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A Simple Question with No Simple Answer

Sep 14th, 2008
by Saltbox.
Comments are off for this post

The other day a candidate for political office who lives in a different part of the Town, asked me to fill her in on issues important to Sag Harbor. Easy…many of these issues are among my daily obsessions: development, preservation of open space, protecting the environment, affordable housing, transportation issues, preserving the “character” of the area, and education. I may have missed one or two; feel free to remind me if I did. Anyway, all was going well until she asked me which one was most important. I opened my mouth to answer, but found I couldn’t decide. Not because I didn’t have an opinion, but because I was suddenly acutely aware — not for the first time — that all these issues are deeply interrelated and interdependent. Given that reality, it seemed to me that singling out any one issue would unfairly shortchange the others.

A very obvious example of how the important issues we face often intersect is the seeming conflict that exists between open space preservation and the creation of more affordable housing. In a nutshell, that conflict can be stated as every acre of open space that is preserved is an acre of land no longer available as a possible site for affordable housing. One might also say the inverse is true as well: more affordable housing equals less open space. Of course, it’s not that simple. Nothing ever is. The real conflict is not between open space and affordable housing; it’s really between high-end housing and open space. Rarely is affordable housing proposed in an area that is also desirable for preservation. Has anyone heard of a plan to put affordable housing in the farm fields of Sagaponack? Not likely. But those fields are definitely vulnerable to subdivision into lots suitable for a new crop of McMansions. When affordable housing is proposed, which as we all know is not very often, it is almost always in areas that are already well developed, and so not in conflict with open space preservation.

So, all is well, or so it would seem; but this happy little scenario gets turned on its head when viewed from the perspective of the aforementioned “well developed” area. Take for instance, Sag Harbor Village, which is almost at the complete build-out stage. In the Village, open space is at a premium, and many of those who live in the Village would certainly like to see as much as possible of what’s left preserved. So when, as recently happened, the owner of one of the few remaining undeveloped parcels proposes a mixed use development — one that will include both offices and housing — all of it affordable — we are faced with quite a conundrum. Adding to the complication is the fact that the parcel abuts the northern end of the Long Pond Greenbelt, and that it may be part of the migratory range of the endangered Tiger Salamander. So, do we encourage the Town to offer to purchase this property with money from the Community Preservation Fund, or do we encourage the developer to go ahead with his plans to create some desperately needed affordable housing for the community’s police, firefighters, teachers and others in the endangered species known as the middle class?

In my mind that’s a tough call. But, so far, we’ve only examined the intersection of open space preservation and affordable housing. If you thought it was going to be that simple, think again. What about that other major East End headache, traffic? As you undoubtedly already know — unless you never drive in the morning, mid-day, or afternoon — commuting workers are one of, if not the most, significant factor contributing to the congestion on our roads. Why do so many area employees commute to work here? Because, they can’t afford to live here due to a lack of affordable housing. So, it stands to reason that one way to reduce traffic would be to make more affordable housing available in the Sag Hampton area. And, where should this affordable housing be? Well, if we really want to reduce traffic, the housing should be as close as possible to businesses and other major public resources like schools, stores, and professional offices. Ideally this new housing stock would be built within walking or biking distance of the aforementioned community resources, i.e., in hamlet centers like Sag Harbor. All perfectly sensible, unless your priority is to preserve the tiny bit of open space that remains in the Village.

However, if you take a slightly broader perspective, it makes perfect sense to encourage hamlet centers such as Sag Harbor, East and Southampton Villages, and downtown Bridgehampton, among others, to accept both additional housing and businesses, because doing so reduces suburban and commercial sprawl and takes the development pressure off the more pristine outlying areas. This makes sense from a public transportation perspective too, as the more people that live and work in an area, the easier it is to serve those people with public transit. A public bus in Northwest doesn’t make a lot of sense; there just aren’t enough people and businesses there to make it worthwhile. But a bus that serves the Villages of East Hampton, Sag Harbor and Southampton, as well as the hamlets of Wainscott, Bridgehampton and Water Mill (especially if each of those hamlet centers also has some new affordable housing within walking or biking distance of downtown) makes a lot of sense. Buses such as these would not only ease congestion on our roads, but also reduce stresses on the environment such as motor vehicle-created air pollution. And, as we focus more  development in the hamlet centers we reduce the pressure to develop farm fields and wooded areas throughout the East End.

