Next week’s community meeting on the proposed shopping center called Tuckahoe Main Street, which is scheduled for Tuesday, June 1, will likely be a raucous and heated one.
Many in the community have already united against the proposal, which calls for the construction of a King Kullen, as many as four restaurants, more than 10 retail shops and a dozen apartments on a 12.4-acre parcel of land south of County Road 39 and east of Magee Street, just outside Southampton Village.
The Tuckahoe Citizens Advisory Committee is organizing the June 1 meeting, which will be held in the library of the Tuckahoe Elementary School on Magee Street. Bonnie Geobert, the co-chairwoman of the Tuckahoe CAC, said she expects a large group of people to attend, including the developer behind the proposal, Bob Morrow, who is slated to make a presentation about his plans. Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley, Town Board members Bridget Fleming and Jim Malone, and members of the Southampton Village Planning Commission are also expected.
Mr. Morrow needs to secure a change of zone from the Southampton Town Board in order for his project to advance. The land, located behind the Enclave Inn south of County Road 39, is zoned residential and commercial. Mr. Morrow has asked the Town Board to create a special overlay zoning district, known as a planned development district, or PDD, which would create special new rules allowing the development.
“We are against it right now because it is one of several down-zoning efforts that all seem to favor the developer over local citizenry,” Ms. Geobert said of the CAC’s position on the project. “If it’s allowed to go through, given it’s such a mammoth shopping center, it will open the door for maverick zoning in all of our hamlets.”
In a show of force against the project, a group called “Coalition to Stop the Tuckahoe Mall” has taken out advertisements in local newspapers. The advertisements can also be seen taped up in shop windows across the area. “We don’t need it! We don’t want it! We must stop it!” the advertisement reads.
Opponents of project say it will negatively impact the business district in Southampton Village. The developer of the project and his staff have maintained that Tuckahoe Main Street will improve a swath of under-utilized land in the hamlet and provide at least six affordably priced apartments—two elements touted as public benefits, a mandatory element of any PDD approval.
“According to our supervisor, she believes very firmly that the community should be behind these efforts,” Ms. Geobert said. “When the Town Board realizes it’s not behind the effort, hopefully, it will go away.”
I agree it does not belong. But, we live in Southampton Town, where the powers that be rubber stamp these hideous overdevelopment projects in the name of progress.
You do not solve a traffic issue by simply moving the traffic elsewhere.
The impression most of us have of the Town Board and the Planning Commission is one of corrupt favor-trading. They need to prove otherwise by denying this change of zoning.
more of everything we don't want. They can't even fill the stores on the highway.
Disgusting is my word for it.
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You MAYBE could get away with a JC Penny or a Bloomingdales in that location but I doubt there is any more need for a supermarket in the SH Village area. With that being said, a superstore kind of takes away from the quaintness that so many ...more people pay so much for in SH and god only knows how it would affect the already dangerous traffic conditions in that area.
Anyway, it seems like a mixed bag to me with a supermarket being the worst of all choices.
It's about the $$$$$$$
You and I and all of us have absolutely NOTHING to say about it or influence it's rejection.
The town WILL approve it.
Money talks. Period.
Welcome to Hell.
I fully agree.
Unfortunately, the only "inevitable" thing is the exact type of businesses that you mentioned---sad to say.
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