Supporters of a plan to extend the Main Road historic corridor from Aquebogue out east through Laurel may have hit a stumbling block in Southold, where property owners said they were notified of the plan with no advance warning.
On Monday, Riverhead Landmarks Preservation Commission chairman Richard Wines met with the Southold Town board, who offered up concerns and reservations about the project.
State officials have set a public information meeting for Thursday, Aug. 14 at the Jamesport Meeting House — the second-oldest building in the proposed district.
On Tuesday, Wines said the State Historic Preservation Office has just decided to delay the review process for the nomination to their next quarterly cycle in December, allowing for additional public outreach in Southold. “They wanted more time to get all the material ready because of the huge size and complexity of this district,” he said. “But this also gives us more time to work with property owners and address any questions they may have.”
Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell said a special meeting will be held for the 42 Southold property owners whose homes would be included in the district, in addition to the general meeting in August.
As a consequence of the delay, all Southold property owners will be re-notified and they will have until early December to submit objection letters if they so choose, Wines said.
If listed, properties within the six-mile historic district will be eligible for substantial tax credits — 20 percent on state income taxes and 20 percent on federal income taxes — for investing in restoration of their properties. There are 312 parcels within the Town of Riverhead portion of the district and the 42 within Southold.
The plan, Wines said, “will bring restoration tax credits without any restrictions. It’s the carrot approach to preservation, rather than the stick.”
A Power Point presentation was given in Southold, and Wines explained that the district would include homes, farmhouses and support buildings.
“We’re trying to provide incentives to keep houses from being torn down,” Wines said, adding that Riverhead volunteers have been working for over two years on the project.
On July 11, the New York State Historic Preservation Office sent notices to property owners that would be inlcuded in the district.
And that’s where the Southold Town board took issue.
The letter, Russell said, “threw some people off guard. We need to get out now and say what this is about. It was news to them, and it was news to me. The fact that it was already submitted on the state level caused concerns.”
Councilman Bill Ruland said a few residents had said the whole proposal seemed “nefarious,” and, after receiving a letter from the state about something they knew nothing about, were looking for clarity.
He said he supported the concept. “But I think people should have the unfettered right to opt out. If a simple majority says you’re in, when you don’t want to be in, I object to that vehemently.”
Russell said an initial discussion last year, the board seemed supportive. But, with only 42 of the properties on the Southold side of the district, the supervisor had asked for clarification from the state, asking if more than 50 percent of property owners objected to the concept, if the votes would count separately — or if Southold would be allowed to opt out completely, with the historic district ending at the town line.
Wines said currently, the state has not agreed and said if the majority of residents in both Riverhead or Southold was not in favor of the plan, the application would not move forward.
He also apologized for the timeline. The state, he said, “got ahead of themselves” and sent out the notices before the meeting with the Southold town board.
And, while the state has said they cannot separate out Southold, officials have assured they’d notify town officials if negative feedback was being received from Southold residents.
“If a lot of people are unhappy, I don’t want to push it forward,” Wines said. “You only want to do something like this if there is widespread support.”
Should the majority of Southold residents object, Wines said the likelihood would be that the application would be pulled and modified to include just Riverhead.
Justice Louisa Evans asked what income-producing properties would be eligible to take advantage of tax credits.
Wines said about three quarters of the properties in Riverhead would be eligible, and could include commercial properties, rental homes, B & Bs, farms, or old homes that were fixed up and sold as residences.
Councilman Jim Dinizio objected to anything that would put any additional burden on property owners. “I’m a little bit skeptical,” he said. “Someone sent out notices to 42 people in town saying that they had to object or they were being included in this district. It’s a little heavy-handed. You saying there are no restrictions just isn’t so.”
He added, that for property owners, “It’s one more step, one more thing to discuss, good, bad, or indifferent. To me, it’s pretty serious, it’s onerous, that you have to opt out. I don’t know why someone just sitting on their own property and enjoying the beach has to take out a pen and paper and say, ‘No, I object.'”
The supervisor said “perceptually, it looked heavy-handed,” but that was due to a lack of public understanding. He said he’d gotten a list of all the potentially affected property owners and would schedule the meeting. “This is due to a lack of understanding and an unintended lack of outreach. We’re going to put property owners in a room and if they support this, we’ll move forward and if not, we’ll exclude Southold from the equation.”
Councilman Bob Ghosio asked what type of jobs would be created. Wines said restoration work would commence; in Riverhead, he said a “big hunk of Main Street” had been designated and had led to he restoration of the old Woolworth building, with a decrease in up to 40 percent of the cost of the exterior work. “Creating restoration means creating jobs,” he said.
After the meeting, Georgette Keller of the Save Main Road Group expressed frustration, saying the Riverhead end of the project had been in the works for years before the state stepped in last year and “pushed” to include Southold. That’s why, she said, not many in Southold knew of the initiative, because it was new to the overall game plan.
At a Riverhead town board meeting last week, Wines said while the listing creates ample monetary incentives for property owners to opt-in, opting in is voluntary and property owners who do not opt in are not subject to any new land-use regulations.
isting effort was launched by the Save Main Road group in April 2012, when it beegan collecting data on Main Road properties. The Riverhead Landmarks Preservation Commission then initiated a survey of historic resources in the corridor. The commission submitted the survey to the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in February 2013 and after a visit by state officials that April, the state agency asked that the district be expanded to include the surrounding “cultural landscape” (i.e. farmland) and the portion of Laurel lying within the Town of Southold.
The extension across municipal boundaries created a bit of a “hiccup” for the effort, because the group had to request and negotiate a license agreement with Suffolk County to gain the right to access the Southold Town geographic information system database, Wines said. Once accomplished, the group was able to survey the Southold properties in the corridor and include them in the application.
The nomination application was submitted to the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in June, Wines said.
Owners of properties within the proposed district have an opportunity to “concur in or object to the listing,” N.Y. state deputy commissioner for historic preservation Ruth L. Pierpont wrote in the letter to property owners.
The Aug. 14 public information meeting at the Jamesport Meeting House is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