The scenario I’ve just been describing is sometimes known as smart growth. It’s a highly-regarded strategy among planning professionals, but not always so popular among our local politicians. To be fair to the politicians, there are valid reasons for this lack of popularity, including the additional stress on our schools, sewage treatment plants, and other public services that come along with increased density. Unhappily, there’s always a trade-off. Housing affects open space. Open space affects transportation. Transportation affects the environment. Or, looked at another way, housing affects transportation. Transportation affects open space and the environment. Take your pick, or come up with your own formula. The combinations are endless…but not insoluble. The key is to start somewhere. We may not be able to say which of our concerns is the “most” important, but we can acknowledge that it is important to get started working wherever possible.  As we proceed we must pay attention to the collateral impact that any action we take will have in other equally important areas.

So, in the end, I told the candidate that affordable housing was “my issue.” It’s what I care about the most right now. I chose it because it is the most neglected of the major issues confronting Sag Hampton. I also told her I was concerned about the impact any development would have on open space preservation and the character of the Village, as well as being very concerned about threats to the environment. So, while I did pick one issue,  in so doing, I actually picked them all.

Posted in: Affodable Housing, Development, Open Space, Transportation.

Knowing When to Say Maybe

Sep 2nd, 2008
by Saltbox.
Comments are off for this post

I recently received an e-mail advising me of a meeting to discuss possible developments, including a convenience store, at the Harbor Heights Mobil station on Rt. 114 in Sag Harbor. This e-mail was the first I’d heard of this possibility, and I have not tried to verify any of the information in the message. For all I know the whole thing may be a rumor, but it did make me think. The writer of the message conveyed a feeling that a convenience store at this location would be an undesirable development, and that the meeting would be one at which local residents might begin to organize against this possibility.

As readers of this blog know, I have often taken positions against mindless development in the Sag Hampton area…but not against all development, and in this case I had some doubts about the wisdom of opposing the possible changes at the Mobil station.

For one thing, the existing gas station is an eye-sore. If the proposal for a convenience store were to include an appropriate renovation of the existing building, and cleanup and landscaping of the property, it would, I think, be an improvement over current conditions. In addition, access in and out of the existing gas-station is an uncontrolled nightmare for all traffic on that road, including not only those entering and leaving the station, but also through-traffic, bicyclists and pedestrians. Again, if the addition of the convenience store were to include a well-designed traffic-access plan for the entire site, it would be a major improvement to both convenience and safety.

Further, the writer of the call-to-arms e-mail posited that traffic on Rt. 114 is increasing, and that the increased traffic poses serious problems both for the historic homes along the road, and the residents of those homes. This may well be true; however, it does not follow that a convenience store added to an existing high-traffic business on that road will substantially contribute to a further increase in traffic. Probable users of a convenience store at that location would be people who are either already on the road going somewhere else, or customers of the gas station. I do not believe that a gas-station convenience store on Rt. 114 would become a “destination” like the centrally-located 7-11 in the village.

Now, all that said, I’m not saying that I’m in favor of a convenience store at Harbor Heights. What I am saying is that citizens who are concerned about the future of our area — as we all should be — need to carefully weigh the merits of each development proposal before deciding whether to speak out against it.  Sometimes there are subtle benefits to a community in a proposal that may at first seem like a bad idea. An example from a few years ago perfectly illustrates how hard it can be to spot benefits that lie just below the surface.

Not long ago, a bike path was proposed that would run between Bridgehampton and East Hampton. Unfortunately, for a short distance this path would have cut across the southern end of the Long Pond Greenbelt. Now mind you, this is a bike path we’re talking about, not a road. No motor vehicles allowed. But, one or two influential folks who like to ride their horses in the area the bike path would cross, felt that the Greenbelt, while a fine place to travel on horseback, would be despoiled by bicycle traffic. You may agree, or you may think that bikes crossing a small section of the Greenbelt on a controlled path would be a worthwhile trade-off to help jump start a much needed alternative method of transportation, that might even get a few carbon-belching cars off our overburdened roads. Ultimately, however, the folks opposed to the bike path carried the day, and so while we preserved a small piece of our natural habitat, we lost the possibility of achieving something that might have resulted in a greater good for the entire area.

