Montauk Nightlife Spots Crabby Cowboy, Ruschmeyers Snatched Up By Same Buyer

The entrepreneur who two years ago purchased and remade the former Cyril’s Fish House, has now purchased two other occasionally raucous social scenes: Ruschmeyer’s resort on Second House Road and the Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe property on East Lake Drive, for which he has already introduced plans for waterfront condominiums.

Having added two of the most popular social scenes of Montauk’s most recent summers to his quiver, Jeremy Morton said this week that it will be “business as usual” at his new joints this summer, though he has plans for an extensive overhaul of the former Rick’s property in the not-too-distant future.

“All of these properties have had a lot of meaning for me in my life and I’m excited to make sure they remain part of the story of Montauk,” Mr. Morton, who transformed the once over-stuffed Cyril’s bar scene into the more quaint Morty’s Oyster Stand in 2019, said on Tuesday. “At Rick’s this year it will be business as usual, but we’ve submitted to the town to renovate the food and beverage space to create a different restaurant offering there and we have plans to alter the hotel as well.”

The self-described “serial entrepreneur,” who also owns the Provisions Natural Foods market in Water Mill, said that the waterfront restaurant run by Rick Gibbs and his wife Laurie for the last 25 years will be taken over for summer 2021 by the operators of Common Ground, the Lower Manhattan nightclub that did summer “pop ups” on weekends at Rick’s in recent summers. The restaurant this summer will continue offering Rick’s style of casual “family friendly food,” Mr. Morton said, with the nightlife scene later on.

The Rick’s property, at 435 East Lake Drive, is 4.6 acres, has nearly 500 feet of waterfront and is zoned for resort business, which allows restaurant and hotel uses. The property currently contains the restaurant, a house, 14 efficiency style housing units in four one-story buildings and has 24 boat slips along it’s bulkheaded waterfront.

The proposal that Mr. Morton presented to the town Planning Board for a preliminary review earlier this spring calls for the four current lodging buildings to be razed and replaced with 27 condominium units in two, two-story buildings, a fitness center and swimming pool. The restaurant and a single-family house on the property will remain.

The property also includes 6.5 acres of underwater land, former owner Rick Gibbs said, which could make it possible to expand the marina facilities, he surmised. The adjacent property — formerly Gone Fishing Marina, now the Montauk Anglers Club & Marina — has more than 100 boat slips.

Town planning department staff noted in their written report to the Planning Board on the proposal that the new development would likely require a sewage treatment system and that the shallow water table under the property would make arranging new septics complicated. They also recommended that whatever new buildings are to be constructed be arranged such that all the structures were set back as far from the waterfront as possible.

Both of Mr. Morton’s new purchases had been on the market for many millions of dollars. Ruschmeyer’s, which has 19 summer camp-like hotel rooms scattered along a hill overlooking Fort Pond and a large restaurant and bar that has been one of the hamlet’s social focal points in recent summers, was listed for sale just this past fall with a $35 million asking price.

Mr. Gibbs, who opened Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe in 1996 and purchased the property in 2001, has had it listed for sale off and on over the years for as much as $16 million.

Mr. Gibbs said on Monday that he is grateful for the good years in business he had at Rick’s, but is looking forward to retirement. He sparred repeatedly with East Hampton Town over various issues related to his operations at the property over the years — most recently last summer when the Common Ground crowd ran afoul of COVID-19 precautions over the July 4 weekend and Mr. Gibbs was hit with State Liquor Authority violations.

While his restaurant has remained popular, he had been seeking buyers with grander development plans for more than a decade. A previous prospective buyer had presented a condo plan to the town that, Mr. Gibbs said, was nearly completed when the mortgage crisis and the Great Recession derailed it.

“I had a great life there, I raised my kids there, put them through college and now it’s time for me to give it to somebody else,” he said of Mr. Morton. “I believe this guy will take it to the next level.”