Thiele Takes A Swing At East Quogue Golf Resort Plan At Pine Barrens Commission Meeting

A member of the original Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said the Lewis Road housing and golf course proposal in East Quogue “flies in the face” of historic strategies for preserving and protecting the Pine Barrens.

“This application is inconsistent with the Central Pine Barrens Act, inconsistent with the comprehensive management plan, inconsistent with the efforts and all the work that went into protecting the Pine Barrens in the first place, and I would urge the commission to reject this application,” the assemblyman told the commission during its last public hearing on the Lewis Road plan last month.

If greenlit by the commission, and approved after subsequent review by the Southampton Town Planning Board, developer Discovery Land’s plan would see the development of a golf resort comprising 118 seasonal single-family homes and 12 year-round workforce housing units, an 18-hole private golf course, clubhouse, pools, recreational amenities and a sewage treatment plant on just over 608 acres. The site is north and east of Lewis Road near Spinney Road, extending north to, then beyond, Sunrise Highway.

The first hearing before the commission on the proposal was held to a standing room only crowd last February. Once the COVID-19 pandemic struck, subsequent hearings and deliberations have been held via Zoom teleconferences.

Deliberations by the commission have been few so far. Through March, April and May, decision deadlines were extended and Discovery Land continued to submit more information about the plan. Revisions to the plan that surfaced in June after Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman tasked town staff with reviewing the proposal and making recommendations, prompted another spate of hearings. While they were supposed to be focused on just the revisions, speakers at hearings in August and October took the opportunity to weigh in about the project in general, expressing either support or opposition.

Opponents offered broad arguments echoed by Assemblyman Thiele during his November 18 commentary. Some, like Assemblyman Steven Engelbright and Pine Barrens Society Executive Director Richard Amper, spoke of the spirit of the Pine Barrens Act when it was adopted in 1993.

“I’m not going to focus on slopes or drainage or even whippoorwills or even whether there are too many par fives and not enough par threes,” Mr. Thiele said. “But what I do want to focus on is the broad policy issues with this and what I think the Pine Barrens Commission is all about. Because for at least the last 50 years, the state the county and the local towns have recognized the importance of what the Pine Barrens is all about — and that’s open space preservation, rural character, habitat and, of course, the groundwater.”

The lawmaker noted that through the years, the theme of the Pine Barrens has been: “This is an importance resource, protect as much of it, preserve as much of it as you possibly can and where there is going to be development make sure it is consistent with the environmental constraints and mitigate any adverse impacts that may come from that development. And that’s what we’ve seen through the years.”

Efforts to that end were made by individual towns through zoning changes — from industrial to residential. Open space zoning, purchases through the Community Preservation Fund and Suffolk County’s quarter-percent groundwater protection program, and the state’s designation of special groundwater protection areas all helped, Mr. Thiele said.

“That’s what we were attempting to do all of those years. And, what we found was, in spite of the best efforts of all those levels of government acting independently, this was a regional resource and without regional action, we couldn't protect the resource,” he said.

“Going into the 1990s, the Pine Barrens was dying a death of a thousand cuts and that’s why this commission was created and that's why a comprehensive management plan was put together. … State legislation was passed and the idea was to make sure the Pine Barrens were not going to be destroyed. Throughout the history of the commission, that’s exactly what you’ve done,” Mr. Thiele said.

Then he continued, “I worry about this application because I think it flies exactly in the face, in the opposite direction of all those efforts over 50 years and the efforts of this commission over the last 25.

“This project is designed to substantially increase the intensity of land use over what was anticipated, what zoning was in place when the comprehensive management plan was first put together.”

Taking a swipe at the history of the project, Mr. Thiele made note that its first iteration, known as The Hills, requested a change of zone from the Town of Southampton. The Town Board rejected a nearly identical plan, which fell one vote short of a supermajority needed for a special change of zone called a planned development district, or PDD. The proposal was denied after years of debate.

Discovery Land tweaked the plan and brought it back as The Lewis Road Planned Residential Development. In 2018, the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals ruled a golf course could be permitted as an accesory use to the residential development, a move Mr. Thiele this month said “didn’t pass the smell test.”

At the time, Discovery Land representatives put forth a little-used portion of the town code — a planned residential district, or PRD — that permits the addition of certain recreational amenities, such as tennis courts, in residential neighborhoods. Discovery Land maintained that a golf course used only by residents of the development is comparable to other recreational amenities and thus permitted by current zoning. “The attempt now is to torture the Southampton town zoning code with a variance interpretation where something that is not permitted as a principal use — a golf course — can somehow be an accessory use to a residential subdivision,” Mr. Thiele asserted.

So far, unless granted yet another extension by the applicants, the commission must make a decision in January.

According to John Pavacic, the commission’s executive director, the body will not be deliberating the proposal when it meets this month on December 16. Rather, it will set a special meeting during the first half of January for the discussion. From there, if the commission agrees the proposal meets the standards of its land use plan, the application will return to the town planning board for a final subdivision review and determination.