Page 42 June 13, 2014
NIMBY
DAN’S PAPERS
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canal. It’s a nice thing, when so they could restore the you run a weekly newspaper, clubhouse. But there’d be to have the opportunity no running water or heat. to write things that might They were approved for a help fashion the future of wetlands permit and given a a community. Newspapers license agreement. have a voice. Some people objected that What I had been struck in this day and age you don’t by when I first moved out re-start a defunct private here as a teenager was how club on public land, but open and available this Mansfield said they’d hire place was. We had dunes a sailing teacher and offer classes to the locals who and cliffs, ponds and lakes, wanted their kids to learn woods and the ocean, farms, New England towns and how to sail. People objected to that, fishing villages. You could go almost anywhere, do almost saying the teaching would anything. really be only for the In the years that followed, members. Others objected to traveling around the the clearing of the wetlands country, mostly in the that would be necessary. Will future generations still sail the East End? wintertime when the paper Eventually the plan was dropped. Instead, the town might try to have didn’t publish, I was sometimes saddened to a little sailing school there themselves. If they come across other beautiful places that did not could teach swimming, they could teach sailing. have this kind of access. Palm Beach was one. They’d restore the place. They’d have sailboats Carmel, California was another. There were and hire a sailing teacher. Kids could come. Keep Out signs. They were places that could be In my job as editor-in-chief of Dan’s Papers, I enjoyed only by the few. I thought it wonderful opposed the private club, but I welcomed the that our home base on the East End was so idea of a sailing school. The Hamptons is such available to everyone. Thus I was really surprised when I got called a beautiful place with so many reasons to drive around and enjoy its many amenities, why not at the newspaper by an attorney hired by have such a facility down at that dead end? At these Johnny-come-lately people on Bay Lane that time there was no sailing school east of the to fight to prevent even a small sailing school
to open at the dead end there. The arguments were that the narrow road was too narrow for cars to pass one another easily going up and down (because of the hedges they’d installed to keep people from peering into their windows.) Other arguments were there would be a lot of noise down there. There would not be enough places to park. I disagreed with all this. If they prevailed, their dead end would be just that— an essentially private street with no reason for anyone to go down to the end and see the beautiful view of the bay unless invited there by those living along the road. The attempt to open the little sailing school for the kids on their property proceeded apace. But then lawsuits were filed by residents on the street. Two are ongoing today. They will probably continue on for years, and, during this time of legal wrangling, there will be no town facility down there. So the old clubhouse remains a ruin. So now the town has put the racks down there and will rent them out, creating a situation where there is only limited outside traffic on this public road other than the traffic created by those who live there. And there is an unexpected consequence. With this diminished traffic, the value of each resident’s property will soar. Everyone loves the peace and quiet of a dead end. Some day, if every nice thing in the Hamptons gets arranged so as to be an amenity for just the few who live behind hedges nearby to it, it will be a sad day.