Southold’s ambitious effort to rewrite its zoning code entered another critical phase this week as planning and zoning officials offered a progress report and set a timeline on the delivery of the second draft update to the Town Board.
Southold Planning Department chair Heather Lanza told the Town Board at a Tuesday work session that her team expects to have a “full set” of recommendations on an updated draft zoning proposal to the board by early October.
“It’s taking time because there’s a lot to review,” the veteran town planner said.
The stakes are high: the once-in-a-generation overhaul has implications for housing, business development, community character and the environment. The last zoning update was decades ago, and every constituency involved sees this effort as a turning point for Southold — from farmers, civic groups and small business owners to housing advocates, preservationists and Greenport officials.
Leslie Kanes Weisman, Southold Zoning Board chair and a member of Zoning Update Advisory Committee, outlined seven guiding factors based on the town’s comprehensive plan and community feedback that the zoning committee is using to update the draft zoning proposal.
She said the guidelines aim to 1) “create more diverse community housing choices and options;” 2) limit the scale, size and footprint of residential and non-residential structures to “prevent over development and to maintain the character;” 3) “support existing and new businesses and employment opportunities;” 4) “update the list of permitted uses … for ADUs”; 5) support “agriculture and maintain rural character:” 6) simplify “town government and the approvals process” and 7) ensure the new zoning code “is user-friendly and easy to use.”
Some of the updates are a response to concerns raised earlier this summer by Southold’s business community, especially the North Fork Chamber of Commerce.
House size and accessory structures
Weisman said that among the most pressing topics is house size.
“We identified a bunch of issues that we really need to look at carefully — house size is one of them,” she said. “The current way in which that’s calculated, the gross floor area, [is] very problematic for a lot of reasons.” She said the board might “see if you want to maybe pull that out from the larger code update.”
The issue of size and scale of new homes has surfaced repeatedly during public forums this year on the zoning overhaul. Residents at public meetings this year have warned about “McMansions” altering the character of hamlets. The zoning update committee — which includes contractor Patricia Kirkpatrick and architect Bruce Nelligan — are zeroing in on the formulas that determine allowable house size.
Accessory structures are another flashpoint.
“The uses that are permitted in accessory structures right now [are] incredibly limited on residential zones and agricultural zones,” Weisman said. “They need to be updated.”
She also said that the zoning board has submitted “a whole range of things that we’ve been grappling with because they’re just prohibited” and provided the Town Board with “a list of uses that should be considered carefully for as-of-right use, without having to come to the ZBA.”
Bed-and-breakfasts, short-term rentals and housing
Updates to proposed regulation of bed-and-breakfasts are also on the table.
“It might be a way to promote tourism and reduce Airbnbs if we allow bed-and-breakfasts to exist in business zones, higher-density hamlet centers/HALO zones along Main Road, along [Rt] 48, without having to be owner-occupied,” Weisman said.
Kirkpatrick said that “one of the ideas would be … to eliminate some of the short-term rental use, which frees up need, which is why everyone says we need hotels. This provides another way to increase the number of small density housing and short-term rentals.”
Accessory dwellings and apartments are another piece of the puzzle.
“We want to take a very careful, updated look at all of those,” Weisman said. “We’re evaluating them relative to New York State Building Code and [Americans with Disabilities Act] compliance.”
ADUs “not being transferrable to new owners was understandable, since we wanted them to be qualified in a certain way — but go try and sell that property and say ‘you can’t use that’ ADU,” Weisman said. “Who’s going to enforce it? Time to rethink that.”
She said that the zoning update committee is aiming to “identify any kind of impediments … to stifle you from creating ADUs and affordable housing.”
Weisman also said the committee is looking at non-conforming residential lots.
“We have a ton of small lots in this town that are non-conforming, and right now the bulk schedule is not properly addressing them with setbacks and so on. You can’t put setbacks for a 40,000 square foot lot on a 20,000 square foot lot. So it’s just problematic.”
Balancing development with community character
On the commercial side, Lanza said the update aims to make development more flexible.
“We’re going to make it easier to develop commercially, because we’re going to get rid of the just one use per minimum lot size,” she said. “We’re going to … regulate it based on setbacks, lot coverage, building height, landscape coverage.
“What we really need to do is analyze to make sure the numbers are working, because some of the lot coverage numbers got changed, some didn’t. We’re trying to do some modeling around that to make sure what we’re proposing actually is better,” she said.
Weisman said the new proposal will seek to eliminate non-conforming use wherever possible.
“We want to find a way to balance the reasonable rights of property owners [and] business owners, with the comprehensive plan, the welfare of the community [and] the goal of really getting rid of non-conformities, so that we have seamless uses in land use regulations that reflect the character of different kinds of neighborhoods.”
Several town board members urged that the code be thoroughly comprehensible to residents. Town Board member Jill Doherty said the board wants “to simplify it so somebody off the street can read it.”
Weisman agreed.
“Property owners have to spend thousands of dollars hiring architects to figure it out … Why shouldn’t house size based on lot size be right there — numbers, not a formula that somebody has to calculate. Just simple numbers. ‘This is how big on your lot you can go.’”
Greenport’s concerns
Greenport Village Mayor Kevin Stuessi praised the committee’s dedication but said village officials will soon send a letter to the town highlighting its concerns about the current draft.
“The village, in the business district in particular, is very concerned about potential sprawl of the business district into greater Greenport, Greenport West in particular, and not wanting to see that.”
Village officials are concerned that Southold’s existing draft zoning update could push growth into village gateways and “starve the village core” of housing and commerce, they said last week.
Stuessi said that he and his colleagues are also particularly concerned about how the zoning update will affect local aquaculture.
“We talked a lot about agriculture, but we also have agriculture out on the water — aquaculture … we also have to preserve what little working waterfront we have left.”
‘Momentum’
Towards the end of the meeting, Town Board member Greg Doroski pressed for a timeline, noting that “the community seems really engaged right now.” Lanza agreed, saying that her team wants to “keep the momentum” going.
She said the recommendations would be complete by “late September, early October.”
Weisman cautioned patience.
“I understand people’s impatience,” the ZBA chair said. “We’re all getting kind of tired of the topic, but the point is: this requires so much thoughtfulness. It’s complicated … It’ll be ready when it’s good.”
She said updating zoning codes on this scale can be a dizzying process.
“You’ve got to get confused before you get clarity.”
Beneath the seemingly endless discussions and debates lies an awareness among town officials that the final product must withstand decades of use.
Weisman said that she wants to create a basic chart, based on the upcoming draft proposal, that simply and cleanly compares existing code to proposed code: “old code, new code … let [people] see how the code is accomplishing those things.”