registry in the 1980s, and a couple who purchased the property and planned on building a private residence tore down the original structure after a legal battle with the village.

They ultimately did not build a home on the property, and when they put it up for sale, the Town of Southampton purchased and preserved it with Community Preservation Fund revenues. But the damage was done, as only some of the wood beams and pieces of the original structure were salvaged.

In January, the village’s Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation voted to designate the homestead as a historic landmark, after Dr. Grier-Key and others advocated on its behalf, with presentations outlining its historical significance. That paved the way for the project to move forward.

The roughly $3.6 million project will include the construction of a replica of Concer’s original home and renovation of a cottage that is still on the property, as well as the construction of a 4,140-square-foot visitors center, parking and other site development.

Because the town owns the land but it is in the village, there is a inter-municipality agreement between the two, meaning the site plans drawn up by engineering firm Nelson and Pope must go through multiple levels of approval.

At a work session last week, the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals said it was not prepared to approve the site plan, because the public notification process was not completed properly — a claim the committee members dispute.

“We’re frustrated, because we have gone over and above, dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t,’ trying to abide by whatever needs to be done to get the approvals we need,” Ms. Simmons said. “The momentum was going well, and then we had this hiccup with the ZBA work session.”

The committee will now need to wait until May 18 to go before the ZBA again, and the delay will have a ripple effect on the timelines for securing additional funding and getting construction underway.

There is also an added cause for concern for Ms. Simmons and Dr. Grier-Key. Ms. Simmons said the committee was recently made aware that new neighboring homeowners on Pond Lane have expressed potential opposition to the project to village officials, and claiming that they had the support of other village residents.

But when asked about that, Mayor Jesse Warren was cagey, declining to either confirm or deny that he’d been contacted by neighbors, instead saying he was “optimistic that everyone will be supportive of the project.”

“I’m not aware of any opposition for the project,” he said. “I’m only there in support of it. I’m generally optimistic about this going forward. I know how hard everyone has worked on it.”

Because so many different entities are involved, the project naturally requires a lot of work and coordination between those groups, and setbacks can jeopardize the project when it comes to securing important funding.

The town has committed $1 million to the restoration of the original home, and the village had pledged another $500,000, but funding is needed for the visitors center and other upgrades, as well as costs related to parking and landscaping.

Grant writer Nicole Jean Christian has been hired by Southampton Village as a managing consultant and her primary role right now is to oversee fund development strategy for the Concer project and other village projects. She is an experienced grant writer who has overseen funding efforts for a number of large-scale public projects, and said her experience so far with the Concer project has stood out, and not for a positive reason. She expressed disappointment that it has been under “scrutiny and attack” for so many years.

“It’s very unfortunate that there have been so many setbacks,” she said. “If this were not about a Black man, I think the behavior around it would be very different. [Pyrrhus Concer] was enslaved, and he bought his own freedom, and it’s an uncomfortable truth to confront.

“No one in America stands up and says, ‘I’m racist,’” she continued. “But the uncomfortable truth of this project is what is hampering it. I’ve been involved in projects larger than this and have never seen such pushback at local levels.”

Ms. Christian explained that the ZBA’s resistance to approving the site plan in a timely manner could potentially jeopardize access to funding avenues crucial to the project’s success. “I cannot write a grant application without an adopted site plan,” she said. “[Southampton Town] has been very supportive, but the town can’t adopt a plan until the village machinations are complete.”

It has been a headache in addition to the feelings of frustration for Dr. Grier-Key, who has done much of the coordinating for the project.

“There are so many moving parts, and so many entities and agencies that touch this program,” she said. “To keep all of that together is a really tough job. Those pieces all have to come together, and that’s what we’ve been doing over many years, and we’ve been doing it with integrity to the highest level.

“I think the part that really slows things down is the human element, and that’s the part that’s very troubling.”

In addition to complicating funding efforts, the delays set back the construction process as well.

“Our goal is to break ground by the fall — but this pushes everything back,” Dr. Grier-Key said.

Despite this latest obstacle, Dr. Grier-Key, Ms. Simmons, Ms. Christian and others involved say they remain optimistic that the project will continue to move forward, and that the community at large will be supportive of it.

“We’re ready to go,” Dr. Grier-Key said. “This project has been a long time coming.”