Hamptons Living With a (Tree) Farm View

In the hypermarket that is today’s Hamptons real estate, a property bordering on an agricultural reserve has a powerful selling point. Anyone with a few million can have a McMansion, but is your vista protected from somebody else’s development?

Still, there are reserves, and then there are reserves. And what I picked up from a conversation this week with John vH Halsey, president of the Peconic Land Trust, is that most “farmland” held in reserves on the East End of Long Island, N.Y., is not actually tilled soil, the kind of pastoral setting that might come to mind. In fact, he says, in all of the 89,728 acres that is Southampton town, only 300 are fully and officially kept for cultivation. The rest in reserve has been set aside in various land arrangements that can be a far cry from the farmland-preservation goal that has animated Suffolk County citizenry–if not always farmers themselves–for at least half a century. (Many farm families were most keen, instead, on keeping their property options.)

It was in the early 1970s that the weekend-luxury rush to the Hamptons took off, and with it the loss of its rich Bridgehampton loam soil to those homebuyers, to forced sales for estate and property taxes, and to the middling returns from potatoes and dairy. Much preservation effort–or artifice–has followed from that, with Halsey’s Trust group involved in many of the genuine deals. (It also looks after woodlands and watersheds.)

These days, depending on the several legal structures available, one may see not row crops but amusements for kids or adults (wineries, golf), boutique horse stables or–most likely–“tree farms.” This last category means commercial nurseries, serving the now-huge home landscaping industry on Long Island’s South Fork, especially.

It is an irony not lost on Halsey and others that the decades of actions meant to safeguard the character of the Hamptons, by such measures as rezonings intended to ward off suburbanization, have supercharged the high-end property market. This in turn fostered the demand for great gardens and screened parcels that summons the landscape designers and endless work crews that call on the satellite nurseries. (They also add considerably to the stunning daily “trade parade” of traffic from west on Long Island.)

It can be argued that the result adds much beauty to the Hamptons (the now-ubiquitous “green giant” trees being a basis for dissent). But it’s a far cry from the mid-20th Century character of the area that many idealize, and that motivated the “save the farmlands” campaigns.

At the same time, the incredible wealth concentration on the East End has generated much charitable giving to the Peconic Land Trust to do its work, while also amassing a huge tax kitty from property sales since 1999 for set-aside acquisitions by town governments in the area. The Hamptons cycles, virtuous or not, go on. –June 27, 2025

Where North Fork Nuclear Almost Was

Nuclear energy was one of many development prospects on the East End of Long Island 50 years ago that are little remembered there today because they didn’t happen.  This month’s print edition of the East End Beacon, a news site concentrating on environmental and land-use issues with particular interest in the island’s North Fork, features an article that should jog memories. It’s about “Hallockville” and the water reactors that could have come to that historic farming ground at the east end of Riverhead town. They were discussed at the time as the Jamesport plants, though they actually were to be located not in that hamlet but in the one just above, Northville, on Long Island Sound. These were to be among a potential 11 atomic generating sites in Suffolk County to be built by what was then the Long Island Lighting Co—LILCO.  The idea, growing out of an early 1960s conception of nuclear energy as clean and “too cheap to meter,” was to supply low-cost power for the surrounding region.  That dream ultimately came fully crashing down in the last and most famous instance, at Shoreham in mid-Suffolk, where a plant was finished by the time sustained protests led Gov. Mario Cuomo to kill it in the late 1980s. Objections there from citizen-advocates were similar to those at Northville: inadequate safety, especially given narrow evacuation routes. That cause swept the day against nuclear power on Long Island. But beneath it lay a foundational objection, much as there had been at Hallockville in 1963 to earlier plans for an industrial harbor: Communities didn’t want economic growth if it meant (as it usually does) disturbing the character of their place. Yet even if tradeoffs are made—Long Island pays high utility rates for its stretched power generation—the bargain is not fully kept:  The North Fork today fights off development pressures on its remaining (strong) agricultural base.  Just as on the South Fork, however, the desirability of residential property has attracted the rich and made limited housing scarce for everyone else, so keeping things “as they are” is never quite possible. But in the place of growth we get preservation zones, such as at Hallock State Park where the nukes were to be situated.  Occasionally a contemporary visitor will find a marker telling him what he missed.  –June 5, 2024

Hallockville at Fifty

A Sag Harbor Preserve…For Whom?

