Issue #31, October 27, 2006

Don’t Look

Is the View of a Farm a Legally Protected Part of Our Heritage?

By Dan Rattiner

People driving down Wickapogue Road toward Southampton last week were startled to notice that an entire farm field between Wickapogue Road and the ocean had seemed to vanish. Instead of looking out at the magnificent stretch of potato field, the signature view that defines much of the Hamptons, they were confronted with a half a mile of five-foot privet, shoulder to shoulder, hiding the activities going on within.

What was this? Well, it was a spite fence, is what it was, made out of foliage. Even more spiteful was the fact that the new owner of this field, Robert Gianos, had informed the village that they would be barred from using a part of a dirt footpath that briefly crossed a corner of his property and they would have thirty days to remove several little wooden foot bridges on this footpath that crossed wetlands on his property to bring visitors to a two-acre landlocked nature preserve. Without the path, the only access to the nature preserve is by helicopter. And there are laws against helicopters landing there.

The actions of Mr. Gianos are indeed despicable in my opinion, but have been brought about, according to him, by the Village Board for dragging their feet on a plan to develop this farm into an eleven-McMansion housing development. Southampton was supposed to be, particularly its Architectural Review Board, Zoning Board and Village Board, very pro-development. What had gone wrong?

So now there would be consequences. Gianos had had it. It was over. And if the objection was that this was a very public view, well, now it isn’t.

I will later get to some of the generous things that Gianos had offered to include in this development had it gone through, such as a pasture, a park area and a large nature area, but, of course, the real question is why was he allowed to do what he did, and why was he allowed to consider development of this land, the last farmland in the Village, in the first place? Well, the residents of Village Hall have nobody to blame for all of this but themselves.

Up until two years ago, the elected officials in the Village of Southampton were about equally divided between those favoring development and those favoring preservation, with a little lean, in more recent times, toward preservation. But then, as a new election loomed in 2004, two very disastrous things happened to those favoring preservation. One was that it was found that a particular councilman who had been on the Village Board for twelve years actually lived about twenty feet outside the village which made him ineligible for office. A village boundary had been jerryrigged by an earlier preservationist administration to allow a new survey showing that the village line crossed over a tip of his property thereby making him eligible. When this error was made public, he was forced to resign.

The second thing was that, at that time, the Village government, leaning toward preservation, had passed tighter zoning laws that were now about to go into effect. People favoring development said that if the councilman had not been in office at the time, the laws would not have been voted through. The more pro-development candidates then jumped on this and announced that as soon as they got elected, they would dismantle the less generous laws. And so that is what they did.

Whether these recently rescinded laws would have prevented Mr. Gianos from doing what he just did is not exactly clear. But what is clear is that many other villages and towns in this community have laws on the books that would have, at the very least, protected the access across the property to the nature preserve. And there is some belief that environmental laws could have prevented the blocking of the view with the privet.

This particular farm has been in existence for two hundred and fifty years. It was owned most recently by Anna V. Flore, who, at various times was urged to participate in a farm preservation program where she would have been paid several millions of dollars to give up the “development rights.” But she declined.

Instead, three years ago, she sold it for thirty five million to Robert Gianos, a well-known developer.

Gianos, in his original proposal to develop the property, was, considering the circumstances, very forthcoming. He wanted seven 4-acre building lots and three 2-acre building lots, but in exchange he offered to leave undeveloped 6 acres of woodlands including the trail, 5 acres for a fenced animal pasture and 2 acres as a “village green” for use as a public space.

The Board met. And many environmentalists only heard the first part of the offer. Their shouts of objection to this project, including the point that the view of this farmland, the last farmland in the Village, was part of the Village heritage, caused the Board to hesitate. And after a time, as it seemed to escalate, the County stepped in, and then the Village overruled the County, and then Gianos simply lost his temper.

The most interesting thing about all of this is whether the townspeople do have the right, as they do to their beaches, to enjoy the vast farmland views that exist throughout our community.

There are laws that protect heights of fences. And there are laws, much less stringent ones now, in Southampton Village, that limit the size of buildings. But privet are, well, trees. And trees grow wherever they happen to grow, for example all in a row along Wickapogue Road.

On the other hand, I have seen with my own eyes where town highway department people have come onto private property, across from the entrance to the Middle School on Pine Street, to cut down trees and bushes on private property that blocked the view of those coming out of the public parking lot behind the stores on Hampton Road. They came uninvited and refused to leave. And they opened up the view over the objection of the homeowner. Safety first.

If not safety, why not other things, such as a neighbor’s water view or a pleasurable view of existing farmland? All sorts of laws are created in communities around the country to handle things like this. In Nantucket, you can only paint your house an approved color that matches the paint on the old homes on that island. And you certainly can’t build anything that is out of character.

I certainly understand the need to put up hedgerows to protect privacy. But hedgerows to keep people from looking at farmland? As a rough start in this direction, how about permitting hedgerows to protect the privacy of property with homes on it, but not allow fences or foliage to “protect” open field property? That’s easy enough to do.

Gianos, in a letter to the Southampton Press, said he put up the privet “as a matter of good land management practice in order to contain topsoil erosion, reduce fugitive dust migration in a residential area, discourage trespassing, and reduce deer traffic.”

This passage was surely written by high-powered New York City lawyers, staring out a window from the 40th floor in a Manhattan office building. They sure don’t know squat about either farming or fences.

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