Month: October 2020

The Bay Street Theater announced today that it has purchased the shops at West Water Street, near its current location, where it will construct a new building with multiple theaters, spaces for new-work development, education facilities, outdoor performance spaces, and public spaces. The space is of course right next to John Steinbeck Waterfront Park, creating an exciting community resource.

“The creation of a permanent home for Bay Street has long been a goal for all of us at the organization, and I’m thrilled that, along with the Friends of Bay Street, we are able to build upon the work of our visionary founders Sybil Christopher, Emma Walton Hamilton, and Stephen Hamilton, to make that dream a reality,” said Tracy Mitchell, executive director of Bay Street Theater, in a statement. “I’m incredibly grateful to Bay Street Theater’s chairman, Steven Todrys, and the entire board of trustees for their support and leadership at this incredible juncture as we enhance the artistic contributions we make to the field and the home we provide to our wonderful community.”

For this project, Friends of Bay Street & Sag Harbor Redevelopment, a separate nonprofit organization, was created to oversee the land acquisition, financing, fundraising, design, and overall site development. And don’t worry, Slurpee lovers, Friends of Bay Street is working with the owners of the small businesses currently in the building relocate to new sites in town.

Friends of Bay Street currently plan to break ground in mid-2021, with completion anticipated in 2023. And don’t worry–for those of us who love the intimacy of Bay Street’s current theater stage, the new mainstage will be similar. Yet the facility’s flexibility will allow Bay Street to offer even more original works, co-productions, and partnerships. More details will be announced in the coming months.

“Today is a foundational next step in the history and ongoing trajectory of Bay Street Theater as well as for the Sag Harbor community,” said Adam Potter, Friends of Bay Street founder and chairman, in a statement. “The location of the new complex will offer residents and visitors access to the revitalized waterfront and even more space for productions and community offerings, expanding the theatre as a hub for engagement and creativity. Not only is the project an investment in the future of both Sag Harbor and nonprofit theatre, it allows Bay Street Theater to expand its role as a major cultural, civic, and economic resource in the region.”

• 22 Long Island Avenue, Sag Harbor [Elliman]

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Get on out of the house and get started with the holiday season by heading over to the Carriage House at the Southampton History Museum! Friday, November 27, and Saturday, November 28, the museum is holding a silent auction of tabletop Christmas trees created by well-known designers, including our own personal favorite Martha Stewart. The auction begins 10AM on Friday and ends at 4PM Saturday, so be sure to hop on by and bid.

But the excitement doesn’t stop there, as the Carriage House Holiday Shop opens the same days. It will be filled with the kind of great finds seen all summer in the Thrift Shop, plus lots of even better stuff the shop has been saving especially for the holidays. (So get there early to nab the nicest!) Brinf your gift list, as in addition to the amazing collection of vintage jewelry, handbags and clothes, there will be ornaments–new and vintage–stocking stuffers for children, books about Southampton, and items by local artisans.

And in the year of Covid, don’t worry. Tom Edmonds, executive director of the Southampton History Museum, says, “This is a great way to get the family out after Thanksgiving and begin a festive season. The museum grounds are a safe haven for fun with all Covid restrictions in place including limited entrance, required facemasks, temperatures taken and hand sanitizing applied before entering.”

The museum is at 17 Meeting House Lane, Southampton. See you there!

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We’ve been crazy about the facade of this house for years. (We’d call it Shingle Style, we guess.) That curving balcony, the swooping roof over the porch? Perfection. So when we saw the place was listed for sale a few weeks ago (by Kieran Brew and Jennifer Brew of Saunders), we were dying to see the interiors.

The interiors turned out to be not quiiiite perfection (we’d like to see a few more signs of age there) but darn close. First, a little history of the place.

