Discovery Land Company

Discovery Land Company, an Arizona-based developer of private golf communities, has spent more than a decade seeking approval for a golf course and about 118 homes on roughly 590 acres of Pine Barrens woodland in East Quogue. The Southampton Town Board rejected the first version, The Hills at Southampton, in December 2017. Discovery refiled a similar plan as the Lewis Road Planned Residential Development, which won preliminary Town Planning Board approval and, according to The Real Deal, approval from the Central Pine Barrens Commission in 2021. In February 2022 the Planning Board found the final application out of compliance with the conditions of the preliminary approval. Later status is not confirmed here.

Discovery's role is applicant and developer: it owns or controls the land and carries the approvals. No architect or builder is attributed on this page.

The project matters to East Quogue property for its scale, its location over a protected aquifer, and its approval route, which shows how the Town's zoning tools and the regional Pine Barrens review interact.

The Hills at Southampton, 2013–2017

The 2013 application sought a planned development district (PDD), a special change of zone negotiated for one project. According to the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, which opposed it, the plan called for 118 houses, a 98-acre private golf course and a 155,000-square-foot clubhouse on 590 acres. The Society notes the site lies in a state-designated Special Groundwater Protection Area and a county-designated Critical Environmental Area.

In December 2017 the Town Board voted the project down and repealed the PDD law. The Society reports that Discovery then sued the Town for $100 million, and that a later vote to incorporate East Quogue as a village, which would have moved the decision to a new village government, failed.

The Lewis Road PRD, 2018 onward

Months later Discovery filed a similar plan as a planned residential development (PRD), a clustering tool under the Town's open-space law that lets homes be grouped on part of a site in exchange for preserved land. The Society reports the filing at 130 homes. The question was whether a golf course could count as the "recreational amenity" a PRD allows; the Zoning Board of Appeals ruled that it could, the Planning Board granted preliminary approval, and opponents including the Group for the East End sued.

Because the land is in the Central Pine Barrens, the project also went to the Central Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission, the state-created regional body that reviews development there. The Real Deal reported the Commission's approval in 2021. Its February 2022 report described:

• 118 homes: 8 clubhouse units, 15 village cottages, 53 village lots, 16 village estates, 26 woodland estates and 12 workforce housing units;
• an 18-hole private golf course on part of a 588-acre site, with about 73 percent of the land as open space;
• a recreation complex, fitness center, pool and clubhouse for residents.

The same month, the Planning Board resolved that the application did not comply with the preliminary approval's conditions and set out a checklist.

What this means for nearby property

Location. The site lies near Spinney Road and runs north past Sunrise Highway. Whether a nearby parcel falls in the same groundwater protection or Pine Barrens overlay areas, and what those designations require of it, is a parcel-level check. See East Quogue and Septic and wastewater.

Approval is a sequence. Preliminary approval, a regional commission's decision and final approval are separate steps, and litigation can stop any of them. A buyer evaluating nearby land, or a future lot inside the project, should read the current Planning Board file, the Commission's findings and the court dockets rather than a press summary.

Lots inside the project. If lots are offered, they will be governed by the approved subdivision, club membership terms and any homeowners' association. Those documents, not the marketing plan, decide what can be built.

Considering property in East Quogue?

Request a property brief that confirms the current approval and litigation status, reads the overlay districts that apply, and places the property against comparable East Quogue sales.