Dan's Papers -February 5, 2010 -Panoramic

I have a new hardcover book coming out in May. It is called In the Hamptons TOO and it is a follow up to the memoir In the Hamptons that appeared in bookstores nationwide two summers ago. That first book, which got a rave review in The New York Times-one entire chapter was excerpted in Newsday-consisted of 32 chapters, each about an interesting individual I knew in the Hamptons during the last 50 years while publishing Dan's Papers. The newer edition is thicker, with 39 chapters, and includes stories about a whole new bunch of individuals, including more artists, writers, farmers, fishermen, celebrities, billionaires and at least two businessmen who built commercial structures in the Hamptons only to have them torn back down after running afoul of the town's building regulations.

I think it is relevant to point this out here, because at the present time, the Town of East Hampton is looking at the building going on at the Panoramic View Resort & Residences in Montauk and is considering pulling that establishment's Certificate of Occupancy if it turns out things were built illegally. The next step, of course, would be a teardown, or a partial teardown. Interestingly, I know of only three commercial buildings in the Hamptons that a Town tore down. I will write about all three in the rest of this article, but what is interesting is that all three were built in the jurisdiction of the Town of East Hampton and all three were in Montauk. The Panoramic View, now in the crosshairs, is also in Montauk. There are those in Montauk who think East Hampton Town is not happy about what goes on commercially in the hamlet of Montauk. Three in Montauk and zero everywhere else in the Hamptons speaks to that, some say-not that the three didn't deserve it.

The first buildings to go-actually, two adjacent buildings-were constructed on Main Street in downtown Montauk in 1960. Starting my newspaper that year, I kept an eye on them until I met the owner-who was building one as an office for his new taxi business, and the other as a garage for the taxicabs. I sold him an ad in the paper that first year. He knew there already was a taxicab business in town, a business called Windsor Taxi. But he would drive him out. He was very aggressive about it. And it was important to him that his ad be larger than the Windsor Taxi ad.

These businesses were all in the summertime in Montauk then. You think off-season is quiet now-it was dead as a doornail in 1960. My newspaper was published just in the summertime too.

The following spring, I came home from college and met him at his place and he was a very angry man. Windsor had apparently come out earlier in the spring and had cut HIM out. "He's made deals with every motel in town," he told me. "I hate this town. I'm here to close up. These buildings will just ROT right here where they have been built for as long as I live. What do you think of that?"

Then he threw me out.

Those buildings stood in dilapidated condition for the next 40 years. By the 1990s, the roofs were open to the sky and they were falling down. And so the Town moved in, condemned them and ordered them taken down and destroyed.

I applauded the town for that. They were becoming a danger to passersby. Dan's Papers applauded the town for that. What I did not applaud was that subsequently-perhaps because this hothead had died-his heirs made applications to build new structures there and it took six years to get permits approved. These buildings face Fort Pond Bay to the North and Montauk Highway to the South, and there are just a few hundred feet between the two. It took so long for approval because between septic and well and wetlands and setback rules and environmental impacts and every other damn thing, that's how long it took-even though the earlier structures pre-existed the founding of zoning.

So what happened? Read it in my book. There is a picture of the two new buildings that stand there today. They are not quite complete nine years since their application was filed. A snow fence surrounds them because they are still under construction. The battle with the town is never ending.

The second teardown in Montauk happened on the Napeaugue strip. A restaurant was built on the North side of the Montauk Highway there in the mid-1960s. By 1972, it was bulldozed to the ground. It's a vacant lot today. Why? A builder who didn't put much truck with building codes built it. But he did do a renovation on my house back then and I thought him a nice guy, except he put all the light sockets at chest levels on the wall "so you won't ever again have to bend down to plug anything in," he told me. It's a nice story and its in the new book too. Where he built that restaurant is now, once again, a vacant lot.

The third teardown by the town took place also in Montauk and it took place real quick, right after the guy went ahead and built it without any building permits whatsoever.

The property was and still is The Lake Club & Marina on the eastern shore of Lake Montauk. It was built as a small stone castle in the 1920s by a rich New Yorker, and by the early 1970s, he was gone and the place was now being run as a marina. The owner had built docks out into the Lake-legally, with permits, I believe-but then told me that he would now begin building a small store and restaurant on the back lawn facing the docks. This would be between the castle and the water. He'd have it open by the following summer.

"Can you get permits that quick?" I asked him.

"I don't need no permits," is what I vividly remember him telling me. "Who's gonna even see it back there? This is private property."

The building went up. The building came down. The guy left town. I approved of that too (except the leaving town part), and Dan's Papers did as well.

This story, I might note, is not in either the first book, In the Hamptons-which will now be available in paperback on May 6, or in the new book In the Hamptons TOO, out on May 10. I haven't written it yet. But I will if there is a call for In the Hamptons Three. I've known at least another 30-something interesting people besides those mentioned in these first two books.

As for the Panoramic View, a report in one of the local papers says that town officials, acting on a hot tip, snuck down there (it's closed up tight for the winter) and saw all sorts of new buildings and improvements going on. They say if these improvements don't match the approved applications, all are going to have to be torn down. The euphemism is "bringing the place up to code."

Toward the end of the article, the specific allegations seem to be that they have enclosed what were originally decks and porches, they have re-graded a parking area and there is one new building which appears to have just flown in from nowhere.

How much of it is true I do not know, but if you step back and look at what is going on here without the aid of the regulation book, you see that the Panoramic View is a pre-existing commercial establishment that has been in continuous use and is therefore legal, that it is on the edge of (and down onto) an ever-changing cliff face overlooking the ocean, and it has not had a renovation in many years. The new owners, who bought it from the Kraft family in 2006, applied to the town to spruce the place up, make the parking lot safe, and gut and re-model all the interiors. In many cases, small rooms would be combined to make larger ones, and they would do so without messing with any exterior walls or roofs and otherwise bring "everything up to code." For that they just needed architectural review board permission, which they got. The building department does not speak to the architectural review board?

Personally, I have witnessed, all over the Hamptons over the years, particularly at restaurants, outdoor slate patios become slate patios with awnings, become canvas covered patios with rain panels on the sides, become enclosed, glass porches with heating units, become full scale sunrooms with wooden or slate floors, become actual extensions to buildings, all either with or without all necessary approvals. Somehow everything gets to live and let live.

I could name names here but in the interest of sanity will not. I eat in these rooms occasionally after all.

Perhaps this is going on at the Panoramic View, perhaps not. Anyway, consider the alternative: a complete shutdown for five or 10 years while everybody from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Suffolk County Board of Health, the Town Board and the Nature Conservancy all mull this over. It should be noted that during the last few months, brushes with the law have involved numerous town of East Hampton employees and this may put them in a bad mood. A town building inspector was arrested for interfering with a police officer trying to break up an altercation on Main Street, Sag Harbor. A harbormaster was arrested for catching illegal amounts and sizes of flounders in his off-hours. Another harbormaster was charged with being in possession of a small amount of marijuana. The former Town Supervisor was investigated by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office on possible money mismanagement charges. The town's chief financial officer was actually arrested and hauled away in handcuffs by the D. A. on the same charges and everybody is pretty upset about all of this.

But, you know, just because there are a few bad apples in the basket etc. etc. None of this has anything to do with what I've described above. We await developments.