Both proposals — the convenience store and the bike path — illustrate how as we exhaust the possibilities for development on Long Island’s east end, the choices we have to make become increasingly difficult, and fraught with the possibility of missteps. What to oppose and what to promote becomes a more and more difficult decision every day. (Bulova, anyone?) As concerned stewards of this land we (temporarily) occupy, we have a responsibility to be aware of the myriad needs of the many communities with which we share this space — each with differing and often conflicting needs and requirements. Finding a balanced approach to development by keeping our eyes and our minds open to all possibilities is key to ensuring that Sag Hampton remains a livable, sustainable, enjoyable place to call home.

Posted in: Development, Local Businesses.

Blog Action Day, Oct. 15

Aug 23rd, 2008
by Saltbox.
Comments are off for this post

Posted in: Blog Stuff, Values.

Save Sag Harbor (Cinema)

Aug 7th, 2008
by Saltbox.
3 comments

Yikes! This is serious. The Sag Harbor Cinema is for sale. There’s nothing more iconic in Sag Harbor than the Sag Harbor Cinema, the art-house theater that’s been a part of the local scene for decades. Just look at all the fuss that arose when my fellow Sag Harborites thought they were losing the theater’s sign! Now, it seems, we may be in danger of losing the entire theater and all that it stands for.

I know that a phrase like “all that it stands for” is a bit pretentious when talking about a commercial enterprise; but the Sag Harbor Cinema does a darn good job of representing the iconoclastic nature of our village in an easily identifiable way. It is after all an art house theater that plays lesser-known, usually small-budget, quirky, independent movies. Doesn’t that sound a lot like Sag Harbor itself? OK, well we’re not really lesser-known anymore, and we’re losing our small budget cachet, but we’re still arty, quirky and independent; in a nice example of symmetry, the Sag Harbor Cinema is one of the features of our village that keeps us that way.

It’s old, and slightly seedy, with a musty smell and seats that fall somewhat short of comfortable, but so what? Where else can you find so many stimulating and entertaining foreign and independent films week in and week out? East Hampton? I think not. Southampton? Don’t make me laugh. Westhampton? Where? OK, so maybe you don’t go to foreign or independent films that often, but isn’t it nice to know that you can see one locally now and again if it should come to your attention? Unfortunately, I suspect that most of us (myself  included) don’t go to this type of film all that often, which probably means that the owner of the Sag Harbor Cinema isn’t exactly raking in the dough. It also means that it will probably be tough to find someone who wants to buy the theater to keep it going as it is.

On the other hand, the alternatives are pretty unsatisfactory. While the facade of the building may, or may not, be protected if it is designated as an historic landmark — it’s not clear that it is — anything could happen on the inside of the building. Perhaps it will be split up into several small retail spaces, or one large one. With retail rents being what they are, the probable inhabitants of such spaces will most likely be limited to high-end designer boutiques. Not exactly the small-scale, mom and pop businesses for which our village is known and loved. Whatever it ends up becoming, it will be a far cry from the integral part of the village it is today.

Now we come to the part of the post where a more ingenious thinker would lay out a strategy for preserving the theater in some way that would be more acceptable then turning it into boutiques. If only that writer were penning this article! Unfortunately, all we’ve got here is me, and I haven’t a clue as to what can be done. Here’s the best I can come up with: Let’s all start going to the movies more often here in Sag Harbor. Perhaps, if we do so consistently, we can make the Sag Harbor Cinema a more economically viable business that may attract a buyer interested in maintaining this local institution just as it is (perhaps with more comfortable seats). Got any better ideas? Think the Library should buy it? Add your thoughts to the comments section below. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the movies.

Posted in: Development, Historic Preservation, Local Businesses, Our Town.