It’s known as “the Conklin house,” which, given that there are at least three other Conklin houses in Amagansett and the town itself has been known as Conklinville, isn’t that information. Actually, it is known as the William D. Conklin House, even though it was actually built by Everett Babcock in 1898. William Conklin lived there later; he was also the Amagansett postmaster. And if either Everett or William stopped by today, they’d recognize the house; it looks little unchanged on the exterior.

On the inside, though, most rooms have been modernized for current tastes. The place isn’t huge, at 2,600 square feet, but there are four bedrooms and 3.5 baths. (We just love the nooks and crannies the old rooms afford. So much fun for kids.) Of course there’s a great looking marble kitchen, which looks out in the spacious (0.29 of an acre) yard. And there’s a wonderful pool out back and pretty landscaping.

All this for $3.5 million? What’s the catch? Well, it’s right on Montauk Highway, across the street from the school. Normally we’d advise caution about a house right on the highway but sorry, caution flies out the window in a house as utterly charming as this. Someone needs to scoop this up fast.

• 327 Main Street [Saunders]

 

 

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That was fast! This large property, consisting of 12 and 15 West Dune Lane, East Hampton, was listed in mid-August for $75 million. It was reportedly in contract by mid-September, and it closed October 1. 15 West Dune Lane sold to a Mr. 15 West Dune LLC for $61 million; while 12 West Dune sold to 12 West Dune LLC (what are the odds?) for $6 million. That’s $67 million for both, but even if you’re a stickler who counts different parcels as different sales, $61 million is a new record for 2020.

The property is technically not oceanfront, we guess, because Wiborg Beach is owned by the Village of East Hampton, but hey, close enough.

So what did the buyer get for their 67 large? 3.4 acres in toto, along with an 8,000-square-foot house designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern and a 6,000-square-foot house just north of it. The houses boast 14 bedrooms and 15 bathrooms. The interiors of the main house are extremely chintzy and, yes, we mean that literally. Will the buyer keep the gambreled Stern house or build a giant glass box? We’ll be interested to see.

Congrats to Ed Petrie at Compass, who represented the buyer.

• 15 West Dune Lane [Compass]

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The last quarter results from the four agencies who compile data are all in, and the broad results are as follows. Each report tends to focus on slightly different parts of the market, so results tend to be slightly different from one another. Basically: everyone wants to be in the Hamptons.

Douglas Elliman

Sales surged quarter over quarter, as the market rebounded from lockdown. And median sales price reached its highest level in fifteen years of tracking after the largest year-over-year jump in sales in nearly seven years.

The median sales price in the third quarter of 2020 was up 40% (compared to the same quarter in 2019) at $1,200,000, while the average sale jumped 46% to $2,008,595. The number of sales leaped 51% year over year to 607.

Listing inventory was down 28% to 1,842. As for the luxury market (the highest 10% of sales), both the average ($7,706,962, up a whopping 47%) and median ($5,800,000, up 65%) prices were way up, and the number of sales jumped 48% to 61.

Town & Country

In T&C’s report, the number of sales were up 52% year over year, to 441. The median home sales price increased by 23.64% to $1,275,000 in 2020 from $1,031,250 in 2019. The total home sales volume (sum of all sales) was up an amazing 102%!

Town & Country breaks up sales into eight ranges, from under $500K to over $20 million, and every single one was up. The middling $2 – $3.49 million price range was up 70% in sales, while $3.5 million to $4.99 million leaped 180%. (Over $20 million was up 200%, from 1 to 3 sales.)

Standout markets includes the East Hampton area, which includes Wainscott, which recorded the most home sales for the Hamptons, with 95 trades. East Hampton Village, however, was a little off: 7 trades this quarter while there were 9 same time previous year.

Corcoran

At Corcoran, closed sales jumped 38% year-over-year in the Hamptons and 23% on the North Fork. On the South Fork, median price was up 21% from the same quarter in 2019, resulting in the highest median price on record, $1,200,000. The average price was $2.041,000, up 11% year over year, and the highest third quarter on record.