Sometimes land preservation doesn’t do much for the public, at least visibly. That’s been the case with an old dairy-cattle spread in New York’s Sag Harbor Village called Cilli Farm. This month’s article in the local Express weekly describes the nine acres as “a tangle of brambles, invasive plants and litter”–see the photo taken yesterday. This perhaps was not the intention 25 years ago when Sag Harbor, Southampton Town (in which most of it falls) and Suffolk County went in on saving the long dormant parcel north of the business district from being swallowed up in the real-estate revival that was taking hold in the historic village. Indeed, the onetime Cilli Farm is now surrounded by dense and very pricey homes and a vibrant waterfront. Often a motivation for setting aside open space is simply to retain greenery or vistas for the sake of current or future neighbors. But, if private capture was the primary result, a public expenditure–$1 million in this case—was of questionable value (even if a screaming bargain today). Sometimes preserving land is useful for ground-water protection, particularly on Long Island. But that has not been a central issue here. Nor has historic preservation, even though the Cilli dairy operation was a source of rich memories from Sag Harbor’s mid-20th century—nothing remains of it. It is just idle “park” space, with each level of government waiting on the others to initiate a plan for public use.  According to the Express article, two village parks stewards are spearheading an effort to clean up the site, improve access and offer trails to enjoy. The surrounding property owners may or may not like the activity that will bring.  At least, however, Cilli Farm will cease to be a local example of the tragedy of the commons. –April 18, 2025

https://www.27east.com/southampton-press/sag-harbor-village-board-hears-call-to-spruce-up-cilli-farm-2349899/

Rail May Yet Figure in Hamptons’ Future

While planning decisions, including sites for scarce housing, continue to be made piecemeal in “the Hamptons,” just to the west in Brookhaven town major infrastructure is in play. This week’s update on the opening of a new Long Island Rail Road station near the Long Island Expressway in what some call East Yaphank is a reminder of what can move the development needle. The station will replace a barely used and obscure depot a few miles away, and be more convenient to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a major employment and visitor center. The linked article from Newsday doesn’t also mention the proximity to the retail and residential hub that’s been erected nearby after years of controversy over affected woodlands. Meanwhile, further west, in the town of Islip, maneuvering continues to try to link the LIRR station at Ronkonkoma to MacArthur Airport, Suffolk County’s only airline flight hub. This could be part of a sizable residential and commercial complex. Though that part is more controversial, the groundwork for more intensive land use clearly would be laid. Even as the LIRR’s direct links to the most prized places on the East End are underused, the carrier’s connections “up island” remain strong and will have ancillary effects, fostering a bigger nearby presence that can bleed over. Eastern Long Island remains a highly desired location, with accommodation to change ever knocking at the Hamptons’ golden door. –April 5, 2025

https://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/yaphank-lirr-station-groundbreaking-wnyzwdpk

Where Police Work Can Pay in NY

These periodic pay reports from NY’s Empire Center (which I help support) are of more than nosy appeal. They chart the upper end of what public employees can stand to make in total compensation, which is a sometimes shocking reminder of how packages negotiated with compliant local officials can put taxpayers at risk. In communities such as those in Suffolk County, tax rates are rising (even with already steep property values as a base) in order to accommodate ballooning pension and health-care benefits. And as this Empire report highlights, “public safety” jobs can be particularly prone to pay escalation. This has ancillary effects, too: New York City is struggling with increased departures from its police force–and many cops have gone to surrounding suburbs with higher salaries and/or easier working environments. Blue-state laws often advantage unionized staff, yet final agreements are reached at the county and town level. (And if a senior officer is hired after already qualifying for a pension after 20 years on another force, as happened in Southampton, N.Y., the double-dipping is somebody else’s problem.) Employee unions often are highly influential in community elections, but residents of the New York municipalities cited in these data should be asking if they are getting the premium returns they are paying for.

What They Make 2024

More Productive = Less Political

I was encouraged to find an article stressing the importance of U.S. labor productivity in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. (The CFR’s agenda includes national competitiveness.) The piece, produced by a former member of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former economics writer in the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau, hits familiar notes about better training of the workforce, along with a few curious side jaunts (arresting climate change and repealing the Trump 45 tax cuts). What I didn’t find was a case for removing impediments to more productive use of both labor and capital, which often as not impinge on the public sector because it is subject to more direct political constraint. I have in mind such obstructions as those that hamstring modernized air-traffic control by the chronically tech-lagging Federal Aviation Administration (the notorious Elon Musk is now on that case). Also–and more often the local level–there are the legacy strictures that prevent government services from adapting to changed circumstances. It’s very difficult to close a public school, for example, even when neighborhoods change, so they stay open for too few students to attend. Likewise, as a recent report from the Reason Foundation explains, transit lines do not adjust as passenger traffic demand shifts, because discarding or diminishing routes is too difficult. Constituencies organize and legislators clamor. Failing that interference, lawyers are retained to tie matters up in court. The Foreign Affairs authors refer admiringly to China’s productivity leaps, which partly stem from the Communist Party’s leeway to force changes over democratic resistance. (This power also deters innovation, but that’s another topic.) You can be confident that the People’s Republic will employ self-driven vehicles on a mass scale long before the U.S. does, even though the software is pioneered here. A full picture of America’s productivity lags should encompass not only inputs (R&D money, as per the article) but outputs, and why those can’t be realized as quickly as they were in less politically “engaged” eras.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/productivity-everything-slaughter-wessel

