Terry Semel
This summer’s kerfuffle involving Terry Semel — the former Yahoo
exec who has angled to build up his East Hampton property — has served
to underscore the town’s hard-core zoning laws and how they affect
neighbor relations, the Observer reported. Semel had planned to build a
10,000-square-foot main house to accompany the existing
1,600-square-foot guest house on his Further Lane property — much to
the chagrin of his hedge-funder neighbors, Jonathan and Peter Sobel.
While Semel’s plan technically violates East Hampton law, his efforts
to get an exception from the town zoning board have allegedly been
unfairly thwarted by the Sobels, he contends. “Every year there’s a new
dispute that gets all the attention,” David Eagan, an attorney for the
Sobels explained. Jerry Della Femina, an East Hampton entrepreneur, had
a more drastic take on the phenomenon of East End drama: “It doesn’t
make sense that people who Monday through Friday are used to getting
what they want no matter what would come out here on the weekends and
cooperate with each other; it’s this, ‘I’m a captain of industry, I
shouldn’t have to have neighbors’ mentality.'” [NYO]