The traffic snarl and its side effects on the South Fork of Long Island have been a longstanding but worsening problem. Various efforts have been mulled or tried to alleviate it, though few would revisit the fateful decision a half century ago not to build a bypass to the sole east-west highway–which is often clogged.Continue reading “Asking for Relief to Hellish Hamptons Street Traffic”
Category Archives: Hamptons Land
There’s No Ducking What Curbed Long Island Farms
The agricultural history of the gentrified East End of Long Island is preserved in spots today through pricey row crops and vineyards that were not part of the early 20th century action. Back then, the big harvest was potatoes and there were plenty of local dairies and duck farms. This week’s edition of Dan’s PapersContinue reading “There’s No Ducking What Curbed Long Island Farms”
Data Factories Within Reach of the Hamptons?
Squaring New York State’s stringent green-energy law with the looming demand for power-intensive data and AI centers is going to be hard enough most places, but especially on Long Island. There, long-standing grievances against the electric utility, now known as LIPA, that date back at least as far as rejected nuclear-plant aims from the 1960sContinue reading “Data Factories Within Reach of the Hamptons?”
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 aContinue reading “Hamptons Living With a (Tree) Farm View”
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, featuresContinue reading “Where North Fork Nuclear Almost Was”
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.Continue reading “A Sag Harbor Preserve…For Whom?”
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 aContinue reading “Rail May Yet Figure in Hamptons’ Future”
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 theContinue reading “Subdivisions That Sustained a Hamptons Middle Class”
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,Continue reading “Tangled Politics of Tribal Construction in Southampton”
Affordability May Hit the Fan Again in Southampton
New and potentially partisan battle lines over “affordable” housing–or overdevelopment, if you prefer–are forming in Southampton town. It’s a tussle that has shape-shifted over recent decades but is now resulting from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s carrot strategy with local governments. After Long Island in particular bucked her earlier plans to intensify residential building inContinue reading “Affordability May Hit the Fan Again in Southampton”
Tim W. Ferguson 