Court Rejects Bid To Overturn Southampton Village Food Pantry Law, Paving Way For Heart Of The Hamptons Plan

A State Supreme Court justice has denied a petition from Meeting House Lane property owners who had asked the court to strike down a Southampton Village law that the Village Board adopted earlier this year to enable a food pantry to open at the former village ambulance barn.

The decision is a victory not only for the Village Board but for Heart of the Hamptons, a nonprofit that plans to move its food pantry operation from a church on Hill Street to the old ambulance barn on Meeting House Lane.

In a March 9 petition, Anton Borovina, the attorney for Meeting House Lane property owners Jim McFarlane, Joann Hale and Paul Fagan, argued to the court that the Village Board’s determination that the local law will not result in any significant environmental impacts was “arbitrarily and capriciously adopted, unlawful, null and void” and requested that the court declare the law itself “null and void.”

Acting Supreme Court Justice John H. Rouse did not agree. In a May 5 decision that was filed on Monday, Rouse wrote that the village had, in fact, undertaken the required review.

“The decision was not a surprise, because the village was on firm legal footing,” Mayor Jesse Warren said Monday.

The same neighboring property owners similarly sued after the village originally adopted the food pantry special exception use law in September 2021. In response, the Village Board voted in October 2021 to repeal the law rather than defend it in court.

Warren said at the time that the board would resolve the issues named in the lawsuit, hold another public hearing, and pass the legislation again.

That earlier lawsuit questioned whether the State Environmental Quality Review Act had been followed, stating that the Village Board failed to establish itself as the lead agency under SEQRA — which was required before the board could declare that environmental review was unnecessary.

To assuage concerns that there had not been adequate review, the village asked VHB, an engineering firm that was conducting a traffic study in the village, to add Meeting House Lane to the scope of its work. The village also had environmental consulting firm Nelson Pope Voorhis conduct a planning analysis regarding food pantries in January 2022, and the firm suggested that creating a special-exception use for food pantries in the village zoning code would be the best route, including implementing standards that would limit where a food pantry could operate in a residential district.

With the studies complete, the Village Board voted in February to adopt the food pantry law again. Then, in March, the board granted Heart of the Hamptons a special exception use permit.

“While the village’s repeated missteps reflect a failure to engage in the proper review in the first instance and past actions were ill-considered, it does not prevent them from correcting those errors to ensure its future course is proper,” Rouse wrote in his decision.

On Monday night, Heart of the Hamptons was before the Planning Board seeking site-plan approval, another necessary step before the nonprofit can begin operating on Meeting House Lane. The Planning Board scheduled a public hearing for June 20.