Not Every Good Idea Is…Well, a Good Idea

Aug 4th, 2008
by Saltbox.
1 comment

Sometimes I get an idea, and at first blush it seems like a world beater. Fortunately, I’m a bit of a procrastinator, so I usually don’t act on these brilliant insights immediately. Usually, over the next few days, I’ll share this idea with friends or colleagues, and they gently (or sometimes not so gently) point out the the things I’ve overlooked, or misunderstood, and suddenly my amazing insight is just road kill, better left by the side of the road.

That’s the way it goes. For every really good idea, there are countless others that are interesting, maybe even exciting, but that just don’t hold up to close scrutiny. Such is the case with the suggestion now being floated in various corners of Sag Harbor that the former Methodist Church building be somehow purchased with Community Preservation Fund (CPF) monies and then used by the John Jermain Memorial Library in some way to relieve that facility’s chronic shortage of space.

The whole concept seems amazingly serendipitous at first glance. The church is around the corner from the library. The church is empty and for sale. The library needs space and is planning on adding space in the near future. The church should be preserved. The CPF was established, in part to preserve historic structures. The Library needs to raise money through a bond issue in order to expand, and the voters have been reluctant to approve such an issue, but the CPF has money; that could be used to buy the church without raising taxes. The library is currently housed in an historic building. The church is also an historic building. It’s perfect!

Or is it?

As it turns out, there are a few problems with this plan, the biggest being that while CPF money can be used to preserve historic structures, that is the limit of what it can be used for with regard to buildings. It cannot, say, be used to adapt historic structures to make them suitable for new uses. Who says so? Mary Wilson, Community Preservation Manager for Southampton Town says so.

Then there is the problem of the church’s suitability for use as a library. Not so suitable as it turns out. The church is in serious disrepair, which is why the Methodist congregation had to leave…and they were just looking at the cost of repairing the existing structure. The library, however, would be looking at a change of use, which would mean not just repairs, but also bringing the building up to current code standards for public spaces. This would be hugely expensive, more expensive, in fact then just building a new building on the piece of property that the library owns down by Mashashimuet Park. Who says this would be more expensive? The library’s architect for one. The library’s previous architect and construction manager said the same thing. Rehabilitation and restoration of historic structures for use by the public is always more expensive than new construction.

Those are two very major issues. Other issues include the fact that the church is a wood-frame structure which raises fire-safety concerns, as well as concerns about the ability of the building’s support structure to bear the weight of the library’s book stacks. Oh, and parking. The current library has none, which is a problem. The church has a few parking spaces, but not nearly enough to address the library’s parking issues. Finally, it should be pointed out that the church’s interior configuration is very unique, spread over several levels that intersect in unusual ways — ways which are not at all consistent with the needs of a library.

So, what we have is a lovely idea, which just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. And, the truth is, it really didn’t take that much scrutiny to find some serious problems with this idea. More in-depth analysis will undoubtedly turn up more problems, but why bother? There are already enough serious issues to relegate this idea to the good-idea-gone-bad scrap pile. Our library provides many important services to the community. Its need for expanded facilities is serious and well-documented. Those charged with delivering library services to the community cannot afford the time or the expense of pursuing this idea any further. Many of us wish it would have been workable, but it’s not. Time to move on.

Posted in: Historic Preservation, Libraries.

Sag Harbor: Alive, Well and Still Kickin’

Jul 30th, 2008
by Saltbox.
Comments are off for this post

Observed in and around Sag Harbor recently:

