Good Neighbors

Sometimes, when you see a storm coming, there’s time to prepare and to take action to limit its damage. In Hampton Bays, what’s brewing has the potential to do a great deal of damage — and there’s still time for cooler heads to prevail and limit the intensity.

The Shinnecock Nation’s plan to build a gas station on a segment of the nation’s Westwoods property off Sunrise Highway isn’t new. Neither is a more ambitious plan for a resort hotel on the bluff of Westwoods overlooking Peconic Bay. Tribal leadership has spoken openly about both projects for years, though until recently both were mostly conceptual in nature.

But there’s nothing conceptual about what’s happening off Sunrise Highway these days. Dirt is being moved, roads are being paved. The gas station plan is moving forward apace — which, to be fair to the Shinnecock position, is the only way it can advance. Any hesitation and the momentum could be lost; blink, and the state, or the town, might find a legal strategy to stop it.

It was a successful method when it came to the 61-foot-tall electronic billboards — the “monuments,” as the nation calls them — were hurriedly built along both sides of Sunrise Highway back in 2019. It was an audacious move: The Shinnecock leadership made the case that it owned the land, but it’s long been a part of the state-held highway right-of-way. But despite the state’s attempts to stop it, at the site and in court, the monuments went up speedily and remain standing today.

Those monuments are, in some ways, a foot in the door. That success has made the nation more determined to move forward with an even more lucrative project on nearby acreage: a tax-free gasoline plaza. In similar fashion, despite the state and Southampton Town objecting to the plan, it’s being built. That old line about asking forgiveness instead of seeking permission seems to be playing out on 10 acres of Shinnecock Hills, with an opening date of spring 2025. There’s no reason to doubt the likelihood.

Hampton Bays activists have taken up the fight, and at a recent Hampton Bays Civic Association meeting, there was talk of civil disobedience and other methods sprung from the frustration of seeing work progress despite a stop-work order from Southampton Town. The feeling of inevitability has stoked hostility toward the project and raised the possibility of passions escalating quickly.

This can be stopped — in fact, if you listen closely, even the critics in Hampton Bays want another reality. Most throw up their hands at the legal fights over tribe-owned lands and what can be built there, and the majority say they actually support the tribe’s moves toward economic self-sufficiency. In a conservative hamlet like Hampton Bays, the idea of “property rights” runs deep — and as resentful as they are, many opponents of the project allow that the Shinnecock should have the right to build on the site.

What they express are legitimate concerns. There are the obvious problems of putting commercial truck traffic (both customers and deliveries) on Newtown Road, the only way to access the site currently. It’s likely that the logistics would derail any typical commercial proposal of the sort. The state is a necessary partner to bring an entry road from westbound Sunrise Highway — which brings problems of its own — but so far isn’t playing ball, likely still smarting over the billboards.

There’s also the clear impact on neighbors of Westwoods. Those living immediately beside the gas station site are going to get a neighbor they never bargained for. If it’s inevitable, it’s still possible for Shinnecock leadership to follow through on promises of being a “good neighbor” and take the potential impact into consideration. There won’t be a typical planning process for the project — but it would mean a great deal to neighbors to hear directly from the Shinnecock Nation, as they have a few times already, with specific ways their concerns will be heard and considered.

A great deal goes unspoken but looms large over this dispute. Shinnecock Nation Chairwoman Lisa Goree has bristled over concerns about construction on tribe-owned lands, when so much construction has taken place around it with no comment. That’s tied into the larger grievance that the Shinnecock Nation has about the unfair treatment over the centuries as its land was largely taken — a point few, even among neighbors of the site, would quarrel with.

But this doesn’t need to become a surrogate for that battle. Instead, there’s room for this to become something much less hostile, much less reviled. In fact, many people would welcome a tax-free travel plaza, as long as reasonable worries are addressed.

Instead of becoming yet another battle in a long war, this can be a compromise that begins to envision a new future, where the Shinnecock, having endured generations of mistreatment, find a community that is willing to try to make amends, and even to accommodate grand proposals that will bring economic success. But, at the same time, the sovereign nation adopts a less combative stance — if not with the state or town, at least with neighbors who are willing to meet respect with respect.

Weighted by history, this is a pivotal moment in so many ways. The phrase “good neighbor” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s time for both sides to show they take the notion seriously.