Court rules in favor of catering at Manor Inn

In a 14-page decision lambasting the Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals and town planning director Rick Hanley, State Supreme Court Justice Peter Fox Cohalan has overturned a ZBA decision denying the owner of the Jamesport Manor Inn the right to build catering facilities on the site of its Manor Lane restaurant.

Cohalan came down on the ZBA and town planning department for “unfair discrimination and oppression” in their handling of applications by Manor Inn owner Kar-McVeigh LLC to erect a barn and temporary tent for catering adjacent to the restaurant .

The court found fault with the ZBA’s denial of Kar-McVeigh’s 2009 zoning appeal, after the owner informed the ZBA the required public hearing notice had not been posted as required by law, and requested an adjournment of the hearing date. The ZBA refused to grant the adjournment, held the public hearing anyway, and then denied the application “based on a willful failure by the petitioner to post a notice of the hearing.”

That, ruled Cohalan, “constitutes an abuse of discretion as it is arbitrary, unreasonable, and is not based upon substantial evidence.”

“The petitioner’s counsel was previously advised that if the posting and notice requirements were not met, the hearing would be adjourned until such posting and notice were properly done,” Cohalan wrote.

“The ZBA and Hanley have disregarded and misinterpreted substantial evidence, such as the prior determinations of this Court and the ZBA, and the applicable provisions of the Town Code, in their decisions in this case,” Cohalan wrote.

At issue in the case was whether catering on the site of the Manor Inn is a permitted accessory use to the permitted principal restaurant use — or whether the catering facilities are an expansion of a pre-existing nonconforming principal use, which requires a special permit of the Town Board.

“The proposed accessory catering barn/tent facilities are included in the permitted restaurant use,” Cohalan wrote. The court ruled as much its 2008 decision on the question, involving the same premises, in Matter of Barbato v ZBA. In that case, the court found that catering was an “incidental and customary accessory use” to the restaurant, and that catering activity was customarily incidental and not subordinate to the primary restaurant use, and did not require a special permit.

The court also faulted Hanley for issuing an opinion on the matter; by law, the court said, only the ZBA is allowed to issue such an opinion, making “[Hanley’s] determination … improper and without legal effect.”

The judge in his Dec. 20 decision directed to the town to “review and grant the two site plans previously submitted subject to set-backs and compliance with the applicable laws, rules, and regulations of the state and the town code.”