Residents Concerned Music Festival Will Turn Amagansett into 'Coney Island or Long Beach'

Amagansett residents came out in force at the meeting on Thursday night to protest a three-day music festival planned for August at in Amagansett.

The board granted Bill Collage and Christopher Jones for the dates of Aug. 12 to 14. East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said that the Aug. 12 show is intended for “locals only.” The list of performers at the festival has yet to be decided.

Amagansett resident John Broderick was first to appear at the podium during Thursday's meeting at . Broderick claimed that 20,000 people would be present at the festival, but Wilkinson corrected him, saying that there will be no more than 9,600 spectators at the concert locale at any given time.

Broderick maintained that his original point stood, asking Wilkinson where the he believed “9,600 kids” would go each night after the evening’s entertainment was over. Wilkinson replied that he did not know and asked Broderick to posit his own theory about the concert-goers’ collective destination.

“They’ll go on a rampage through Amagansett,” Broderick said.

“Well, I have more faith in human nature than you do,” Wilkinson replied.

When Broderick accused Wilkinson of being “snide and cute," Wilkinson said that Broderick had not yet seen “snide and cute."

 Joan Tulp, another resident, told the board that the Amagansett community had been given no opportunity to participate in the decision to allow the music festival. Tulp said she was “saddened and disheartened” that the town had “let Amagansett down by allowing a three-day rock concert,” adding that the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee and other mamlet organizations had not been consulted. “We do not want 9,000 people ages 20 to 30 here at the busiest time of the year,” Tulp concluded.

Former ACAC Chairwoman Sheila Okin accused the Town of not being forthcoming with the community, asking “Whatever happened to transparency?”

ACAC Chairwoman Rona Klopman read from a letter by resident Jeffrey Britz which claimed that the Ocean View Farm location is an agricultural overlay zone, and expressed concerns about “serious potential problems for the land and for the local water supply.”

Britz stated in the letter that an environmental impact study ought to be carried out of a mass-gathering’s effect on the property. The letter also guessed that the $100,000 promised to local charities by the festival organizers is “pure conjecture, and to my mind, fool’s gold.” Wilkinson responded that the town is trying to ensure that the $100,000 amount is made prior to the festival.

Helen Kuzmier of Amagansett feared that the planned event might have the effect of “turning us into another Coney Island or Long Beach,” and warned that the festival might have the opposite effect of that envisioned by its supporters upon the local economy by deterring the community’s more typically affluent summer visitors.

Among the more memorable public comments at the meeting was the claim by Arlene Reckson that “This reeks of a Woodstock acid flashback -- and I was there!”

Jim Macmillan said that the town should “rescind or suspend the mass-gathering permit.”

Town Councilwoman Julia Prince tried to reassure Amagansett residents. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” and that she had been “confident that [the festival permit] would be a non-issue.”

Wilkinson tried to address concerns about parking, security and crowd management by telling the audience that “I vetted this with the chief of police and he was pretty satisfied.” 

Correction: This article previously incorrectly stated that John Kowalenko was an organizer of the music festival. He was hired by the organizers, but is not a principal.