Gov. Hochul visits new affordable housing development in East Hampton

Long Island Morning Edition

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul visited the Town of East Hampton this past Friday, when she announced $2.5 million in state funding toward restoration of the dune system at Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk, where three storms last winter devastated the beach and dunes and caused flooding in the surrounding neighborhood. Christopher Walsh reports on 27east.com that later, at the newly constructed Green at Gardiner’s Point affordable housing complex in East Hampton, she announced the town’s designation as the first on Long Island to be named a Pro-Housing Community.

“The threat of climate change is no longer a threat,” the governor said in the Friday morning event at Montauk Downs State Park. Extreme weather, she said, “is our new normal. That is our reality here in the State of New York. It’s been such a threat to our coastal towns. It really impacts not just the natural beauty, but it affects communities,” from tourism and small businesses to residents. “I’m here today because I continue my commitment to protecting our beaches, our shorelines and making sure that as these threats continue and are becoming more ferocious, we will make the investments now so future generations know that we cared and we made a difference.”

Governor Hochul said “we also know that one storm can wash away everything that you built. Everything that you love can be gone in an instant.”

This, she said, is “why we have to build up resiliency. This is the peak of hurricane season. It is getting longer, more sustained than we’ve ever had.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast an “above-normal” 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.

After the winter storms that left the beach profile “nonexistent and down to the hard pan,” as East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez described it last winter, a two-phase beach and dune restoration project at the popular beach saw the placement of 5,800 cubic yards of sand in June, sufficiently restoring the beach for recreational activity this summer. Christopher Walsh reports on 27east.com that following the peak summer season, a project to restore the dunes along a 2,700-linear-foot stretch of shoreline running from just west of the main parking lot east to the edge of the stone revetment fronting the Montauk Shores mobile home park is to be completed.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul visited a newly built affordable housing development in East Hampton this past Friday, as her office recognized the town as the first certified pro-housing community in Suffolk County. Jonathan LaMantia reports in NEWSDAY that the certification recognizes a municipality’s commitment to increasing available housing for its residents. As part of this year’s budget, the governor and legislature made the pro-housing designation a requirement to receive a portion of up to $650 million in state discretionary funding for economic development.

In addition to East Hampton, Hempstead Village and Long Beach have been certified by the state, joining Mineola, which was the first to receive the designation earlier this year.

Seven more municipalities have applied, and the state is preparing to certify their applications, according to state officials. They are the towns of Brookhaven and Riverhead, and the villages of Freeport, Farmingdale, Port Washington North, Sag Harbor and Westbury.

The development where the governor spoke on Friday, called the Green at Gardiner's Point, will offer 50 affordable apartments to renters who meet certain income requirements, with rents at $1,500 for a one-bedroom apartment, $1,784 for two-bedroom apartments and $2,045 for a three-bedroom apartment.

Tenants for the five-building complex, developed through a partnership of Jericho-based Georgica Green Ventures and the East Hampton Housing Authority, were selected through a housing lottery last week.

Municipalities have two ways to earn the recognition. First, they can submit data to the state showing they have approved permits that increased the number of housing units in their area by 1% over the past year or 3% in the past three years.

If municipalities haven’t met that standard, they still can be certified if they pass a pro-housing resolution - indicating the local government supports "housing production of all kinds in our community …" The locality must also pledge to streamline permitting for multifamily housing and affordable housing and incorporate regional needs into planning decisions, among other provisions.

The development where the governor spoke on Friday, called the Green at Gardiner's Point, will offer 50 affordable apartments to renters who meet certain income requirements, with rents at $1,500 for a one-bedroom apartment, $1,784 for two-bedroom apartments and $2,045 for a three-bedroom apartment.

Tenants for the five-building complex, developed through a partnership of Jericho-based Georgica Green Ventures and the East Hampton Housing Authority, were selected through a housing lottery last week.

Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, East Hampton Town's supervisor, said the town applied for the funding because she recognized the importance of affordable housing and wanted East Hampton to be eligible for state funding to support more projects like the one the governor visited on Friday.

The state’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, NY Forward and Regional Council Capital Fund are among the economic development programs tied to achieving pro-housing community status.

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East End Arts, the Riverhead-based arts nonprofit, has a new executive director. Alek Lewis reports on Riverheadlocal.com that Wendy Weiss, previously the organization’s creative director, was promoted to the top job on June 17. Weiss, 45, of Bridgehampton, got involved with East End Arts in March 2020 as a board member and was later hired to oversee the organization’s major arts exhibitions.

Weiss, grew up in Bridgehampton and graduated from Mercy High School in Riverhead. She has a marketing degree from Johnson & Wales University.

From her office above the organization’s main gallery on East Main Street in Riverhead Ms. Weiss told Riverheadlocal that she has ideas about expanding and refining the organization’s existing programming. One of them is adding more of the organization’s satellite art galleries across the twin forks and Suffolk County.

“It gives us the opportunity to rotate member artwork and have it on display in different places across the community,” she said. “And it’s become a really powerful program because it supports that mission of being regional and being out in all of the parts of the community and meeting new people. And it helps our members be able to get their artwork out there.”

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After the Southold Town Planning Board determined in July that a planned expansion of the Gulf station at the Main Road gateway to Mattituck would need extended environmental review, the owners of the gas station are preparing a scaled back plan. Emre Ilgin, son of business owner Sukru Ilgin, told attendees at a July 29 Mattituck-Laurel Civic Association forum on the project that his family had already gone through the process of preparing a detailed Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Gulf station they recently built on the corner of Young’s Avenue and Route 48 in Southold, and would like to avoid having to prepare an EIS for this project. Beth Young in EAST END BEACON reports that the property at the intersection of the Main Road, Old Main Road and Bray Avenue in Mattituck is currently the site of a 1,600-square-foot mini mart and gas station with 9 pumps. In 2022, the applicants proposed merging the property with a vacant 1.12-acre lot immediately east of the current location, demolishing the existing gas station and pumps and building a new two-story, 5,000-square-foot office and convenience store and 12 gas pumps on the vacant lot.

“Since the last meeting, we went back to the drawing board,” Emre Ilgin told attendees at the Civic Association meeting, referring to the July 8 Southold Town Planning Board meeting at which the board issued a “positive declaration” for the project under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), which would mean the project would require an Environmental Impact Statement.

Ilgin said his family owns 12 gas stations on Long Island, but this is his father’s first gas station, and he wanted to move the corporate offices to this site. The expanded mini-mart, he said, is part of the reality of trying to operate a gas station business in these times.

“Back in the day, there was profit on gas,” Ilgin said. “Now businesses like Costco and BJs are selling gasoline at cost — they make their money from memberships. For me to stay in business, I have to move toward the convenience store side.”