The number of sales increased in all but one hamlets except for East Quogue/Hamptons. The largest increase in sales occurred in Southampton Village, where closings swelled 89% year-over-year. Bridgehampton/Sagaponack leaped 80%. The other villages and hamlets ranged from 18% up to 60% increases versus the same quarter last year.

Sales volume increased in 11 of 13 areas, most notably in East Hampton Village (an astounding 330%) and Quogue Village/ Quogue (104%). The most dramatic change was in East Hampton Village, where average price was up 187% and median price was up 104%, the result of five sales over $5M, compared to zero in the same quarter 2019.

Brown Harris Stevens

Covid-related demand drove the market up, too, at Brown Harris Stevens. Total dollar volume for the area rose unprecedented 101.5% to over $973,000,000 from $483,000,000 in the third quarter of 2019. Of course, the average and median sales also rose; sales prices in the Hamptons averaged $2,173,353 during the third quarter, an increase of 33.2% over last year, while the median price jumped 26.2% to $1,267,500.

So what’s ahead? Is the party going to continue? All indications are yes. Judi Desiderio, president of Town & Country, said, “The only report better than [the current] one will be next quarter!” Stay tuned.

Here’s a reader’s comment from yesterday’s post:

Could you write about your thoughts on the Windmill Lane oceanfront in east hampton that just got listed for 72 million (trying to make a 30 million profit in three months with no renovation) ?! Or the new meadow lane that just got listed for 53 million?! The readers want to hear the latest and greatest on all oceanfront!

Why, certainly!

First up, our thoughts on the Windmill Lane oceanfront relisted for $30 million more three months after purchase:

Sometimes we wish we were born with the brass neck (or similar metallic body parts) to do something like this. Ah, well, guess that’s one reason the seller can afford to buy $42 million properties while we just write about ’em.

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As for the $52.5 million Meadow Lane property, we think that ask is a serious reach. The property was built in 1982 by Fred and Phyllis Pressman, son and daughter-in-law of Barneys New York founder Barney Pressman. It was designed by well-known NYC architects Beyer Blinder Belle.

Now, we’re a sucker for a building with a fake-thatch roof. The house looks very similar to some large Arts and Crafts homes you might find in the English countryside (though they wouldn’t have real or fake thatched roofs). And since Arts and Crafts is our favorite style, the exterior gets a big thumbs-up from us. There are also a generous three acres of land, which of course includes a pool and tennis, not to mention 200 feet of oceanfront. Great.

The interiors are disappointing, though. This seems like the kind of house that was designed from the exterior in–the lovely facade makes for some awkwardly shaped and placed rooms. Plus, the interior design is dated, fussy, and frankly, kind of jangles our nerves–too many railings and skinny legged-tables. The interior is just not what a buyer wants today. The kitchen is quite small for today’s tastes, and so on. It’s possible that a good architect could reconfigure the space into the bigger rooms that are in style today–we don’t know. It’s about 6000 square feet, with 7 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half baths.

The property is repped by Tim Davis at Corcoran. We’ll be interested to see what happens with it.

• 346 Meadow Lane [Corcoran]

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Back in May 2016, author Neal Gabler made headlines for a while with a piece in The Atlantic called “The Secret Shame of Middle Class Americans,” in which he bravely outed himself as someone who is always in a precarious financial position as a freelance writer. He was very frank in admitting his own financial mistakes, even things that critics pounced on him for (private schools, paying for daughters’ college, and a house in the Hamptons). He also wrote, “When people look at me admiringly after I tell them I live in the Hamptons, I always add, ‘We live there full-time like the poor people, not only in the summer like the rich people.'” (Us too.)

While we certainly hope things are looking sunnier financially for Mr. Gabler, he has however put his stunning Bell Estate house on the market. An original 1940 barn, the house is bursting with vintage charm. Besides the main great room with incredible beamed ceiling, there are three bedrooms and three baths. There is open loft space, perfect for getting some writing work done, a screened area for summer nights, and even a basement that could be finished. And, with 1.36 acres of land, there’s plenty of room for a pool, though with deeded access to the private Bell Estate beach, a new owner may not need a pool.

