Dan's Papers - July 27, 2007 -

On Tuesday, July 14, I attended a Town Board meeting in Southampton; on the agenda was the proposed expansion of the Plaza East Shopping Center in Bridgehampton. Plaza East now consists of King Kullen, Caldor, Sears, and several smaller stores. Kimco, owner of the shopping center, has purchased the area just west of Caldor, which is now occupied by a no longer operating drive-in theater. Kimco plans to erect a larger King Kullen and construct space for many smaller shops: in other words, create a major shopping mall, that will be known as Bridgehampton Commons, so that, as a lawyer for Kimco said, East End residents will not have to drive to Riverhead or Patchogue or Smithaven Mall to fulfill their many needs.

The area in question has been zoned for commercial use since 1957. Judging by the map displayed at the meeting, the current Plaza East occupies perhaps a fourth of the available commercial space.

To put it mildly, the Town Board meeting was one of very strong emotions. Those for the expansion of the shopping center appeared evenly matched by those against. Loud cheers interrupted the remarks of every speaker when their supporters felt a point was well put. At the beginning of the meeting, when the lawyer for Kimco gave a professionally impassioned address, there were also some "boos." Supervisor Martin Lang cautioned the gathering that while clapping seemed appropriate, derision was not. This was wise, for in the course of the meeting there would have been, I think, a lot of derision expressed from both sides.

The meeting was long. The afternoon was hot. There were reporters from several papers. At one point a black lab wandered inside the auditorium, circled it entirely, then, doubtlessly bored, nonchalantly exited. The position of those supporting the proposed expansion (and I mean support by citizens, not simply Kimco -- which owns 125 malls) could be summoned up as: convenience. During the ten years I myself have lived on the South Fork I've heard many residents say "When you want to get X or Y, you have to go to Riverhead or Patchogue, etc." The fact is, many residents of, say, Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton, feel it is too much to go to Southampton or East Hampton, especially during the peak traffic hours of the summer. The expansion supporters claim (anticipating the obvious response), that the larger shopping center will not increase traffic on Montauk Highway. As one speaker said, the traffic problem is not due to developers but the geography of the island.

At this point I should declare that I very oppose the expansion of plaza East. Ultimately all the arguments for expansion come down to nothing MORE THAN convenience -- a dubious god our society has been much seduced by. We later find that each convenience is not so ultimate as we had thought, and that further "conveniences" are required to booster it, and so on.

It would seem quite obvious that more shops packed into one area would definitely increase traffic on Montauk Highway; and I think most of us feel traffic there has already reached intolerable levels. What I see happening if Plaza East is expanded is the eventual outcry for some new major roadways north of the highway, putting more land in danger of death by concrete. There has already been an outcry for a bypass in the past.

The lawyer for Kimco, in his opening exhortation, promised, in the larger King Kullen, a "bigger meat department, a bigger bakery section," etc., trying to move the crowd with visions of increased essentials. He made a heart-rendering plea for "mothers with babies on their hips," being able to more easily purchase necessities. One of the speakers in opposition, a mother and resident, drew larger cheers when she said she had carried two babies on her hips and resented being told just what she was supposed to need.

In one of C.S Lewis' theological works, he mentions that in earlier centuries men were impressed with brightness and light, which signified for them spiritual illumination; they thought the brightness of the stars evidence of a special purity. He added that in our age we are impressed with size and number. We think the Galaxy greater than the Earth, and recite the number of existent stars with too much awe.

In other words, we see bigger and more as better - in fact, as improving quality. But so much of recent history has proved the opposite. I think those middle-aged or older recall so many products that small stores carried which larger chains have either debased or dropped entirely. I am perfectly content with the sprouted wheat bread I but now at King Kullen (as far as the meat department goes, I'm a vegetarian).

I will not use the words "developer" or "development." Where your house stands once stood only vegetation. The problem comes down to choice, and it comes down to balance. Society needs its central cities, such as New York and Boston; it needs its suburbs, as in Nassau and most of Suffolk; it needs its countryside, as on the East End. Each offers things others lack; that is as it should be. You don't walk down Fifth Avenue and expect to find uninhabited woodland a block away. Central Park is lovely, but the number of its visitors makes it inferior to the woodland along the Sag Harbor Turnpike. So the problem is: do you want fifth Avenue or Mineola country? Kimco and its supporters claim the proposed Bridgehampton Commons certainly is not Fifth Avenue. Well, not yet. But if a man starts from A and takes two steps towards B and then tells me he never intends to get B and takes more steps, stops, protests again he won't reach B, but continues once more towards it - well, I know where he's going.

This past spring there were many days where people stood outside King Kullen, taking signatures on a petition in support of Plaza East expansion. I remarked to one woman collecting signatures, "At this rate the Hamptons will be like Islip." She said, deprecatingly, "then you'll have to move to the boodocks."

Unfortunately this attitude has been too prevalent in 20th century America. Unlike smaller European countries, or, say Japan, Americans felt they have in their possession unlimited space. They could get away with that attitude in the 19th century (at the expense of the Indians), but not now. You don't like what the city has become, move to the suburbs. You don't like the country becoming suburban, move to the boondocks. Why must we, who have come to love very much the area we live in, have to flee, instead of simply saying, no, we wish to remain as we are? Others try to shame us with the specter of progress. I say it is not progress, but degeneration. Us country-lovers may indeed move to the boondocks, but when the shopping malls arrive there too, and then arrive at the next place we move to--well, at just what point we will be firm enough to say: The desecration of paradise stops here!