In the time we’ve been covering the East End, we can’t remember seeing residential property re-zoned outright as commercial property.

We’ve seen planned development districts that had initially been conceived with the intent of providing a public benefit in exchange for greater development but didn’t live up to the expectation, we’ve seen the dire need for housing drive greater density of residential development and we’ve seen allowed uses of properties added and taken away as time and industry changes, but we haven’t seen a compelling argument for making residential property commercial.

But this is now a request being seriously made by some business advocates on the North Fork, who have organized a concerted effort to cast doubt upon Southold Town’s Zoning Update project.

Let’s take a cautionary ride down County Road 39 in Southampton, a road many of us use to travel to and from work. If you see it every day, you might have become numb to it, but if you take a visitor who’s never been here before on a day trip to see The Hamptons for the first time, don’t be surprised if they become sullen at the gateway into Southampton, look around and say “this is The Hamptons? I expected something much more beautiful than this.”

This is the legacy of outdated land use practices on Long Island. We are all smarter than that now.

Southold Town is filled with beautiful, walkable hamlets that can become hubs of smart growth in a rural town. But it will take funding and creative solutions. New sources of state and county money will likely revolutionize sewage treatment in the upcoming years, in ways that make the development of hamlet centers more viable. You only have to look to the Village of Westhampton Beach to see that this can work, or to Riverside to see the process underway in real time.

In downtown Cutchogue, there is a cluster of large, brand-new houses that were recently built after the subdivision of a swath of commercially zoned land adjacent to the Cutchogue Post Office. It’s a block in the heart of downtown Cutchogue that could have been a perfect extension of this tiny hamlet center. Where were the people advocating for more commercial property when this land was taken out of the commercial mix?

Why are large houses being built on waterfront, marine-zoned parcels that had historically been used for a variety of fishing and aquaculture purposes?

The market is dictating these changes, and the market is demanding this housing. It benefits the construction trades, but it takes available land away from potential small business owners.

Is there a zoning mechanism that can slow down these types of changes? We’re not the experts. But these are the kinds of questions we need to ask, as a community that truly does cherish the idea of small business.

Where are the business incubators on the North Fork? They aren’t going to look like industrial parks in Setauket. Here, they look like the Peconic Land Trust’s Charnews Farm, where farmers can test out business models before moving on to rent or buy their own farmland. They look like (maybe) the East End Food Hub or the Stony Brook Incubator kitchens in Riverhead.

We can surely come up with an idea for an incubator for other such businesses in Southold, and provide a mechanism in the zoning update for an overlay zone that makes them possible. This town is filled with underutilized industrial property surrounding railroad stations that could be repurposed in this way.

We’re hopeful these conversations will happen, but we’re not sure they can in a local election year. It is imperative that changes to the zoning update not be driven by politics. This is a process that began a decade-and-a-half ago, driven from the start by widespread community engagement in the development of a well-considered Comprehensive Plan. It began under a Republican administration, but it may be completed on the Democrats’ watch.

It is vital that Southold’s current government listen to the citizens who have devoted decades to articulating what makes Southold a special place, and not be swayed by the chatter of the upcoming election season.

At a recent public hearing on the redevelopment of the heart of Riverhead’s Main Street, a respected history professor asked the pro-development Riverhead Town Board why it wasn’t listening to the community’s concerns.

“What I heard through much of this conversation was money. I understand that’s a big word today,” she said. “The second thing I heard today was ‘tourists.’ What about the people of Riverhead, the residents?”

Southold needs to remember this lesson right now.

We know Town Supervisor Al Krupski loves Southold. His administration can show true leadership that preserves what we all love about Southold, and what visitors to this place love about it too. History will remember what happens this year.

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