On The Waterfront

Strong’s Marine has been a vital part of the East End business community for 75 years, providing boats, large and small, to those hoping to enjoy one of the area’s biggest draws — its wide-open waterways and fishing grounds.

So when the company’s owners approached Southampton Town officials seeking permission to convert a house on a property adjacent to the company’s North Sea marina near Conscience Point into an office for the business, the officials rightly sought to help find a solution. But the fix that planners came up with may have been a little too extreme.

The problem is that the marina is a pre-existing, nonconforming use in a residential zone, meaning that it predates zoning and is allowed to operate even though it doesn’t fit the current zoning. The adjacent house sits on a separate property that is also zoned for residential use only. In order to operate it as a business, the town would have to change the parcel’s zoning designation.

But instead of focusing on the single property in question, town planners developed a new type of zoning overlay, which, with the Town Board’s approval, could be applied to a number of qualifying waterfront parcels in residential zones in which the owner desired to operate a business.

If the “floating zone” were to be created, the town could be inundated by requests from waterfront property owners seeking to take advantage of the new overlay zone in areas where the residential feel of the neighborhood is prized by homeowners.

A better solution would be a change of zone for the specific property in question — with guarantees that it would not one day be home to an overall expansion of the marina — rather than an all-encompassing new zoning tool that, as Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman observed, might be solving one problem but creating others at the same time.

For now, the Town Board has decided to send the proposal back to the drawing board, which is where it should remain. Its members should find a targeted — and permanent — solution for Strong’s, a business that has been a good neighbor for four generations. But there’s no need to open a can of worms with anything bigger.