Specifics Needed on Planned Development Districts

Many residents of Southampton are still not satisfied with the new draft legislation on Planned Development Districts.  They say that community benefit is not clearly defined and more work must be done to restructure the application process.

Since Planned Development Districts have been a major concern for many in Southampton Town and specifically in Hampton Bays, town representatives have decided to redraft the legislation on the entire process.  The purpose of this is to get more community input.  In addition to restructuring the permitting process, town officials are grappling with the definition of community benefit, the required give back to residents.  These community benefits must be defined based on the needs of each particular community

"There are different concerns and needs in different parts of town and we have to qualify that and map that," said Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst at the town's second meeting on the preliminary redraft of planned development district legislation.  Holst said that the town is working on ways to clearly identify the community benefit. "You have to come up with equivalencies," she said. 

The new draft first attempts to outline what is outside the parameters of what is defined as a community benefit.  Throne-Holst said this would help clarify what is actually a community benefit.  "The easiest way to start is by identifying what is not a community benefit," she said.

"I find this to be a very loose way of approaching it," said Hampton Bays resident Eve Houlihan.  "I think the first step is to analyze each community and determine what their needs are."

Affordable housing is identified in the new draft legislation as a community benefit.  However, any developer with plans to build housing would have to double the required 10 percent affordable house units, and make 20 percents of the units constructed affordable in order to meet the community benefit standards.

Another part of the preliminary, amended legislation allows for pre-applications to be posted on the Internet prior to a public hearing.  Throne-Holst said this would address concerns about large applications going through lengthy and expensive application processes, sometimes for years, only to be rejected by residents.  "They spend all this time and money only to go back to the drawing board," she said at the last meeting. 

Deputy Town Supervisor Frank Zappone said publishing pre-applications on the Internet would shorten the process and give residents more information up front.  "There's a big shift in the amount of information that's available to you and the time frame that it's available," he told residents.

Throne-Holst plans to hold meetings one a week for community input on the legislative draft.  The meetings are open to the public and will be announced on the town's website.