Next Thursday, the iconic, beloved 20-acre parcel of open land located between East Hamton's tony Lily Pond Land and Apaquogue Road, goes before a public hearing after a year of negotiations with the town's planning committee. After years of conservation and protection, the land has now ended up with ownership by five members of the Williams family. The prominent property has been divided into, you guessed it, five lots in the subdivision planning (compound much?); the family claims to be retaining 52% of the land as open space, but only as a part of the individual lots and not as open reserve. Meantime, they've generously offered to limit the sizes of houses on the lots to, er, 12,000 square feet each.
It's unclear whether a fight will really ensue over this application, but, as the Press has it, "Nearby residents expressed last summer what was inevitably a pipe dream: that the village would be able to step in and buy the land". A pipe dream indeed, as the village has nowhere near the funds required to buy land in this type of überprime location (which counts Martha Stwart and Spielberg as neighbors). Time, as ever, marches on.
Image via Google Maps
· Village's Most Iconic Open Space to Become Five House Lots [EH Press]