Southampton Town Officials Express Concern Over Palm Tree Festival

Long Island Morning Edition

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Southampton Town officials say they are concerned about the haste with which the Palm Tree Festival has been shifted to the Shinnecock Nation territory, given the more than 10,000 people who are expected to attend this coming Saturday, and the complicated ballet of transportation services that the festival’s organizers have set up to get the huge crowd into the Shinnecock property.

But the tribal hosts say that the seasoned professionals organizing the event have covered all the bases, and they expect the concert to go off smoothly despite the harried influx and departure of crowds that will certainly accompany it. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that there will be more than 200 security officers and more than 100 New York State Police Troopers overseeing the site, two medical tents staffed by Northwell Health, and up to 10 ambulances from emergency services agencies between Southampton and Mastic Beach standing by.

The concert is set to start sometime around 3 p.m. on Saturday, with the gates to the property opening at 1 p.m. The music's over at 11 p.m.

The festival’s organizers have arranged both trains and buses to shuttle concertgoers from New York City and from Montauk. The trains will utilize the Southampton Village train station, arriving at 2 p.m. and departing at midnight. Buses will disembark at the Stony Brook University Southampton campus, where there will also be a ride-share drop-off area.

A fleet of 65 school buses will shuttle attendees from the train station and the college campus into the Shinnecock property. There will be parking on the Shinnecock land for about 700 cars that paid a premium up-charge and for another 300 or so cars at the college, according to schematics of the plans.

There’s a long-held belief in Montauk that there is a schism between the business community and environmentalists, but as coastal flooding has become a frequent reality here, that schism may be melting. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that this past winter, a private donor funded The Nature Conservancy’s involvement in a conversation with Montauk’s business community on the topic of coastal resilience, which “has been a very hard, complex topic to tackle,” Montauk Chamber of Commerce President Leo Daunt told an overflow crowd that gathered at the Montauk Library earlier this month to discuss “Coastal Resiliency and the Future of Our Town.”

There were more than 100 people in attendance, some watching via a livestream upstairs in the library, and many more participated by Zoom. The forum was organized by Concerned Citizens of Montauk, and is expected to be the first of many community meetings as East Hampton Town works to implement its 2022 Coastal Assessment Resiliency Plan, known locally as CARP.

One of the most contentious recommendations of the CARP is the eventual relocation landward of a block of hotels that line the downtown Montauk oceanfront.

The Town of East Hampton also began work this week to renourish the beach at Ditch Plains and build a 15-foot high, FEMA-compliant dune there, with the help of the firm Coastal Science and Engineering. They hope the project will protect the beach this winter.