Zabar's will take over Amagansett Farmer's Market

Recommend

Comment

Email this article

Print this article

Get news alerts

RSS Feeds

Share Digg Mixx Linked In Facebook Twitter Delicious

see all images

The Amagansett Farmers Market will re-open for business, possibly by the end of this month, under the management of Eli Zabar, owner of Eli’s Bread and the brother of the owners of Zabar’s gourmet emporium in Manhattan.

East Hampton Town and the Peconic Land Trust finally closed the deal to purchase the popular market and eight acres of adjacent farmland from owner Pat Struk on Monday, after nearly two years of negotiations. The Land Trust, which will own the building, promptly announced that it has a three-year contract with Mr. Zabar to operate the market business.

Mr. Zabar said on Tuesday that he hopes to have the market up and running by August 1.

“I am very excited and I can’t wait to get out there,” Mr. Zabar said from New York City on Tuesday. “We’re a little bit at the mercy of logistics. There are still bits and pieces that are in the way. I’d like to say it would be next week but I think realistically it will be the first of August.”

Mr. Zabar is the son of the Zabar’s founders and the owner of a food empire that includes Eli’s Bread, Eli’s Vinegar Factory, W.I.N.E. wine and spirits shop, and the restaurant emporiums E.A.T., and TASTE. The market, he said, will evolve over the summer but will be focused on offering products from Long Island waters and farms.

“The market is going to be different than it has been for years,” he said. “It is going to be much more focused on the region. For this summer, we want to just get it open but what we envision for the future is to create a real farmer’s market with everything the Peconic Bay area has to offer and all the best things from the whole region.”

Mr. Zabar said he would like to have a market that not only welcomes products from farmers throughout the New York region several days a week but also possibly a nightly market in the evenings for local farmers to bring their harvest for sale the same day it is picked. He also envisioned having an oyster bar someday, serving local oysters and wine on-site, he said. Of course, the market also will feature the wide variety of products Mr. Zabar’s various businesses sell.

“You’ll see the breads, the pastries, all our prepared foods and sandwiches and prepared dinners,” said Mr. Zabar, whose wife, Devon Frederick, is the former owner of the Loaves and Fishes market in Sagaponack. “You’re not going to see Carr’s table water biscuits. You’ll see good milk and dairy products from places where we know the cows. There will be lots of picnic tables so people can read the newspaper with their cup of coffee.”

Eli’s Bread has been delivering its products to East End restaurants and stores for more than two decades. When the bread trucks were empty, Mr. Zabar said, they would stop at farms on the North and South forks and fill up with produce to take back to his stores and restaurants in the city.

Mr. Zabar, whose brothers operate the famous Zabar’s gourmet market on Broadway in Manhattan that their parents opened in 1934, said he will modernize the inside of the Amagansett market building during the off-season but that the building will retain its general appearance.

Ms. Struk opened the Amagansett Farmers Market with her husband in 1954 and operated it with her son, Brenndon, until last fall. Ms. Struk said on Monday that her son is talking with Mr. Zabar about continuing to work at the market when it reopens.

The town and Ms. Struk agreed in principal to a deal for the store that would preserve the farmland behind it more than a year ago but the closing was delayed repeatedly for a variety of reasons. Last fall, Ms. Struk, saying the deal was taking too long, re-listed the market for sale. On Monday she was smiling and relieved that the sale to the town had worked out.

“It was a good era,” she said just after signing off on the $5.5 million sale. “I think the community will be very happy. That spot is very important as a food source.”

The deal that ultimately got Ms. Struk to the closing table on Monday morning was a complicated one. Just before closing on the market with Ms. Struk, the town closed a deal with Margaret de Cuevas, whose family owns hundreds of acres of land in Amagansett—most of it preserved through deals with the town—to purchase the development rights on 26 acres of woodland in the Stony Hill region for $4.38 million, drawn from the Community Preservation Fund.

At the same closing table, Ms. De Cuevas, through her attorney, Lisa Kombrink, put that money and another $1 million of Ms. De Cuevas’s own money up to purchase the entire Farmers Market property from Ms. Struk for $5.5 million. The town then purchased the development rights on the eight acres of farmland for $2 million, again using CPF money, and Ms. De Cuevas gave the three-quarter acre of land that contains the market building to the Peconic Land Trust. Ms. Struk will retain ownership of her house, next door to the market.