Subdivisions That Sustained a Hamptons Middle Class

As the South Fork of Long Island saw a housing boom in the mid-1980s, development pressed into woodlands—the very areas whose environmental worth was finally gaining currency. Roughly 40 years ago, a pair of adjoining subdivision proposals north of Quogue Village drew particular press and public notice. Unlike several other large projects floated during the period, these two were ultimately approved and built. What was gained and lost as a result?

In the plans for what were called Wildlife Associates and Woodland Pines—today flagged by entry signs as simply Wildlife and Woodland—the few hundred acres between the Quogue Wildlife Refuge and County Road 104, north of Old Country Road were to become 200 single-family homes. Objections flew from the nearby village of Quogue, from Westhampton down the road, and from preservationists at what was then the Group for the South Fork.

The developers were guided through the approval process by a young outfit called Inter-Science Research, headed by former water-quality advocate Richard Warren. Inter-Science would go on to become one of the go-to shops for property applicants on the South Fork. In this case, a set of concessions–reducing the number and footprint of the homes and handing off a 100 acre “buffer” between the developments and the wildlife refuge–greased eventual approval. The town planning board, led by Roy Wines Jr., drew considerable criticism for such comprises during the hectic 1980s rush into the “Hamptons.”

(A history of the process must mainly draw from newspaper coverage at the time, which was more consistently attentive to development matters than it is today. Personal memories unfortunately have faded.  Prominent local attorney Stephen Latham represented some opponents but is now semi-retired and his clients have also left the scene. Carolyn Zenk objected for what is now the Group for the East End—and later became a Southampton town councilwoman—but didn’t respond to inquiries, as Warren did not as well. An attorney who represented the developers also couldn’t be reached.)

Forty years later, what can be seen? By most indicators, a successful settlement.  The residential streets, most notably Whippoorwill Lane and Peacock Path, are populated with 128 moderately sized houses with a woodsy backdrop. (Prices have risen considerably, but most sell for well under $2 million.)The home sites bear a great resemblance to Whalebone Landing in Noyac, an early cluster subdivision welcomed by town planners. As family domiciles, they benefit from being part of the Quogue Union Free School District, one of the best performing in the state.

The Quogue refuge, meanwhile, has only grown in renown as Southampton town’s pioneering wildlife park, dating to its days as a private sanctuary the 1930s.   Assistant Director Marisa Nelson told me that there’ve been no measures of feared harm to the sanctuary’s ponds (which share a watershed with the developments), no discernible effect on the fowl and mammal life, and only periodic violations of the buffer area for hunting or refuse. A recent walk along the perimeter of the refuge yielded not even a sight of homes or their outcroppings.  A more noticeable presence, noise-wise, is the nearby Gabreski Airport, operated by Suffolk County and due for expanded use.

East Quogue, the hamlet where the subdivisions arose, today maintains a middle-class character. But the gloss of the modern Hamptons is reaching it. A luxury home development with a private golf course is under construction barely a mile away, also approved after years of contention and in its case millions of dollars in lawsuits. Its go-ahead marked a rare defeat for the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, which took up advocacy on developments by the late 1980s. The stakes, it seems, have grown far higher in the four decades since the Wildlife and Woodland neighborhoods were born.

