Listen to this articleIf nothing else, Alfred Caiola is persistent.
For nearly a decade the developer and real estate investor has been pitching a project that would create a walkable, mixed-use community hub that aims to reinvent a sizeable swath of the Hampton Bays downtown business district.
Caiola, along with his development partner Gregory Small, have long proposed a project that would bring about 150 apartments above street-level retail and restaurants to a 9-acre site just north of Montauk Highway.
The plan got close to advancing nearly five years ago, when the Southampton Town Board adopted the Hampton Bays Downtown Overlay District in Feb. 2020. The new zoning, the culmination of a planning process that involved more than 1,200 community members, sought to allow for a more vibrant, pedestrian-friendly downtown, according to the town.
However, the new overlay zoning, which could have paved the way for Caiola’s proposal, was short-circuited by a July 2021 court ruling in an Article 78 lawsuit brought by a local homeowner that struck down the new zoning district. Now the town is once again exploring the creation a new mixed-use zone for the area between Squiretown Road and Springville Road, from Good Ground Park to the Hampton Bays Long Island Rail Road station, and Caiola’s plan has been reintroduced to the community.
“We regrouped and got some new team members,” Caiola said. “We’ve been doing some tremendous outreach and had have a great reception. You have to reach out and let people know. I’m really excited in that regard.”
The developers gave a presentation at a recent meeting of the Hampton Bays Chamber of Commerce at the revamped Canoe Place Inn. Chamber President Christine Taylor said the revitalization of Hampton Bays is vital to its current businesses to help create more foot traffic.
“The businesses that are there are suffering now because they don’t get enough people,” Taylor told LIBN. “I feel Alfred’s redevelopment will help draw more people into town which will ultimately get more foot traffic for the existing businesses as well as offer more things for people to do in the community rather than putting their businesses in Southampton or Westhampton. Additionally, I think that he’s going to have new facades that will entice the other businesses and property owners to improve their facades and facilities to keep up with the standards that he’s going to be creating.”
Caiola’s project would connect Good Ground Park with Hampton Bays’ downtown and create a new Main Street running north and south from the park to Montauk Highway. The “pedestrian-friendly area would offer diverse shops, services and mixed-use spaces, connecting seamlessly with the park to form a lively corridor where residents and visitors can enjoy cafes, green spaces, and local businesses,” according to the plan’s website.
Caiola, a longtime Hampton Bays resident whose family-owned Caiola Real Estate Group has developed dozens of mixed-use buildings in Manhattan, and Small, a former owner of a stock-brokerage firm in Garden City who also owned some AT&T stores, have assembled the 9-acre development site over several years. The property, where the developers want to build about 275,000 square feet of residential apartments and 40,000 square feet of retail, is now mostly vacant land with a couple of small mixed-use commercial buildings and some houses.
Attorney John Leonard, who has his Law Office of John J. Leonard in Hampton Bays and is a founder and board member of Hampton Bays Alliance, has been organizing meetings with residents and business owners over the past several months to provide education and get input on revitalizing the area.
“As far as the Hampton Bays Alliance is concerned, we recognize the absolute necessity to the residents and the business community in the hamlet of Hampton Bays for the revitalization and redevelopment of our downtown area,” Leonard said. “We are excited by Mr. Caiola’s vision and we look forward to working with him and the members of the residential and business communities to fashion and design a plan that ultimately will benefit all members of our community.”
And while it has taken several years to get to this point, there is still a ways to go before the proposed project sees shovels in the ground. Besides the required rezoning of the area, which could take another six months or longer, the area’s redevelopment also hinges on the town’s new $14 million sewage treatment plant in Hampton Bays that’s still in the planning stages.
The developers think the wait will be worth it.
“It’s going to be a lively, mixed-use area,” Caiola said. “And we need housing tremendously. That is what’s catapulted us.”
More information on the Hampton Bays plan can be found at hbdtr.com.