As the Southold Town Planning Department weighs the voluminous amount of public comments received earlier this summer on the first draft of a rewrite of the town’s zoning code, the town’s Zoning Update Advisory Committee (ZUAC) is embarking on a deep dive into how that code will work in real life.
Pictured Above: Southold Zoning Update Advisory Committee members (l-r) Kevin Stuessi, Pat Kirkpatrick, Leslie Weisman and Heather Lanza at the Aug. 19 work session.
Some members of the ZUAC, made up of volunteers from the community with expertise in land use, affordable housing, local business and building design, along with Planning Director Heather Lanza and Zoning Board Chair Leslie Kanes Weisman, gave an update on its current work to the Southold Town Board at its Aug. 19 work session.
“It Will Be Ready When It’s Good”
“Our analysis is about to start, and we have a lot of work to do,” said Ms. Weisman, who gave the bulk of the presentation to the board. “We’re all getting kind of tired of this topic, but this requires so much thoughtfulness, and the number of variables in doing this kind of uplift is enormous.”
“It will be ready when it’s good,” said Ms. Weisman of the Zoning Update.
The ZUAC, which was initially formed in 2023 but was put on hiatus until the draft Zoning Update was released to the public this spring, has since broken down into subcommittees to examine the code in depth and from different angles, ranging from design — what you can do on your property and where you can put it — to housing and definitions.
Ms. Weisman said the committee “has identified a bunch of issues” with the code, one of which is the way in which house size allowed on a lot is calculated, using a gross floor area calculation. This calculation, which was added to the town code several years back and is not part of the Zoning Update, has proved difficult for applicants and the town’s land use boards, she said.
“Property owners have to spend thousands of dollars to figure it out,” she said. “Why shouldn’t house size be based on lot size, just simple numbers. This is how big you can go.”
She added that the uses permitted in accessory structures “right now are incredibly limited,” and the committee will present a “list of uses we think should be considered carefully.”
The ZUAC also wants to take a hard look at how the code may be stymying people from building accessory apartments and affordable housing.
Ms. Weisman added that the committee would like the town to consider allowing bed and breakfasts in commercial zones without the owner present on site, as currently required.
“That’s fine in residential zones, because we don’t want to turn it into a business zone, but in other zones we don’t want to do that,” she said. “It should be an allowed business use.”
Another issue she identified is the setbacks on small lots — currently, the town’s setbacks are based on the smallest zoning district, R-40, or one acre zoning, while many lots in town are even smaller, pre-existing properties that still need to meet the one acre zoning setbacks.
“What we need to do is analyze and make sure the numbers are working,” said Ms. Lanza. “We’re doing some modeling to make sure it’s going to be better.”
ZUAC member Bruce Nelligan, an architect who is serving on the design subcommittee of the ZUAC, has volunteered his staff’s time to run these models. While he was not present at the Aug. 19 work session, he told The Beacon in July that if he believed the ZUAC’s work “couldn’t save the North Fork, I wouldn’t be on the committee…. I hope we will be able to maintain the character of the community.”
Ms. Lanza added that a change in the Zoning Update allowing business owners more uses on their property, and allowing special permit applications to be processed along with a site plan by the Planning Board instead of in a separate application to the Zoning Board should help businesses in town.
Workbooks, SEQRA & Next Steps
“You touched on a lot of the concerns we’re all hearing about in the community, which is important,” said Councilwoman Jill Doherty, who added that it will be very helpful to the public if the Zoning Update website included a direct comparison between what is allowed now and what would be allowed under the new zoning.
“That’s what people are concerned about,” she said.
A 110-page “Zoning Comparison Workbook” spreadsheet has been added to the Zoning Update website, and while it exhaustively details the recommended changes in allowed uses, it can be cumbersome to navigate.
The ZUAC’s work is taking place concurrently with the Planning Department’s review of the comments received in writing and at more than a dozen public forums earlier this summer. The Town Board is expected to review the Planning Department’s compilation of comments, and work with the Planning Department to prioritize changes to be addressed in the final draft.
The timing of that process may depend on whether the town determines the Zoning Update will have significant enough of an environmental impact to require extensive review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. That process could take several months, pushing the final review of the Zoning Update into 2026.
ZUAC members who were at the work session said they are hoping to have their report prepared by the end of September.
Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi, who serves on the ZUAC, says the committee will also be “incorporating comments that came out of community meetings that many of us attended,” as part of its report. “I’ve been so impressed with the energy and level of intelligence everyone brings to this committee… We’ve been working on this for two years, and at this point we should be getting married.”
Separately, the Village of Greenport has raised issues with the Southold Town Board’s recent decision to return retail and restaurant uses to a new corridor business zoning district in the Zoning Update. Mr. Stuessi said the town should expect a letter from the village shortly.
ZUAC Member Pat Kirkpatrick said the biggest pushback against the Zoning Update has been from owners of business zoned property “bought up by national chains. We’re getting a lot of pushback, but this is something that has to be balanced.”
The ZUAC’s role in the zoning update process has been the subject of some debate over the past several years. It did not play a part in the preparation of the first draft of the Zoning Update, despite its initial charge to work with the town on the project, and it received the first draft, released in April, at the same time as the public, after being put on hiatus for several months prior to the release of the draft because it had nothing to review.
A work plan submitted by the town to the New York State Department of State says the committee will “oversee all aspects of the project in cooperation with municipal officials and the project consultant,” while the town’s Zoning Update website says its role is to “review and provide constructive feedback” on the project, according to the ZUAC’s initial report issued earlier this year, before the committee had a chance to view the first draft of the Zoning Update.
“All of this requires a lot of expertise, but I’m convinced we have all the expertise in this town that we need,” said Ms. Weisman of the ZUAC’s work. “We want to have plenty of opportunity to make sure the public has a lot of access to this. The details should be ironed out well before public hearings.”
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