Dan's Papers - July 27, 2007

The Streck family has run the Amagansett Farmer's Market on Main Street for more than forty years -- it is a great institution in the Hamptons. Last year, however, they wanted to sell the place and retire, but every buyer they approached just wanted to tear it down and carve it into residential building lots. Eventually, the Town of East Hampton stepped in and, declaring the Market a community treasure, purchased the development rights for $ 2 million. This summer is the last year the Strecks will be there. After this summer, the town will have a tenant in place to run the business, or they will run it directly. The plan is to run it just as it has been run before.

One of the more interesting aspects of this -- which the town now inherits -- has to do with a creative approach the Strecks took to providing outdoor seating space for the customers. There are maybe fifty customers at any one time who would like to take their fresh baked goods or coffee or sandwiches or newspapers and find a nice spot on the premises to sit down and enjoy what they bought. There is the farmstand and market building itself, where there is really no place to sit. And there is the farm field out back -- about eight acres -- where you can not sit. And there are about four acres of grassy fields with shade trees and shrubbery and even a little brook where you could sit, if you were allowed to have tables and chairs and umbrellas. But the zoning laws would not allow the Strecks to have an outdoor cafe. So they couldn't use it. Or could they?

What the Strecks found was that there was nothing at all to prevent anybody from having tables and chairs and benches in a field. No zoning required. And so, along the eastern side of the building, the Strecks made what really was just a private six-acre park with lots of flowers and pathways and some benches and plastic chairs and tables, where you could eat your food and read the paper and talk and watch the birds and butterflies pollinate the beautiful flowers. Children run around. Dogs are welcome.

Since this is perfectly legal and since the town has now taken it over with the idea of running the Farmer's Market as it has been run before, this private park is now a public park, so to speak. You can still lock the gate to it when the sun goes down, coinciding with the closing up of the market itself.

The concept of this seems to be leading other local officials to look at similar things elsewhere. On North Main Street in the Town of East Hampton, the authorities have purchased a 3.2-acre formerly wind-powered sawmill, most recently owned by the Labrozzi family. It sits right on the corner of North Main and Cedar Street, by a traffic light, and includes a small abandoned farmhouse, a woodshed, a barn and several other outbuildings, all unoccupied and locked up, waiting for the village to decide what it wants to do with them and the rest of the property. Meanwhile, pedestrians stroll by and motorists pass by, admiring the leafy grounds wondering when and if something might happen. The answer could be years away.

But maybe not. It's been suggested that, while everybody waits, people be allowed in to stroll the grounds. Also, perhaps a few benches could be brought in. Voila! An instant park!

It hasn't happened yet. But the very idea is intriguing. Will the bureaucrats get a hold of the idea and stop it? Are there laws about lighting that have to be obeyed? Are there liability issues? Hopefully, if we all pull together, we can get this done and there will be one more place where the public can go for rest, relaxation, contemplation and conversation. And not later, but NOW. Power to the people!

There is so much money coming into municipal coffers from the 2.5% real estate transaction tax and so many purchases, wonderful purchases, taking place so that there are natural and beautiful places for people to visit. This tax, added to all real estate transactions in excess of $250,000, has elicited no argument from anybody and has been such blessing. And it also makes perfect sense. All these new people buy houses out here. And so, with the money they spend to do so, we preserve things for them to enjoy when they come here.

With all this in mind, it might be a good thing for the authorities to survey what they've got, what they haven't got around to and how much time they will take BEFORE they get around to it and what they might do in that interim.

For example, there is this seven-acre park next to the 7Eleven in Southampton just sitting there, publicly owned, with nothing going in it. There's one.