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A view of the proposed site of the Lewis Road residential Planned Development. PRESS FILE
Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine wasn’t having it. With yet another request for an extension of time and yet another change to the Lewis Road RPD development’s map, Mr. Romaine, a member of the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission, offered a motion to deny the request during the Commission’s meeting on Wednesday, September 16. Denial of the extension request would, in effect, deny the application to create an 118-unit residential golf resort in the East Quogue Pine Barrens.
Offering his motion, Mr. Romaine said, “Today is the final date that was set forth at the applicant’s request and approved by the commission for a final determination. The basis of the request for an adjournment is the applicant’s statement that it is in the process of making changes to its development plan, which, by the way, it’s not the first time this happened. To avoid any confusion, since today was the date set forth for the final vote, and I assume the request just came in today, to extend, I also vote to deny the proposed project before the Pine Barrens Commission. Neither the commission nor its staff has seen the new proposed plan. If the applicant wishes to pursue this new plan, it has a right to reapply, but we should not grant the extension. “
Carrie Meek Gallagher, the commission’s chairwoman, agreed with Mr. Romaine, and voted in support of his motion. Remaining members of the commission — Riverhead Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar, Dorian Dale, the Suffolk County representative, and Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman — did not, and the extension was granted. The process will proceed into next year, with a hearing on the revisions slated for November at the earliest, and a January 2021 decision deadline.
Describing the request for the extension, planner Julie Hargrave explained the Town of Southampton had performed an analysis of the plan and identified “deficiencies” in drainage and grading plans. Developer Discovery Land will revise the plan and return it to the commission for another look.
Mr. Schneiderman lobbied colleagues to grant the extension. He said he’d tasked Southampton Town Chief Environmental Analyst Marty Shea to undertake a detailed analysis of the plan “on my behalf.” The changes to the plan, he insisted, are not major changes “in any way.”
Asked to weigh in, Mr. Shea said he had been working with the applicant since the close of the public hearing in August. Mr. Shea reviewed and requested changes related to steep slope impacts, clearing, and contiguous open space. The applicant agreed to make “significant changes,” Mr. Shea said.
If the applicant is making significant changes, Mr. Romaine argued that because the application has been revised so many times, “This is a new application.”
The changes are “all reductions,” Mr. Schniederman countered. There may be minor changes to the configuration and location of a few lots, but, said Mr. Shea, he hasn’t asked for significant changes to the layout.
Once the commission outvoted Mr. Romaine and Ms Gallagher, the next question arose. How can the planning commission staff set a public hearing for revisions it has yet to receive? It was agreed a hearing would be necessary, but the revisions had not yet been submitted to the commission’s planning staff for review. Southampton Town staff had them.
If approved, the plan would comprise a residential development of 118 units, an 18-hole private golf course and other private recreational facilities on 588 acres of land, 65 percent of which would be open space, in the Central Pine Barrens Overlay Protection District and Aquifer Overlay Protection District in East Quogue. The site is north and east of Lewis Road near Spinney Road, extending north to, then beyond, Sunrise Highway.
The first hearing on the proposal was held in February. Since then, hearings have continued as the applicant, Discovery Land, requested extensions of the vote date, each time tweaking the proposal. Following what was expected to be the final hearing in August, a special meeting was scheduled for commission members to deliberate the complicated application. That meeting, slated for September 11, was canceled.
Environmentalists have continually argued against the proposal, speaking to its environmental impacts, opining that the development would be built contrary to the spirit of Pine Barrens Act protections. Additionally, they have argued repeatedly that the plan changed so substantially from the plan approved by the Southampton Town Planning Board in October 2019 that an entirely new application should be filed.
The commission’s meeting, held via Zoom teleconference, opened with a half-dozen comments from the public in opposition to the plan, among them, Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End.
Expressing “deep concern” about how the review process has unfolded, Mr. DeLuca wrote, “Unfortunately, since August 26, 2020, the review process has been significantly altered. Without explanation, a critically important Commission meeting, designed to fully discuss the current application and relevant comments, was canceled and the review of a new development proposal is now apparently being substituted in its place.”
Allowing the applicant to submit new revisions outside the closed public record amounts to, he wrote, “a double standard” and “resulted in special treatment for the applicant at the expense of the broadest public interest.”
With review of the new submissions in the offing, and a tentative plan to set a public hearing at the commission’s October meeting, should staff have the time to adequately analyze the new details, there are some procedural points to consider.
The Town of Southampton cannot override the commission’s ultimate decision, slated for next year, in January. At that point, if the commission voted to deny, the applicant would need to resubmit a plan or apply for a hardship variance.
If the current or future map is approved by the commission, the town Planning Board would be up next, with the task of approving a final subdivision map. New York State law provides that a municipality’s final subdivision map cannot substantially deviate from the preliminary map it previously approved without reopening the review — which may end up being the case here, Mr. DeLuca explained this week. “So if the Pine Barrens map deviates substantively from the prior map it approved, there could indeed be a much more detailed review required.”
Speaking to Mr. Schneiderman’s tasking a town planner with looking the application over, the environmentalist offered, “I cannot recall a town supervisor reaching into the process to secure an additional level of review after the close of the public hearing on the matter before the commission. It may have happened, but I cannot recall such an event.”
Offering support for Mr. Romaine’s motion to deny the request for an extension, as well as the project as a whole, Ms. Gallagher said, “While I certainly appreciate the applicant’s efforts to improve the environmental aspects of the project, my concern here is that the Town of Southampton has a role in reviewing the project and the Pine Barrens Commission has a separate and distinct role in review the project, and it seems that those two processes have become convoluted as this continues.”
