North Fork Town Seizes Family’s Land to Stop Project

Southold Town emerged victorious in its eminent domain fight against a family’s plans for a hardware store on a vacant parcel.

The title for the land at 12500 Main Road in the North Fork’s Mattituck vested to the town, Patch reported. The title transfer brings a lengthy fight between Southold and the owners of Brinkmann’s Hardware to an end.

The dispute between government and retailer reached the federal courthouse after the Brinkmanns filed a lawsuit against Southold in 2021, alleging the town didn’t have a legitimate reason to prevent the construction of the store at the corner site. A building permit filed in June 2019 was followed eight months later by a town construction moratorium on the same stretch of Main Road.

The Brinkmanns purchased the store in 2016, eyeing the Mattituck intersection as a location for a paint and hardware store. The company also has locations in Sayville, Blue Point, Holbrook, Miller Place and Jamesport.

The town’s aim was to use eminent domain to seize the two-acre parcel and transform it into a park. Eminent domain is the forced sale of private properties in the name of public interest.

The public largely sided with the town’s goals for the site, expressing concerns about traffic, environmental and safety issues with the Brinkmanns’ plans. At one hearing in 2020, co-owner Hank Brinkmann said he was “vehemently opposed to the town’s taking of my family’s property.”

A woman who identified herself as from Mattituck hit back: “Quite frankly, Mr. Brinkmann, you are not wanted here. . . You are not from here and you don’t know what it’s like to be from here. That place with green trees that you see as a worthless parcel is priceless to us.”

The Brinkmanns ultimately didn’t have a winning argument in the eyes of a judge in the U.S. Eastern District Court in Brooklyn, who said the family failed to state a claim under the Fifth Amendment clause that guarantees personal property can’t be seized to benefit another private person without a justified public purpose. The lawsuit was tossed in October and the litigation came to an official close two months later.

The family has not commented on the end of the litigation.

— Holden Walter-Warner