  • More Priuses per block than perhaps anywhere else in the country;
  • Tibetan Monks running programs at the Unitarian Universalist Church and North Haven Village Hall;
  • Heavy trunout for meetings of the various Village Boards;
  • A rejuvenated public library with more visitors, circulation, programs and joie de vivre than ever;
  • An Alternative Energy Fair at the Whaling Museum, which also seems pretty spry these days;
  • An agressive and effective Greening of Sag Harbor Committee;
  • An agressive and effective Save Sag Harbor group;
  • Our very own (aggressive and effective) Town Councilperson, in the person of Sag Harbor (soon to be Noyac) resident, Anna Throne-Holst;
  • Our very own baseball team;
  • For better or worse (depending on your point of view), a green light for the renovation of the Bulova watchcase factory;
  • A rambunctuous public meeting (or two) of the Sag Harbor School Board at which the community voiced its opinion loudly and clearly, and the Board, in its own way, responded;
  • An activist Village government that is not only trying to protect Sag Harbor’s future, but listens and responds to the concerns of residents and businesses as it goes about its business;
  • The Hamptons Music Festival at the Old Whalers’ Church;
  • The bigger than ever Bay Street Theatre Gala back on Long Wharf;
  • A sparkling new website for our home town newspaper, The Sag Harbor Express;
  • And, under the category of “things never stand still in Sag Harbor” the iconic Sag Harbor Movie Theater is apparently up for sale!!

I sometimes (okay, often) find myself slipping into the role of local curmudgeon here at Sag Hampton, forgetting the qualities that drew me to this town some thirty years ago. So, while Sag Harbor may need “saving” (and I believe it does), it’s good to look around now and then to remember that Sag Harbor is still an exciting and vibrant place to live, work, play and raise a family.

Did I leave out your favorite sign of life in Sag Harbor? Add it in the comments area below.

Posted in: Our Town, Values.

Blog Problems

Jul 29th, 2008
by Saltbox.
Comments are off for this post

For the past few months we’ve been having some problems with our blog hosting company, which seems to be gradually going out of business. Today, with much help from our new blog host Blogharbor.com (nice coincidence, that!) we’re up and running again, so if you’ve been trying to visit Saghampton.com and were consistently getting error messages about “exceeded bandwidth,” rest assured that those days are over (I hope) and that going forward you will be able to access Saghampton.com whenever you wish. Thanks for your patience. I’m glad you’re still reading.

Posted in: Blog Stuff, Dear Reader.

We’re All Only Human…Including the Board of Education

Jun 5th, 2008
by Saltbox.
9 comments
I haven’t been to a School Board meeting for longer than I haven’t written a blog post. But tonight I’ve done and am doing both. You may know (if you read the Sag Harbor Express) that the Board of Education of the Sag Harbor School District announced a special meeting for this evening for the sole purpose of appointing a new Superintendent of Schools. This came as a bit of a shock to most of the community, as there have been no public meetings, discussions, meet & greets, or other opportunities for the public to follow along and participate in the process of making this very important selection.

So, at 7:30 p.m. tonight the Board held and “executive session,” which is a way for them to meet out of the public eye to discuss things that require a degree of privacy such as personnel issues, negotiations, legal issues and the like. Then, at 8:00 p.m. they went into public session to vote on hiring Dr. John Gratto as the District’s new Superintendent, which they did. They did not allow any public input at this meeting. When some members of the public spoke anyway, voicing their displeasure at the Board’s lack of openness during the process of selecting the new Super, the Board did its best to ignore what was being said. Eventually, Theresa Samot, the Board President, asked for a motion to go into executive session again “to discuss personnel issues.” The motion was made, seconded and voted on, and the Board walked out, leaving behind not only the public, but a somewhat stunned looking Dr. John Gratto, who had been expecting a cookies and punch reception.

That’s the bare bones of what happened tonight. There was much more, but I’ll leave it to the local papers to report and speculate about all that. What I would like to draw your attention to in this space, is the very sad fact that our friends and neighbors who serve on the School Board seem to have forgotten that they are also members of the very same community that they ignored and stonewalled tonight. How did that happen? I’ve known one of the Board Members for many years, having served on the Board with her decades ago, and maintained a passing friendship with her every since. I’ve served on committees with two of the other Board Members, and my wife also knows and/or has worked with a couple more. By and large, we like and respect these people, and believe they feel similarly about us. Yet tonight, they were able to build a wall between themselves, in their roles as board members, and their friends and neighbors who were sitting in the audience asking for a chance to be heard. That they were able to create this imaginary wall, and sustain it in the face of public outcry was much more disturbing to me than the fact that these normally caring, concerned and thoughtful people made a bad choice in how they handled the hiring process.

