Hampton Bays people: Janice Landis

Janice Landis
Community association: Hampton Bays Civic Association secretary

When did you first discover Hampton Bays?

Around 1980. I was from New Jersey originally and my future husband brought me out here, his father had a house out here. I just fell in love with it. To me, it’s like New England meets the beach. So, we were living in Manhattan and we had a business and we used to rent out there, we thought of it as a weekend retreat. About 10 years ago, we realized we could just as easily run the business from out here so we moved out permanently.

What do you love about it?

The beauty of it. The individual, close-knit nature of it. It has -- I never quite know how to classify it, it’s not suburban, it’s not urban, it’s not rural. It’s like a little bit of everything. And I still love New York, so it’s close enough to get in. There are so many opportunities to get involved. There are so many wonderful groups out here for hiking, biking, kayaking. And so many groups like ours where you can feel like what you’re doing is making a little bit of a difference.

What challenges do you think the community faces?

The health of the waters is huge. We have big problems with brown tide and red tide.
Also the issue of thoughtful development, that’s an issue everywhere. We’re a year-round community, but summer tourism is a huge part of our economy, so it’s especially important to protect our waters.

Define the character of the community.

Landis called on help from fellow members of the civic association for this one. Here’s a list of words they called out: 

"Down to Earth."
"Diverse."
"Populated."
"Real working village."
"Unorthodox."
"Real."
“The Un-Hampton.”