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Steven Williams, the new chair of the Sag Harbor Historic Preservation and Architectural Review Board, at the July 14 session. PETER BOODY
Plans for a new 4,200-square-foot house that will replace a smaller cape atop the hill at the corner of Archibald Way and Jermain Avenue won approval from the Sag Harbor Architectural Review and Historic Preservation Board on July 14.
The unanimous decision to approve a “certificate of appropriateness” for the proposed house and its landscaping came after months of resistance from the panel over the proposed structure’s height and mass.
It came after owner James Peyton agreed to lower the grade of the hill by another 18 inches, to a total of 3 feet below what it is now.
Also, he and his architect, Siyu Liu, canvassed Archibald Way residents for letters of support and said they had submitted 18 to the board.
The vote came about one month after a site visit at which colored flags were placed on the terrain to show the effects of the regrading. Peyton said in a brief phone interview after the July 14 meeting that the demonstration had showed “the front visual peak will be at the same elevation” as the one on the existing house, a 1960s cape with a wide front porch.
Since the board opened the hearing on the Peyton plan in February, under previous Chairwoman Jeanne Kane, the board had steadily rebuffed Peyton and Liu on incremental changes they made in response to requests for a less imposing house. They included a 1-foot reduction in the height of the house and a 311-square-foot reduction in its gross floor area, making the house slightly smaller than originally planned.
After a villagewide shakeup of all its boards by Mayor James Larocca, the panel’s chairman is now Steven Williams, who also was critical of the application as a board member. It was Williams who some weeks ago first suggested regrading the site to lower its elevation in order to make the house less imposing.
Williams launched the July 14 meeting with a nod to Kane, the former chair, who is no longer a member of the panel. He said she had been “a really great chairman” and that he hoped he could “keep consistent with her august leadership.”
At the session, Peyton told the panel, “Our ears have been open” to the board’s concerns about mass and height. “We’ve been trying to make it work.”
Board member Christian Cooney agreed. “I think they’ve gone out of their way to try to accommodate us,” he said, adding that he was “with them on this one.”
Board members Bethany Deyermond, Judith Long and Robert Adams agreed, as did Williams, who said he made it “unanimous.”
The property is just outside the boundary of the Sag Harbor Historic District, which follows Jermain Avenue in that area. In addition to demolishing the existing house and regrading the hilltop, the plan calls for a retaining wall on the west side of the property where it adjoins Mashashimuet Park; a detached garage; a pool, and an extensive landscaping plan including trees on the hillside and privet hedges in the rear that the board required to be no higher than 6 feet instead of the proposed 8.
Also at the July 14 meeting, the board gave its approval to another plan that it had resisted for months: Ralph Raciti’s proposal to renovate and build an addition on the 19th-century house at 25 Liberty Street, a “contributing structure” in the Sag Harbor Historic District.
The board welcomed the latest plan at its last meeting in June. On July 14, it approved the plan, which calls for a shorter addition than originally proposed with a porch connector to the main house, even though Raciti acknowledged having to forego an element of the latest proposal that board had favored: a lower roof ridgeline on the addition than on the main house. Raciti said the lower ridgeline made the attic “almost nonexistent” and disrupted the proper alignment of the addition’s windows.
Raciti submitted four letters in support from the property’s nearest neighbors.