At tonight’s meeting one community member stood up and pleaded with the Board to recognize the many errors they were making by sticking doggedly to the path they had chosen. He asked them, “Is this really how you want to start Dr. Gratto’s tenure in Sag Harbor?” He appealed to their common sense and their humanity. But the Board had apparently checked their humanity at the door.

But why? It didn’t have to be that way. Even in the face of having already committed to Dr. Gratto, the Board could still have listened to what the public had to say. Perhaps it was too late for them to change course, but they could have opted to remember that they are also community members, and listen to what their fellow Sag Harborites had to say. It would have taken so little effort just to listen. Nothing else was necessary. Perhaps they would have heard a comment or two that would lead to a better decision, or at least a better decision making process, but we’ll never know. That’s a loss for everyone; but the people who lost the most tonight were the members of the Sag Harbor Board of Education — they lost their humanity. Not permanently, I’m sure, but for long enough to do damage both to their standing in the community and their own psyches.

Sometimes we just identify too much with the role we are playing at a given moment, and forget that underneath that role, we’re all just human beings. The Board of Education had a collective forgetting tonight. I’m guessing that somewhere along the way they fooled themselves into thinking that because they get to vote on the decisions, that the decisions are really theirs to make. Though they tried mightily to hold onto that illusion, they were reminded tonight, that that’s not how it works. In the end, the community makes the decisions; the Board just implements them.

It’s my hope that the Board wakes up soon from this dream of ‘being in charge’ and remembers that they are us.

Posted in: Schools.

So, Where Do We Put the Affordable Housing, Take Two

Oct 12th, 2007
by Saltbox.
3 comments

Transportation issues are on everyone’s mind again even though the worst of the summer season is over. (So, you’re thinking, “what’s that got to do with affordable housing? — wait, I’ll get there.) The much hyped South Fork Commuter Connection (SFCC), comprised of extra Long Island Railroad trains between Speonk and Montauk, and feeder buses to take commuters from the trains to various south fork hamlet and work centers has captured people’s attention, and got them asking questions. Some of those questions came my way today and led to an interesting conversation about…affordable workforce housing.

As I write this, it’s late, so I’m going to give you the shorthand version of that conversation. The Commuter Connection is similar to the light-rail/feeder bus network proposed by Five Towns Rural Transit (5TRT) as a mass-transit system for our area. 5TRT is an outgrowth of the East End Transportation Council (EETC – dontcha just love acronyms?). EETC commissioned the SEEDS  (Sustainable East End Development Strategies) Study. Boiled down to one important bullet point, SEEDS stated that  you cannot separate regional transportation problems from regional land-use issues (zoning). Get it? No? OK, I’ll elaborate a bit.

In order for mass transit to be successful, you need to have relatively large groups of people who are all moving between the same places — say, from where they live to where they work. That puts the mass in mass transit. If you don’t have these concentrations of people all in one place, than the trains/buses don’t get used, ’cause you can’t lay track to, or put a bus stop at everyone’s front door. Unfortunately, for decades zoning policies in our area have encouraged us to build houses on large plots of land spread around on every buildable acre. At the same time, we’ve encouraged businesses to locate all along our highways and byways, between the hamlets. In general, this type of development is known as suburban sprawl. From a transportation perspective, there’s no there there.

But, the SEEDS study tells us that in order to get people to use mass transit — thus keeping their cars off our over-burdened highways — mass transit has to be convenient. Otherwise, people won’t use it. Duh! So, SEEDS says in order to fix the transportation problem, you need to first address the zoning problem by encouraging a mild increase in hamlet center density,  (through a variety of strategies) while upzoning the areas farthest away from the hamlet centers, so that fewer homes are built in outlying areas. SEEDS also suggests putting an end to strip mall development along our highways, while encouraging “infill” and redevelopment in existing business centers. (Please remember, this is a very simplified explanation of the SEEDS recommendations.) The idea is to make it possible for more people to live and work closer to transportation hubs, so that it’s actually convenient to use mass transit.