At the same time, maintaining some vestige of “affordable” housing (that is, beyond the richest percentiles) in or near the Hamptons has also become a focal point of public policy. This will require concessions of the sort that opened up the woods near Quogue 40 years ago. –Jan. 13, 2025

Tangled Politics of Tribal Construction in Southampton

I’ve been waiting for the New York Post, which this month ballyhooed a coverage push into Long Island, to seize on a land-use story that captures its aggrieved-middle-class shtick. It’s the Shinnecock tribe’s rush to build a “travel plaza” (for starters) on its 79-acre adjunct site in a wooded part of the Hampton Bays hamlet, just west of the locally-renowned boating canal named for these earliest settlers. Construction of the giant gas station (officially recognized “Indian” peoples can sell without tax) along the Sunrise Highway is taking place in defiance of local zoning and abutting a neighborhood of homes that sell for less than the multimillions commanded on the east side of the canal–the true “Hamptons.” The Shinnecock have long eyed their so-called Westwoods holding for development; they say a bay-facing resort hotel will follow the fuel and convenience retail, and the neighbors further fear that once-quashed casino plans there will be resurrected. This is now a full-fledged political crisis in Southampton town, which includes the hamlet. The town council voted 3-2 just before the Christmas holidays to sue the tribe to stop the project, as the article below from the Southampton Press ably explains. The Press and the East Hampton Star, flagship weeklies on Long Island’s South Fork, are left-of-center editorially and support the tribe–thus contributing to a regional media vacuum that the conservative Post seeks to fill. The Hampton Bays homeowners complain that the town’s government, which is majority Democrat, neglected their concerns until the state of New York, which has its own beef with the Shinnecock, forced the issue. The hamlet has a longstanding grievance over being a “stepchild” to the richer nearby precincts. The only Republican on the town board has supported the residents, while the two most liberal members opposed the lawsuit against the tribe. So, in a twist, the GOP member is the most pointedly anti-development. Shinnecock leaders, meanwhile, brusquely won’t give an inch, asserting their own historical grievances. Underlying the pushback they face is an argument that Westwoods, which lies a few miles from the formal Shinnecock reservation in the town, is actually owned (in fee simple) by the tribe but is not part of its independent “nation.” Got all that? Maybe soon it’ll be distilled under a blaring headline in the Post. –Dec. 29, 2024

UPDATE 1/3/25: The Biden Interior Dept., in a letter released yesterday, sided with the tribe over its claim to territorial jurisdiction over Westwoods.

https://www.27east.com/southampton-press/lawsuit-claims-shinnecock-sovereignty-does-not-extend-to-hampton-bays-land-but-tribal-official-says-claims-are-misguided-2325120/ (paywall)

No, You Can’t Have a Free, Long Lease on a Dining Shed

I have to disagree somewhat with my libertarian friends at Reason who argue in the piece below that New York City is stifling a “creative, organic” outgrowth of the food-and-drinks business by shutting down the pandemic-era street sheds. I do so for the same reasons I have veered away from a number of laissez-faire positions: Just too many impolite or arrogant people abuse the public unless held in check. In this case, the offense was a form of squatting: Restaurants and bars were given “emergency” leeway, after Covid had largely emptied many streets, to expand outward in what was 1) initially considered a safer dining space and 2) soon became additional floor space to recoup lost business from the lockdown days. Then guess what? They never wanted to leave the sidewalk or curb areas, even as most of New York returned to full throttle. However, there were complaints of rats and late noise, plus the obstruction. In the winters, some spots had few outdoor customers but it was a hassle to dismantle and reassemble the structures so for months they just collected dirt, debris and the occasional substance abuser. After a long political stall, the city finally made the sheds come down last month, to be replaced next spring only in approved areas and formats (with fees, of course). Reason’s authors are right that the bureaucracy will limit their comeback, and stretches of the city will be lessened. But that’s the thing with people who make their private pleasures or profit a matter of the commons: Some add to others’ enjoyment and some detract, and we only have one rule book to enforce decorum. Most displays or displacements are tolerable for awhile–live and let live–but then you have the chronic or obnoxious cheat. This is why we cannot enjoy the sweet liberty of natural order in many walks of modern life, especially when people are crowded together. Too many of them don’t behave decently anymore, if they ever did. My older but still libertarian self has less time for that.

https://reason.com/2024/12/14/the-death-and-life-of-new-york-outdoor-dining/

Inflation’s Message From and To Trump

So much can and will be said, but one helpful message to be drawn from this election is that politicians and policymakers should be deathly afraid of ever loosing the inflation beast again. Memories and aftereffects of the price rises of 2021-2023 fed into the economy being an overriding reason for ousting Democrats from the White House. This should be particularly useful in restraining Donald Trump and whoever he might appoint to the Federal Reserve from pursuing a monetary out from the looming fiscal squeeze that he has yet to address. If anything, Trump has ruled out significant steps to contain the budget deficit and national debt, promising only some Elon Musk magic along, of course, with tariffs and deportations that would elevate costs. If Democrats win the House majority, he will not gain social spending cuts even if appoints officials who will seek them. But there will be no free lunch from debasing the dollar and inviting another round of inflation, either.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/how-trump-won-over-americans-on-the-economy-f9551283