Main Road historic district proposal hits snag in Southold Town

The proposed Main Road historic district hit a roadblock in the Town of Southold yesterday, where Laurel property owners included in the district objected to the plan because they were notified it without any advance warning.

State officials last year asked that the district proposed by Riverhead Town be expanded across the town line to include the entire hamlet of Laurel. Riverhead amended its nomination application seeking listing of the district in the state and national registers of historic places. The state office of historic preservation was set to review the application Sept. 11 and earlier this month sent letters to all property owners within the proposed district formally notifying them of the proposal and seeking public comment.

The letter “threw some people off guard,” Southold Supervisor Scott Russell said. “It was news to them, and it was news to me. The fact that it was already submitted on the state level caused concerns.”

State officials have decided to delay the nomination review until December, Riverhead Town Landmarks Preservation Commission chairman Richard Wines told Southold officials yesterday. The delay will allow for additional public outreach in Southold.

Representatives of the state office of historic preservation will hold a public information meeting on Thursday, Aug. 14 at the Jamesport Meeting House, Wines said.

Russell said a special meeting will be held for the 42 Southold property owners whose homes would be included in the district, in addition to the general meeting in August.

All Southold property owners will be re-notified and they will have until early December to submit objection letters if they so choose, Wines said yesterday.

Wines stressed that listing on the state and national registers brings the opportunity for substantial tax credits — 20 percent on state income taxes and 20 percent on federal income taxes for restoration investments — with no new restrictions.

“It’s the carrot approach to preservation, rather than the stick,” Wines said.

“We’re trying to provide incentives to keep houses from being torn down,” he said, adding that Riverhead volunteers have been working on the project for more than two years.

The six-mile long district, stretching from County Route 105 in Aquebogue east through Laurel, where it juts into Southold Town, would include homes, farmhouses and support buildings.

There are 312 parcels within the Riverhead portion of the district and 42 within Southold.

Southold Councilman Bill Ruland said, though he supported the concept, he thought property owners “should have the unfettered right to opt out. If a simple majority says you’re in, when you don’t want to be in, I object to that vehemently.”

The Southold supervisor said he was concerned that the outnumbered Southold property owners would not have a say in whether the district is adopted. If a majority of the property owners object to the listing, the state will not approve the nomination, Wines said. Russell would like to see the Southold owners’ votes counted separately — or Southold allowed to opt out completely.

Wines said the state has not agreed to that; if a majority of residents in both Riverhead or Southold objected to the plan, the application would not move forward.

Wines also apologized for the timeline. The state, he said, “got ahead of themselves” and sent out the notices before the meeting with the Southold town board.
And, while the state has said they cannot separate out Southold, they’ve said they will notify town officials if negative feedback was being received from Southold residents.

“If a lot of people are unhappy, I don’t want to push it forward,” Wines said. “You only want to do something like this if there is widespread support.”

Should the majority of Southold residents object, Wines said the likelihood would be that the application would be pulled and modified to include just Riverhead.

After the meeting, Jamesport resident Georgette Keller of the Save Main Road group, which first proposed the district in 2012, expressed frustration. The Riverhead end of the project had been in the works for more than a year before the state stepped in last year and “pushed” to include Southold. That’s why, she said, not many in Southold knew of the initiative, because it was new to the overall game plan.

The listing effort was launched by the Save Main Road group in April 2012, when it beegan collecting data on Main Road properties. The Riverhead Landmarks Preservation Commission then initiated a survey of historic resources in the corridor. The commission submitted the survey to the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in February 2013 and after a visit by state officials that April, the state agency asked that the district be expanded to include the surrounding “cultural landscape” (i.e. farmland) and the portion of Laurel lying within the Town of Southold.

The nomination application was submitted to the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in June, Wines said.

Owners of properties within the proposed district have an opportunity to “concur in or object to the listing,” N.Y. state deputy commissioner for historic preservation Ruth L. Pierpont wrote in the letter to property owners.

The Aug. 14 public information meeting at the Jamesport Meeting House is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.