Southold Town’s long-anticipated zoning overhaul got a reset Thursday night, as officials put community housing first, scrapped last year’s controversial zoning map and laid out a phased path forward after months of public confusion.

Planning director Heather Lanza briefed a packed crowd at the Southold Recreation Center on where the town stands in its process, presenting eight urgent priorities and saying affordable community housing is at the top of the list.

She gave a three- to five-year timeline for completing 10 priority phases, a schedule that she and several residents acknowledged was disappointing.

“We need more homes that people with middle and lower incomes can actually afford,” she said. “Part of what’s slowing us down is our own zoning code. We need to remove the barriers that are standing in the way of creating more community housing.”

She added that tackling short-term rentals is a key factor in that.

Ms. Lanza said the town also needs the zoning changes to better use Community Housing Fund money, since the current code limits where and how some housing can be built.

The zoning update has been underway since 2021, aiming to make land-use regulations easier to interpret, guided by the town’s Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2019 after a decade of work. 

A draft of the update came out in April 2025 and created widespread confusion among the public. The town hosted several public meetings last summer to discuss it.

The town initially hired a consultant, ZoneCo, to work on the update. Ms. Lanza said it became clear that the firm had taken the project as far as it could, so the town chose to review it in-house with staff.

That was later determined not to be feasible, leading the town to shift to a piecemeal effort in April.

“We needed a better approach, so the town board has decided to divide this project into smaller phases,” Ms. Lanza said. “This phased approach will allow us to make steady progress while ensuring that each piece gets a good look.”

Under the new approach, each section of code would be drafted, reviewed by the Town Board’s Code Committee, brought back to the public at forums and then moved through formal public hearings before adoption.

She also shared that Southold will not be going forward with the controversial new zoning map from last year’s draft. 

“If you’re concerned about what’s on that map, you don’t need to worry, because we’re not using that map,” Ms. Lanza said. “Any future zoning map changes will begin fresh and only as needed as we develop new code.”

East Marion resident David Mammina said he finds it “wonderful” that the town is not going to use that map.

Following community housing, priorities included improved zoning for businesses and agriculture, protecting community character, definitions, addressing ZBA code interpretations, coastal resilience and using tables and specific standards. 

Not listed in the priorities was a proposed wireless code that could make it easier to site cell towers, but Ms. Lanza said it should be up for public hearing at the board’s next meeting, Tuesday, June 16, at 6 p.m.

“We’re happy to see that the first priority is housing,” Cutchogue resident Paul Romanelli said. “That in and of itself really needs the attention.” 

Former Greenport Mayor Dave Kapell suggested two locations that the town could look into for housing: its Town Hall Annex campus and a privately owned property across Youngs Avenue, formerly home to a financial services office.

“You can do something significant. Talk about several dozen housing units you could build,” Mr. Kapell said. “There are many, many programs that would subsidize affordable development at sites like that that the town could take advantage of.”

While residents broadly supported putting housing first, several speakers urged the town not to let environmental issues wait years for attention.

Barbara Friedman, of Orient, suggested adding a land-clearing code to the list of priorities, saying the number of properties being clear-cut needs to stop. 

Fellow Orient resident Drianne Benner and Suzanne Donovan of Greenport pressed coastal resiliency an issued that should be moved well up the list.

“I come from the perspective of the coastal resilience piece being a critical part of where we are in the 21st century,” Ms. Donovan said. “We can start to think about things like coastal resilience overlays and flooding overlays throughout the entire conversation that we’re having about these various priorities.”

Supervisor Al Krupski said almost $200,000 has been spent on the zoning update project since the board interviewed ZoneCo four years ago, with the majority through a state grant.

“A lot of that effort is not wasted; we’re going to incorporate it moving forward,” he said. “We are really looking forward to more community input.”

The post Southold puts community housing first in zoning update reset appeared first on The Suffolk Times.

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