East Hampton votes to clarify zoning code

East Hampton's village board has voted unanimously to clarify an ambiguity in its zoning code that might have opened the door to squeezing large houses onto small building lots, a practice commonly referred to as creating McMansions.

Under the change, any floor space with a ceiling more than 15 feet tall will be counted twice when determining the total area of a house or a commercial structure -- limiting the total size of a building with those soaring open spaces.

"It's a word I despise -- McMansion," said Andrew Goldstein, chairman of the village Zoning Board of Appeals, as he urged the village board on Friday to change the way it calculates the gross square footage of areas with a high cathedral ceilings, or any other area where the roof is more than 15 feet tall.

"I'm all for grand staircases," Goldstein said, but added they may not be appropriate on lots that are a quarter-acre or less.

The problem is that while the village code provides a formula that sets the maximum size of a house to the size of its lot, one room with a 16-foot ceiling could be measured differently than two rooms with eight-foot ceilings, even though they take up the same space.

When the ZBA reviews an appeal from someone who wants to build a home that is larger than the village code permits, it has been doubling the space over stairways and in high-ceiling living rooms, but Goldstein said that might not work in the future because of the vagueness of the statute. "We've interpreted it this way, but I don't know if we can continue if you don't pass this," he told the board.

The revision would also apply to commercial buildings, and Margaret Turner of the East Hampton Business Alliance said it would be unfair to put new restrictions on people who owned buildings with those high ceilings. "The village knew when it adopted the Gross Square Area law that all buildings have stairways," she said.

But Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said the village code is not always set in stone, and sometimes requires changes. "It's a living document. Occasionally, an elected body has to look back on the code as written," he said.

The village board voted 5-0 to approve the clarification.