The Southold Town Board voted unanimously Wednesday to extend a moratorium on new hotels, motels and resorts for another year, part of a broader zoning overhaul currently underway.
The current moratorium, first enacted in 2024, was set to expire June 18. The extension follows conditional approval earlier this month by the Suffolk County Planning Commission, which requires the town to report back every three months on the progress of its comprehensive zoning update.
The next community zoning update, this one aimed at business owners, takes place Thursday, May 29 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Peconic Lane Recreational Center.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the board also closed a public hearing on a proposed exemption to the moratorium that would allow the application process to move forward for an 81-room hotel at the former North Fork Bank building site at 9025 Main Rd. in Mattituck.
Originally proposed as a 121-room hotel with an indoor water park, the project has since been scaled back, and has been the subject of previous public hearings. Before the hearing closed, town officials heard arguments from both supporters and opponents of the revised plan.
Christopher Kent, attorney for the developers, told the board that the proposed hotel would generate fewer traffic impacts than other uses permitted under the site’s current zoning. He also argued that the project would help reduce reliance on short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO. (The latest rendering of the proposed Mattituck Hotel is pictured above and was submitted last year as part of the developer’s proposal.)
In a letter submitted to the board, Kent called the vacant property a “lost opportunity,” writing that moving forward with the hotel “would generate real property tax revenue for the town and the school district, develop jobs for the community, and serve as a financial catalyst for surrounding businesses.” He added that the project would include an advanced nitrogen-reducing wastewater system and emphasized that the developers “will not seek any real property tax abatement.”
Vincent Guastamacchia, a Southold resident, voiced strong support for the proposal.
“We’re no longer an agricultural-based economy; we are a tourism-based economy,” he said. “To deny this application would be a direct blow to our currently struggling business community. Hotels do help the business community. That’s what this is. It does not burden the school system and generates tax dollars.”
Opponents of the plan registered a range of objections.
“Any building that size would be a detriment to our community,” said Joann Lechner of Mattituck. “The town board must consider the impact this development would have on our infrastructure, quality of life, the additional traffic, environmental quality, and water resources. Further, if you accept this waiver, you’re setting a precedent for everybody else to do it.”
Eric McClure, also of Mattituck, said the site would be better suited for affordable housing and urged the town to wait for its zoning overhaul to conclude before considering such developments.
“I think given how far along the town is in restructuring, redoing the zoning code, it probably makes sense to wait until that’s complete before moving forward with any projects like this,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of undeveloped sites — certainly of that size — in this community. Given its proximity to the marketplace, the train station, and other businesses downtown, it seems to me an ideal place to think about building housing for the community.”
Traffic concerns also surfaced during the hearing. Trinka Erwin, a Laurel resident who lives on Peconic Bay Boulevard, said navigation apps like Waze already reroute drivers onto her residential street when Main Road becomes congested.
“You’ve got plenty of letters from us,” she told the board. “Something that size is going to have to have traffic control, and will probably back [traffic] up further. And Waze is going to put more traffic on Peconic Bay Blvd, where — we are dying over there.”
