After the U.S. Supreme Court effectively upheld Southold Town’s 2020 eminent domain seizure of 1.75 acres of privately owned land in Mattituck by declining to review a lower court decision, town officials are expected to begin planning for a future park or green space there early next year.
In the wake of the high court decision, “the town can move forward [with the] planning stage to determine whether it should be a passive parcel or a more formalized park or some other use for the public good,” town attorney Paul DeChance said in an interview this week. “I think that’s something you’ll see next year — the [town] board begin to discuss and make plans to move forward.”
In 2018, Brinkmann Hardware Corp., a family-owned business with five stores on Long Island, including VanKemenade Paint in Jamesport, purchased the property at the corner of Main Road and New Suffolk Avenue with plans to build a 20,000-square-foot hardware store and an 8,000-square-foot paint store at the site. The application came under scrutiny over environmental and traffic concerns and the project was stopped by a series of six-month development moratoriums first enacted in 2019. In September 2020, town officials voted to initiate an eminent domain proceeding against property owners Ben and Hank Brinkmann in order to preserve the site for community use.
The Supreme Court’s rejection in October of the Brinkmanns’ appeal in the case marked a major milestone in a decade-long community odyssey to protect and preserve Mattituck’s commercial district from overdevelopment, an initiative that continues today but which began almost exactly 10 years ago in Mary Eisenstein’s living room.
In the fall of 2014, Ms. Eisenstein and her husband, Mel Morris, invited friends and neighbors into their home to gauge interest in launching a new community advocacy group, a gathering that would lead to the creation the following year of the Mattituck-Laurel Civic Association.
At the heart of interest in forming the new group was the concern that Mattituck, home to the most sprawling commercial district in Southold, was becoming a ripe target for big box stores that would displace local merchants.
Of particular interest was the protection of what the community considers the “gateway” to Mattituck: the corridor between New Suffolk Avenue and Main Road on one end and Love Lane on the other.
Ms. Eisenstein, who became the Mattituck-Laurel Civic Association’s first president in 2015, was a driving force in the campaign, according to friends and civic members.
“Every hamlet has its own unique culture and character, and people felt that Mattituck was definitely more commercialized, and that there was a need to bring a little more community character to that whole entranceway — from the Long Island Railroad trestle into the area of Love Lane and along Main Road,” Ms. Eisenstein said. “The whole intersection was the focus.”
In 2018, after the Brinkmanns purchased the property for $700,000, Suffolk County and Southold Town partnered to make an offer to buy the land from them and preserve it as a park. When that initiative proved unsuccessful, the eminent domain process, which included compensating the Brinkmanns for the seizure of the property, began in 2020 and ended in October.
Ms. Eisenstein was at home when she received a text about the Supreme Court’s decision, and said she felt like she could finally exhale.
“When you spend a lot of time and energy learning, informing and paying attention to what the community wanted … it was like I could take a breath, a deep breath,” she said. “Having a community be informed and educated and be able to have an outlet to give voice to what they wanted was the whole circle for me.”
ORIGINAL REPORTING BY CHRIS FRANCESCANI