Sagaponack Village defers to the courts to get joint property owners to play nice

If all else fails, procrastinate. That’s the approach of the Sagaponack Village Board in dealing with two conflicting subdivision applications for the 44-acre oceanfront farm. The majority owner, entrepreneur Marc Goldman, said he has been trying to build a house on this land since 2001, but has run into a ridiculous multitude of roadblocks, courtesy of village officials.

But now, he’s also at odds with Milton Berlinski, to whom he sold a portion of the land in 2005. Berlinski, an investment firm executive, has since turned in his own application for subdividing the entire property, and the two are duking it out in New York State Supreme Court. Sagaponack board members are tabling the issue until next week, when they hope the State Supreme Court will have a verdict over which owner has the authority to submit land use applications.

It’s not been easy for Goldman — at least not according to his 2,000-word diatribe against the Sagaponack Village Board published in the New York Observer in 2015. That same year, he planted thousands of Christmas trees on the property at 451 Daniels Lane, blocking the public’s view of the open farmland, in what some say was an act of revenge against the municipality. [27East]