That got us talking about Sag Harbor, and more particularly about Bulova, because if you think about our transportation issues, and the solution suggested by SEEDS, then you realize that the place where we should be encouraging more of our workforce to live is in the Village center. But, the Bulova developers are saying we should put our workforce housing somewhere else — not in their development — which just happens to be the largest parcel left anywhere near our hamlet center that’s available for (re)development.  Its location and size makes Bulova the ideal place for workforce housing. Yet knowing all the facts, Village government is sitting on their hands and letting the Bulova developers’ need for financial gain trump both the community’s need for affordable workforce housing and a potential solution to our regional transportation issues. A million+ bucks in a “workforce housing fund” sounds nice, but is beside the point since the donors are dictating that the one place where it actually makes sense to put workforce housing is off limits. This opportunity to address two important regional issues at once won’t come around again.
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Currently listening to: Boom Town by Greg Brown.

Posted in: Affodable Housing, Development, Transportation.

Sag Harbor: Still Making History

Oct 8th, 2007
by Saltbox.
1 comment

What’s the one constant in Sag Harbor’s 300 year history? Change. Starting as the port for the farmers in Sagaponack, Sag Harbor went on to become a bustling center of trade, home to one of the country’s largest whaling fleets, and an industrial center producing everything from watchcases to parts for the lunar landing module. As you walk the village, you can see bits and pieces of those various histories: The Custom House dating from the earliest days of the village; the Bulova Watchcase Factory, perhaps the jewel in our industrial crown, and the many lovely structures on south Main Street that started life as the homes of the prestigious and wealthy captains of the whaling fleet. Commercial, industrial, residential, waterfront, religious, and other structures from many different eras crowd together in the barely two square miles that is the entirety of Sag Harbor village. Wherever you walk history abounds, some from long ago, some of a more recent vintage — for history is an ongoing process. Yesterday’s obscenely modern structure is today’s honored period home. (Think Norman Jaffe’s south-of-the-highway homes.) A previous generation’s cheap motel is now a chic boutique hotel (Think Alexis Stuart’s Bridgehampton Motel.) Yesterday’s Watchcase factory is tomorrow’s luxury condos.

Many say that Sag Harbor has entered a period of unprecedented change that may irredeemably alter its character forever. Others, with perhaps a more long-range view, understand that there has never been a quintessential Sag Harbor. This village is not frozen in time. It evolves to meet the needs of its inhabitants. Looking back, or ahead, we may not recognize those inhabitants, but it was, and will be their village, not ours. Ours is the Village that we have today: historic, funky, upscale, charming, nautical, artistic, resorty and small-town. It’s the culmination of all that came before, and the root from which the Sag Harbor of tomorrow is sprouting even as we watch.

To help us reflect upon these changes and consider how the village will continue to evolve and adapt, a few members of the 300th anniversary organizing committee, led by Benito Vila, have put together a workshop which will be held on Saturday, October 13th at the Methodist Church on Madison Street, to celebrate the character and legacy of Sag Harbor. This workshop, which looks to be a lot of fun, will begin with a presentation and discussion led by experienced preservationists and local artists, after which everyone will head out into the streets to “catalogue” in photos, sketches, or what have you, various aspects of the village’s public and private spaces. Once the cataloging has concluded, the collected materials will become the basis for one or more collaborative projects. One such project might be an online “wiki” where digital photos and digitized sketches are stored, tagged as to content, and commented on by participants, and later by others who view the wiki. The John Jermain Memorial Library has offered the use of its computers to facilitate the creation of the wiki, or other online project, and will make the results available to the public through its website. Other projects may also be developed based on ideas brought forward by participants.

Everyone is invited to participate. At the very least we hope to enjoy an afternoon with friends and neighbors celebrating together the place we live. At best we will create a time capsule of sorts, recording images of the village, documenting what is currently here, and identifying the qualities we hope to retain and encourage for the future. Given the proposed commercial development of existing properties and parcels throughout the village, there will be much to compare and contrast. The effect of those initiatives will be an important consideration as we observe Sag Harbor continuing to make history.
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Currently listening to: Our Little Town by Greg Brown.

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Posted in: Development, Historic Preservation, Local Events, Our Town.

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