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One of the conditions of the sale of Adelaide de Menil’s forty oceanfront acres on Further Lane to Ron Baron was that the collection of historic buildings—the houses, barns and outbuildings in which de Menil and her husband, Ted Carpenter had lived for over three decades—be removed. De Menil and Carpenter generously gave the buildings to East Hampton Town, had them moved to be renovated into a new town hall, and provided an endowment for their maintenance—an inspired act that prevented part of our local heritage from ending up in the dumpster.
It seems strangely appropriate that the property has been scoured of hundreds of years of history, that the past has been discreetly relocated, for its future will veer sharply from that past. What was farmland for generations and then home to dignified, centuries-old structures is now a clean slate, a purged site waiting for the extreme mansions of the extremely rich. The property is set to become an icon of the over-the-top real estate ambitions of today’s free spending buyers. It’s all been hush-hush, at least up until the time this article was going to press, but Baron is reportedly paying $103 million. It is an impressive number even for a man who already spent $23 million in 2002 for 11 acres on the ocean just west of de Menil and bulldozed a 13,000 square foot house that was apparently not up to his size or standards.
Temporarily displaced from Further Lane, if not exactly homeless in the Hamptons, Baron was scheduled in May to move into a house on a point surrounded by Georgica Pond in the Georgica Association. It seemed like a perfect house for Baron, who values his privacy. But he appears to have walked away from the deal at the last moment without a word of explanation.
He declined to be interviewed for this article, so we can only speculate where Baron will live this summer while wheeling and dealing with all this breathtakingly expensive real estate. On thing is certain: as the billionaire founder of Baron Capital he can afford to do exactly what he wants.
According to real estate insiders his next step will probably be to subdivide the Further Lane property into three large oceanfront lots with an inland reserve, subject of course to East Hampton Town Planning Board approval. It seems likely to be approved since such a subdivision plan is not overreaching and it will have a large reserved area.
Observers think Baron will keep the lot abutting his own property, and sell the other two. Estimated price per lot is $50 to $60 million. This being the Hamptons, there is already a market with a pool of potential buyers. (Assume that all potential lot buyers are billionaires unless otherwise noted.) It is rumored that one lot will go to a friend of Baron’s, Steven A. Cohen.
Cohen is a Connecticut hedge fund investor and according to Forbes, the 85th richest person in the United States. He also made the Forbes list of “Top Billionaire Art Collectors” in 2005, and is regularly cited by Art News in their top 10 list of the world’s biggest spending art collectors. He has spent over $700 million on art since beginning his collection in 2000.
He owns a Pollock drip painting (for which he paid $52 million) and two paintings by de Kooning ($63.5 million and $137.5 million), all purchased from David Geffen, so at least from an art standpoint he might already have some knowledge of and appreciation for East Hampton.
It is getting harder and harder to remember when Further Lane was mostly potato fields. From this point forward, the story is all about money.