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The office building at 99 Sanford Place, where the owner wished to subdivide the property and build two residences. DANA SHAW
A State Supreme Court justice has sided with the Southampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals after the ZBA denied a property owner’s application for a special exception permit to build two residences in the village’s office district.
On Tuesday, September 20, Justice Linda Kevins dismissed a petition that had asked the court to annul the ZBA’s September 2021 denial of 99 Sanford Place LLC’s permit application.
Among other arguments, the petition contended that the ZBA had recently granted a special exception permit request in a similar situation on White Street and had a responsibility to adhere to that precedent by also approving the Sanford Place application.
The justice did not see it that way.
“Although a zoning board is bound to follow its own precedents … the court found that the unrelated matter is sufficiently distinguishable from the present case,” Kevins wrote in dismissing the petition to annul the ruling.
The property owner had wanted to subdivide 99 Sanford Place, where the former Platt Platt & Platt law office currently stands, into two lots and develop a residence on each. The Planning Board could approve the subdivision, but to build residences in the office district a special exception permit from the ZBA would be required. In a 3-1 vote, the board turned down the permit request.
At a meeting three months prior to the board rejecting the permit request, ZBA Chairman Mark Greenwald noted that the village’s comprehensive plan from the year 2000 called for an analysis of the office district that never happened, and he suggested that the applicant pay for a study of the entire office district. That way, he explained, the board could make an informed decision on whether granting the permit would be wise and whether it would change the character of the community. He pointed to a provision in the village code that puts the onus of paying for professional review by an expert on the applicant.
Attorney Liz Vail, who was representing the applicant, had told Greenwald that only the Village Board has the authority to order planning studies. “You are the Zoning Board of Appeals,” she said. “You are not the legislative board of the Village of Southampton.”
Vail argued that the Village Board had already decided that residential use was permitted in the office district and that the application conforms with the comprehensive plan and subsequent planning studies. She also told the ZBA that 99 Sanford Place is in an area that has more residences than commercial properties.
Kevins wrote that the ZBA “submitted sufficient evidence to demonstrate the rationality of the Zoning Board’s denial of the application” and that the property owner “failed to demonstrate that the proposed project ‘… is particularly suitable for the location in the community.’”
