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Skip Tollefsen explained to the Planning Board why he won't be able to run his restaurant after improvements are made to County Road 39.
Sunrise Highway didn’t go all the way to Southampton when Skip Tollefsen built the Lobster Inn in 1969, but the changes to the end of that road over the past two years are now putting the squeeze on his business.
Mr. Tollefsen appeared before the Southampton Town Planning Board last week to discuss the possibility of building condominiums to replace the restaurant, and he lamented the ongoing impact of County Road 39 changes that he said have made it impossible for the restaurant to survive.
Famous for its waterfront dining, local seafood and hometown ambiance, the restaurant stands at an intersection that has become known among traffic consultants as “the bottleneck at the Lobster Inn.” That is where the two eastbound lanes had been reduced to one as Sunrise Highway ended and County Road 39 began in the shadow of the restaurant’s large red sign, before an expansion of the highway added a second lane.
The Lobster Inn, a 293-seat restaurant that includes a 48-slip marina, had little to do with the bottleneck. For years, it benefitted from increased business on Friday nights from eastbound tourists stuck in traffic, but otherwise it maintained a clientele of regular customers who returned for the venue’s trademark “splat,” a feast containing every shellfish imaginable, and other maritime delicacies.
It is also the location where the Southampton Town Trustees and a handful of baymen who practice aquaculture on Cold Spring Pond dock their boats.
When plans to improve County Road 39 by adding a second eastbound lane were finalized last year, Suffolk County banned left turns from the restaurant’s parking lot into the newly flowing traffic where the merge had been.
Last year, Mr. Tollefsen printed maps showing his customers how to get back on County Road 39 through a circuitous route that involved doubling back westbound on North Highway to Exit 66 on Sunrise Highway.
He said that many customers gave up trying to get to the restaurant, and his business was down 25 percent last year. This year, business has been even worse—but he said the county’s long-term plan for the road will be the final nail in his coffin.
Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, who was a driving force behind the road improvement, “came in and said, ‘Skip, we’re gonna close you down,’” Mr. Tollefsen told the Southampton Town Planning Board last Thursday, September 18.
Mr. Schneiderman rejected Mr. Tollefsen’s version of the conversation and said this week that the Lobster Inn is “definitely factored in” to the county’s long-term plan. “The county hasn’t forgotten that there’s a commercial establishment there. We’re trying to resolve those issues,” he said.
Mr. Schneiderman said that he’s aware that Mr. Tollefsen is interested in selling the property and he is waiting for a concept plan from the town for potential future public use of the land.
Though there is currently a moratorium on development on County Road 39, the town exempted the Lobster Inn from that moratorium earlier this year—in exchange for an agreement from Mr. Tollefsen to give his road frontage, and the land his business’s sign is on, to the county.
The county plans to use Mr. Tollefsen’s remaining street frontage to create a service road connecting Inlet Road West, which runs alongside the restaurant, with Inlet Road East, a road that currently connects to County Road 39 just east of the former merge. The new service road created by that connection would not have access to County Road 39.
The change in the roadway, which is outlined in the county’s long-term improvement plan, might make driving safer, but it will certainly make the route more circuitous for residents who live near the inlet, who will need to drive west on North Highway to Exit 66 on Sunrise Highway before turning back on Sunrise Highway heading east.
It’s a five-minute detour for those who know the roads, but Mr. Tollefsen said that it will prove deadly for a business that had historically been dependent on eastbound drivers who do not know the area well.
If he were to keep the restaurant open, he said would need to put a sign at Exit 66 urging drivers to get onto North Highway to get to the restaurant.
Though Mr. Tollefsen has asked the county to put a traffic light in front of the restaurant to allow customers to get out, he said that it has refused, citing safety concerns.
“The county so much wants to get rid of this road,” said Mr. Tollefsen’s attorney, Wayne Bruyn. “We can’t say it’s not appropriate to make these other things safer for our neighbors.”
Over the past two years, Mr. Tollefsen had negotiated with the Town Trustees and Cornell Cooperative Extension to potentially use his property as a nature center or a marine research station, but the town was unwilling to pay Mr. Tollefsen’s asking price.
He said that he had even considered creating a world-class butterfly garden as a destination before his research revealed that he wouldn’t be able to attract enough butterflies.
Since the Lobster Inn, which stands on two parcels totalling 7 acres, is in a residential area, Mr. Tollefsen’s latest plan is to build between 14 and 30 condominiums on the site, along with a public yacht club. He said that the baymen and Trustees would still be able to use the docks, and the plan with more units could include affordable housing.
The plan is also currently before the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals, because the town had created a Maritime Planned Development District for the property in 1999 to allow Mr. Tollefsen to build a barn, woodworking shop and farm stand on his property.
Mr. Tollefsen’s attorney is arguing that the PDD has now expired and the property should revert to its original residential use.
“I wanted to grow vegetables and serve them in the restaurant, but I can’t sell what I grow myself,” said Mr. Tollefsen, citing laws that prohibit him from selling produce grown on the site. “It’s beyond me.”
“There’s been no consideration for me or my help or my customers. I told my young help to look for something else,” Mr. Tollefsen told members of the Planning Board, adding that he is now asking his aging friends to help out in the kitchen because there’s no future at the restaurant for young people looking for a career in the business.
Mr. Tollefsen no longer keeps regular hours at the Lobster Inn, and his wife, Karen, who answered the phone there Monday morning, said that this winter the restaurant will be open only on weekends, for the first time ever.
“Not too many people care. The town’s been extremely difficult,” she said of their decision to close.
