Southold Town is going it alone on the final stages of its Zoning Update, after signing a settlement agreement to part ways with ZoneCo., the company the town had hired to do a major overhaul of the town’s zoning code, in early September.
The agreement terminating the town’s contract with ZoneCo., signed by Town Supervisor Al Krupski on Sept. 9, was effective July 29.
It states that the “parties had a disagreement regarding work performed and fees owed under the contract,” and “both the town and ZoneCo. mutually desire to terminate their contractual relationship.”
The parties also agreed to not issue any public comment or statement regarding the agreement.
Pictured Above: Members of the Southold Town Board and the community packed up tables and chairs after the first public forum on the zoning update this spring. Town staff and community volunteers are expected to do more heavy lifting in the months ahead.
The town had hired the Ohio-based zoning consulting firm in 2022 to do a major overhaul of the town code, based on recommendations in a Comprehensive Plan completed in-house by town planning staff in 2020.
ZoneCo’s original contract called for the company to be paid $183,500 to shepherd the zoning update process from the early listening sessions, through rewrites and public hearings, to the final adoption.
Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski told The Beacon this week that $11,000 had been added to the contract to cover having ZoneCo visit Fishers Island and to provide a session bringing the new town board up to speed on the code when he took office in 2024, bringing the total of the contract to $195,500. Much of cost of ZoneCo’s work had been paid for through a $172,000 grant from the New York State Department of State under Title 11 of the state’s Environmental Protection Fund.
Mr. Krupski said that, as of the time of the separation agreement, ZoneCo had been paid $181,000 — $14,500 short of their original contract.
“The last step is revising the draft based on community comments, and we have a feeling we can do it best in-house, because we have more institutional knowledge of the town,” he said.
ZoneCo’s initial zoning update draft, unveiled in April of this year, was delayed numerous times in the winter of 2024-2025 as the town’s planning staff worked with them to iron out the details of their proposed revisions.
Updates Currently Underway
As the town takes the project in house, Southold Town Planning Director Heather Lanza told the Town Board at its Sept. 25 work session that planning staff members have been fervently uploading the massive amount of comments received from the public, in writing and at a series of public forums this summer, to the town’s zoning update website, southoldzoningupdate.com, where they are now readily available for the public to read.
Town Planner Mara Cerazo has been working to catalogue the data on that website, including preparing a massive comparison of existing and proposed uses under the new code.
Ms. Lanza said the Planning Department has also added a “Progress Reports” tab to the home page of the website to give visitors the latest news on planning staff’s progress. The website can also now be translated into Spanish.
At the Sept. 25 work session, Ms. Lanza also outlined numerous changes to the language in ZoneCo.’s first draft of the zoning code.
The ZoneCo. draft had recommended changing the names of several commercial zoning use districts, which led to major confusion among business owners at public forums early this summer.
ZoneCo.’s draft had changed the “General Business” district name to “Corridor Business,” “Limited Business” to “Rural Business,” “Residential Office” to “Transitional” and “Hamlet Business” to “Hamlet Mixed Use.”
Ms. Lanza recommended the names of the districts be reverted to what they had been before.
“We want to go back to the original names, so it’s easier to have conversations as we work through the revisions,” she said, adding that the meat of the changes is really in how the uses will change in those districts, not the name of the district.
Board members agreed.
“It was impossible to understand with the different name changes,” Mr. Krupski told The Beacon. “The name doesn’t matter. Why change it?”
Ms. Lanza’s updates are part a document, with changes tracked, that have now been uploaded to the Progress Reports section of the website.
Ms. Lanza added that her staff needs to work on clarifying the standards for uses like convenience stores, especially since the Town Board has decided to add retail uses back into the General Business district — these uses had been removed in an earlier draft of the code.
Mr. Krupski told The Beacon in late September that he is urging planning staff to revisit existing town code prohibiting big box stores to ensure that it provides protection against the type of suburban sprawl that is a hallmark of western Long Island. Southold currently does not permit retail stores greater than 8,000 square feet.
