The fate of a Laurel marina that’s got neighbors up in arms was put off for another month by the Southold Zoning Board of Appeals Thursday.
The 11-slip marina is tangled up in gnarly situation that spawned one court case so far, has some town officials scratching their heads and neighbors seeing red.
The small parcel of vacant land on Brushes Creek has been used as a marina since the early 1950s according to the town’s own records, said Mattituck attorney Dan Ross, who represents the owners, Frank and Elizabeth Kelly of East Islip. The town’s first building inspector, Howard Terry, wrote a letter in September 1968 stating that the site had been a marina since 1951 — prior to the enactment of zoning in the Town of Southold in 1957.
The original owner of the property, who lived on another parcel along Brushes Creek, maintained about a dozen slips there. He’d allow neighbors and family members to use the slips, and some were rented, according to testimony by neighbors at a public hearing before the ZBA last month.
The current owner, who does not have a home in the neighborhood, bought the site from an heir of the original owner. Since he does not live on site, his insurance company required him to fence the property in, Kelly told the ZBA at a Dec. 7 hearing.
That’s when things started to go bad for Kelly and his neighbors on Brushes Creek. Neighbors, upset with the fence, complained to the town. The town said Kelly would need site plan approval for the fence and went to court to get a restraining order blocking him from putting the fence up. Kelly had obtained a trustees permit for the fence, his lawyer said, but the town still issued him a violation because he didn’t have site plan approval.
The town won the injunction and Kelly attempted to file a site plan application but was told he had to file a building permit application first, in order for the building inspector to determine whether a site plan application is necessary.
The building permit was disapproved, so Kelly appealed to the ZBA to overturn the disapproval.
During the course of the legal machinations, things on Brushes Creek heated up and relations between Kelly and his neighbors deteriorated.
“I want this case closed. It’s been like a circus around here,” Kelly told the board during a hearing last month where about a dozen irate neighbors showed up to complain.
“Since he’s owned it, there have been tents, RVs and loud parties, all documented with the Town of Southold,” neighbor Jerry Morrissey told the ZBA last month. “We’re in fear that this site plan allows him cart blanche to do whatever he wants,” said Morrissey, who called Kelly’s six-foot fence “an eyesore.”
“The marina owned by old Mr. Murray… he had this little parcel of land to all his allowed friends, family and local acquaintances to tie up their little skiffs, if you will,” Morrissey said. The new owner is doing something completely different and the neighbors worry he is attempting to establish a commercial marina there, he said.
“I don’t think any of us has a problem with it being used the way it’s been used for 100 years, but to allow it to be abused, having a trailer park there, it sets a terrible precedent. It tells anybody that wishes to come out to this beautiful area, tear down some woods, bring in his RV and his tents and call it his summer home,” Morrissey said. “That’s no what the Town of Southold is about.”
Another Brushes Creek neighbor, the former congressman George Hochbrueckner, lives across the creek from the marina and told the board he is very upset with how Kelly has been using the site.
“At one point there were six RVs parked on the property,” Hochbrueckner said. “There were tents. There were fires. They turned it into their personal summer campground,” he said, his voice rising.
“The fact of the matter is we do not have trailer parks in Southold Town. Mr. Kelly made that property into a trailer park,” the former congressman said, growing red in the face.
Hochbrueckner said the community tried to live with Kelly. “But he’s pushed his luck to the limit and that’s why the community organized and got signatures on a petition and went to the town board. That’s why they went to supreme court for an injunction — to stop Mr. Kelly and his abuse of our community.”
The hearing was held open pending the determination of the building inspector on Kelly’s application for a pre-C.O.
If there is a pre-C.O., then site plan approval is not required and the applicant’s ZBA appeal becomes moot, ZBA Chairperson Leslie Weisman said.
“An application for a pre-C.O. has been submitted and is currently under review and there will be a decision before the next meeting,” assistant town attorney Stephen Kiely said at the ZBA’s Dec. 7 meeting.
But no decision was made before the board’s next regular meeting on Jan. 7, prompting another adjournment, this time to Feb. 4 at 12 noon.
