Southold Town is hosting three community meetings for public input on the draft land use chapter of the town’s comprehensive plan update.
The first, set for Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Peconic Lane Community Center, will cover the Southold and Peconic hamlets.
Next Thursday, April 28, Greenport West, East Marion and Orient will be the topic of discussion at the second public input meeting at Peconic Landing auditorium, beginning at 7 p.m.
Draft provisions relating to Mattituck, Laurel, Cutchogue and New Suffolk will be discussed on Saturday, April 30, beginning at 10 a.m. at the Human Resource Center in Mattituck.
The comprehensive plan update, years in the making — the process got underway in 2010 — is nearing completion. After completion of the land use chapter — obviously a very significant piece of the plan — the remaining chapters are transportation and infrastructure.
Southold planning director Heather Lanza is feeling good about where things stand and excited to present the draft land use chapter to the community.
Unlike other previous comprehensive planning efforts in Southold, which were written by consultants, this one is being written by town officials and staff, in collaboration with residents and stakeholders. When all is said and done, the town will have convened more than 40 community meetings, where hundreds of people gave input and feedback into early drafts of each chapter. Looking to boost community input, the town even opened the plan up to comment on the town website, where each comment was also responded to by planning staff.
The draft land use chapter (read it below) discusses current land use in every hamlet, does a “buildout analysis” to estimate how much more development would occur if all the property that could be developed were developed to the fullest potential allowed by zoning. It discusses town wide goals, reviews current zoning and sets forth a list of objectives that would help achieve those goals, making recommendations for changes to the town’s zoning code.
The document then discusses each hamlet: providing a summary of land use and zoning and a buildout analysis and setting forth long-term goals identified through hamlet stakeholder work.
This is just the second comprehensive plan update since planning first began in Southold, according to the background section of the draft, and while it’s the effort has been in progress six years, that pales compared to the first plan, which was begun in the mid-1960s and completed in the late 1970s. Work on the first plan update took seven years to complete.
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