“That law preserves opportunities for small businesses, so they won’t get crushed by big box stores,” he said. “It was designed to protect our small businesses.”
Staffing Changes
In the midst of the most major rewrite of the zoning code in years, Assistant Town Planning Director Mark Terry retired four months early in mid-August.
Mr. Terry, who had drafted the town’s big box store code and served as the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan (LWRP) Coordinator, had played an integral role in the drafting of the Comprehensive Plan, and was involved with the Zoning Update until his retirement. He has also been an outspoken advocate for affordable housing in Southold.
The Town Board accepted his retirement on Aug. 19.
Mr. Terry said in an interview with The Beacon in late September that “I just decided to move on. I had to change the way I worked from a desk job. I was there for 23 years.”
He said he expects to take on consulting work and devote more time to his passion for painting the North Fork’s landscape.
Mr. Terry was hired in 2002, when Valerie Scopaz was Planning Director, and had served as acting head of the Planning Department before Ms. Lanza was hired. At that time, he said, the town was considering creating an Environmental Management division, which he had been hoping to head.
“I think Southold’s in good hands,” he said. “They need good reactions and responsible decision-making. That’s the key to the future — knowing what you’re planning for. The Planning Department was, from my perspective, planning for the people of Southold, maintaining their quality of life.”
“I wish him well. He was really dedicated to the town and had a great appreciation for its history,” said Mr. Krupski, adding that Mr. Terry comes from a family line dating back to Southold’s founding in 1640.
Mr. Krupski said the town will soon be advertising to hire an Environmental Planner to fill some of the roles Mr. Terry had filled.
“They can be a planner who has an environmental background, or they can be an environmental studies person who is interested in planning. It will be a combo title,” said Ms. Lanza earlier this month.
Ms. Lanza was named the town’s LWRP coordinator at the Town Board’s Sept. 9 meeting, and the town hired Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County to provide consulting services in support of the LWRP program for five months, with compensation not to exceed $35,000, at its Sept. 25 meeting.
The town’s volunteer Zoning Update Advisory Committee, whose work was paused for several months late in 2024 as the first draft of the Zoning Update was delayed, has since been meeting regularly to go over the definitions and mechanics of the new code.
Architect Bruce Nelligan, a ZUAC member whose New York City firm, Nelligan Architects, has worked extensively on city zoning issues, has been an active participant in the Zoning Update.
He has offered desk space in his office in the city for city college interns hired by the town, who would use his company’s architectural software to run scenarios to see how the new zoning design standards will work in real life.
Ms. Lanza pitched hiring two college students as independent contractors, at a rate of $20 per hour and a cost not to exceed $15,000, at the board’s Sept. 9 work session, to be paid for out of the salary line of “someone who retired,” she said.
She declined later to comment further on Mr. Terry’s retirement.
The independent contractors would work at Mr. Nelligan’s office in Manhattan, and would be recruited from colleges in New York City.
“He’s done a lot of hours pro-bono work already,” said Ms. Lanza of Mr. Nelligan.
“That’s a really generous offer,” said Mr. Krupski.
The Town Board voted that evening to advertise for those positions in The Suffolk Times and on the town’s website.
While Mr. Krupski said there had initially been some urgency to finish the Zoning Update when he took office in 2024, it’s now been nearly four years since the project began, under former Supervisor Scott Russell’s administration.
Mr. Krupski said he’s confident the town’s team will put in the work to make the new code reflect the desires of Southold residents.
But the timeline?
“It will be ready when it’s ready,” he said.
Ms. Lanza told the Town Board at the Sept. 9 work session that she’s watched the timeline for other municipalities that have done a major overhaul of their code, and “it’s pretty typical that it takes this long to do a huge overhaul. Every place I’ve looked at has been three to five years, so we’re in the ballpark.”
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