Asking price for all this is a very reasonable $1.7 million. (OK, reasonable for the area. Not reasonable for normal middle class people.) It’s repped by Angela Boyer-Stump and Hillary Davis at Sotheby’s.

• Fabulous Barn Home in Amagansett [Sotheby’s]

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There’s basically nothing not to love about this spacious, chic property. The property itself is 1.5 acres, but it looks out onto a 14-acre pasture, so there are broad vistas to enjoy. The house itself looks like an old East Hampton barn, with its shingled exterior and beamed interior. Walls of glass and a stylish kitchen make the interiors look bang up to date, however.

In all, the house boasts 5000 square feet, with five en-suite bedrooms and gym. Outside, of course there’s a gunite pool and pool house with bathroom, as well as decking and patios to make the most of the outdoors. Location, too, is good: in the northwest close to Longhouse, which means the price is lower than it would be on Bull Path, and a much shorter ride to town and beaches.

Asking price for all this is a very reasonable $3.875 million. It’s repped by Patrick Mclaughlin at Douglas Elliman. This would make a perfect family home for anyone looking to escape the city, or even for a couple with a lot of friends and family to stay.

• 9 Old Orchard [DE]

 

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We’ve seen this happen before: a house is priced very ambitiously at the beginning, no one buys, and then the price is gradually cut and chopped away, eventually hitting a reasonable level, but somehow the place seems like a laggard on the market and still doesn’t sell. Eventually the price gets so low we’re scratching our heads.

Now, $18.75 million for this Sag Harbor place, known as the Nathan P. Howell House, was ambitious back in 2017. But since then, as we alluded, the price has dwindled to $10.9 million, which seems eminently reasonable, Covid or not. (Heck, the place sold in 2014 for $9.75 million.) The house is the largest on Captain’s Row, with 10,000 square feet of space, and the property is also large at 1.1 acres.

The house was built in 1833 by Nathan P. Howell, from a wealthy whaling family, in the Greek Revival style. About twenty years later, Mr. Howell enlarged and renovated his house into the then-fashionable Italianate style. The house stayed in the family until the 1970s. Now it is upgraded for the twenty first century, but retains most of its period charm. There are four levels of living space (with an elevator) and a widow’s walk with amazing views of Sag Harbor.

There are seven bedrooms, eight and a half bathrooms, arched entries throughout, nine fireplaces, and two staircases. Outside, there’s hedged landscaping for privacy, a gunite pool, and a climate-controlled garage with an attached art studio.

The property is repped by Susan Breitenbach and Cutter Koster at Corcoran. We think it’s a good buy now.

• 238 Main Street [Corcoran]

 

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We’re not going to make a lot of Sex and the City jokes in this post, partially because we never watched the show (not that that’s stopped us before), but because as far as we’re concerned, Kim Cattrall is Valeris, the Vulcan vixen, from Star Trek VI. Period.

She has listed her bayfront house on Gerard Drive in Springs, and we think it’s really delightfully down to earth (for a Vulcan). It looks like Cattrall added some furniture and pictures, landscaped the exterior, but mostly left the house breathe. For instance, take a look at the kitchen and bathroom–not at all Hollywood glitzy. The knotty pine, too, is surely original.

The living room in the main house does, however, offer a starlet-worthy 59 X 80 motorized screen that descends from a recess in the ceiling, along with a professional projector. In all, there are 0.40 of an acre of land, which includes a main house with 2 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, along with a separate studio with its own half bath.

The star here, of course, is the views, which this property makes the most of. It’s repped by Rebekah C. Baker at Sotheby’s, asking a pretty logical $3.25 million. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

• Bayfront Bliss [Sotheby’s]

 

 

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