Clashing Views on Steinbeck Home Preservation Effort in Sag Harbor

A discussion before the Sag Harbor Village Board on Tuesday, October 11, about the effort to preserve the former home of Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, at times turned testy, as Mayor Jim Larocca focused on details of the plan that members of the group that wants to buy the property as a writer’s retreat run by the University of Texas said were premature.

Larocca, who two weeks ago announced an effort to have the village play a greater role in the preservation effort, said he had a number of questions for the group, ranging from whether the University of Texas was the right university to run the retreat, to whether Bluff Point Lane, where Steinbeck’s cottage overlooks Morris Cove, had been properly taken into the village road system back in 1971.

The mayor complained that his efforts to learn more about the project were being dismissed in a hostile manner.

“The posing of these issues is not to be viewed as a hostile act,” Larocca said toward the end of a nearly hour-long discussion. “I’m weary of having these questions, which I think are legitimate questions — public policy and legal questions — treated with the hostility I have felt from the very beginning.”

But both Susan Mead of the Sag Harbor Partnership and Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, a resident of Sag Harbor who has led the effort to have the town contribute money from its Community Preservation Fund to buy the property, told the mayor that the first order of business was to secure a deal — and then the nitty-gritty details could be hashed out.

“We are not going to do anything until we get the property under contract,” Mead said, as she explained that the partnership may be required to close on the property before transferring the land to a newly formed nonprofit, which would, in turn, lease the property to the University of Texas.

The heirs of Steinbeck’s wife, Elaine, put the 1.2-acre property on the market for $17.9 million in January 2021. The price has since been reduced to $15.4 million.

Besides an undisclosed town CPF offer for the development rights, the partnership said it has raised more than $1 million in pledges and is expecting a $500,000 state grant as well, but an agreement has yet to be made with the sellers.

Mead and Schiavoni were joined by Kathryn Szoka, co-owner of Canio’s Books, who sounded the alarm when the Steinbeck property first hit the market. She collected more than 30,000 signatures on an online petition, setting the preservation effort in motion and eventually enlisting the help of the partnership.

“It is impossible to overstate John Steinbeck’s significance to our community and to both American and world literature,” Szoka said in urging support for the preservation of his home.

Steinbeck, one of only 13 Americans to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was living in the village when he was honored, and his novel “The Winter of Our Discontent,” written here, was cited by the Nobel committee, she said.

Szoka said under the plan hatched by the partnership, there would be an advisory board made up of representatives from the Village Board, the John Jermain Memorial Library, the Sag Harbor School District, the Sag Harbor Historical Society, and other local organizations.

An effort had been made to find a local university to run the writer’s center, but none was forthcoming, she said.

Texas was ultimately chosen because it has run several writer’s centers, including the James Michener Center, had an archive of Steinbeck’s papers, was the alma mater of Elaine Steinbeck, and agreed to provide a $10 million endowment for a writer’s retreat at Steinbeck’s home.

She added that Bret Anthony Johnston, the director of the university’s Michener Center, had made it clear that any writer applying for residency would be required to become involved in the local schools, the library and other organizations.

The mayor, who said he was concerned that the partnership’s plans remain “fluid” at this late date, said he had to focus on what would be best for the village.

He focused most of his concerns on whether a writer’s retreat, with four open house weekends each year, would be an allowable use under the residential zoning in place, and said he had serious questions about whether Bluff Point Lane, which was accepted into the village road system by a unanimous vote in 1971, met the legal standard for a village road.

“The acceptance of the road as a village road is not simply a matter of opinion, it is a matter of law,” he said after Schiavoni said the group had researched the matter and was comfortable that the road, even though it was never improved to village standards, had been legally accepted by the village.

Larocca said that former village attorney Fred W. Thiele Jr. had offered a different opinion for another similar road that had been offered to the village. He said the village might be required to lay out the money to improve the road to meet its standards.

The mayor insisted that he was a strong supporter of the effort to preserve Steinbeck’s house, saying his interest dated back two decades ago when he was dean of Southampton College.

“I want this to be as successful and rich for the village as possible,” he said.

Szoka seized on that comment to suggest that both sides wanted the same outcome and needed to work together to iron out the details.

“I want to take a step back and say, what will happen if we let this go?” she said. “If Sag Harbor loses this, it will be a big loss for the soul of our community.”