Opinion: Montauk, When Remaining the Same Is No Longer An Option

There is a saying, "The more things change the more they remain the same."

Unfortunately in Montauk, that saying just does not apply. After decades of being the "blue collar unHampton," Montauk has now perhaps become the ultimate Hampton. No one can truly define what is the catalyst for major change to Montauk this time around; there is no Carl Fisher, or United States military to credit or blame for a chain of events that make no sense and yet happened.

Old time Montauk families, home owners, and business owners are quietly cashing out with huge million dollar profits. Long time local employees are being weeded and squeezed out by an out of control rental market. Montauk is on the run, fast tracking into a new direction, one long time residents and visitors really don't want, but are powerless to control or stop.

It's happening on so many fronts. First there is the issue of the ocean shore erosion, that in the last decade has altered the ocean beach most noticeably both in Montauk Village and Camp Hero. Slowly at Camp Hero the huge, beautiful bluffs are gracefully but lately quickly dissolving through an erosion not caused by man.

In the village local ocean-front motels and homes are only yards away from a menacing rising tide and eroding beach situation.

Ten years ago when I started to notice a massive change at Ditch Plains Beach while I lived in a trailer at the now famous "Montauk Condominiums."

Larry Penny, the then-paid Town of East Hampton environmentalist told me "the ocean beach sands come and go with the seasons." A decade later it now appears the sands have gone more then they have come — the beach area is shrinking.

The East Hampton Town Board is now in the process of learning that you can't tame Mother Nature with plastic sand bags and failed promises by the United States Army Corp of Engineers. You can understand the town board's desire to act but perhaps not their arrogance to act without proper research and to think a solution was so simple. No one is sure what will happen next with all those exposed plastic sandbags long term.

Yet the biggest change is not being caused by the mighty Atlantic Ocean but by a new generation of people discovering the magic of Montauk and in effect, changing Montauk itself.

The East Hampton Town Board can use it's "codes" to harass and in some cases ruin local businesses that are catering to the needs of the now not so new millennial phenomenon. I am old enough to remember authorities in towns like East Hampton banning the musical group, The Doors, from performing in their towns in order to protect their youth. Of course they learned they cannot control or even temper a phenomenon beyond their command.

Nothing will bring the old families back to Montauk to run the motels, restaurants and historic venues as they did in the Montauk unHampton era. There are millions of dollars worth of reasons they cashed in. Now comes the new blood, the new vision, the new business plans of those who have spent huge money to come in to Montauk and perhaps will change town codes or those enforcing them so they can recoup their buy-in investment.

It is ironic to an outsider such as myself that for the first time in almost 30 years the Supervisor of East Hampton Town is a home grown local who did not move out east but was born out east; he is now supervising over the greatest change in Montauk since both the World War II and Carl Fisher.

I suppose for him and his peers this change is most disturbing because I am sure keeping things the same is something they treasure, but it's something they cannot and will not stop. Montauk is now on the map, not as a small drinking town with a fishing problem, no longer as a blue collar family summer destination, but as a mecca for the next generation to do what they will choose to do.

I loved the ways things were before the local real estate folks oversold the East End. The people who have bought in to owning the land and the homes of the East End are no longer of the same mindset as the folks who sold off the farm land, businesses and homes that remained the same for generations. The new folks have their own ideas to create hipper gig shacks and $50 lobster rolls.

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