4 Photos
Students, teachers and parents file into the Bridgehampton School's cafeteria to discuss challenges that come with its size. KELLY ZEGERS
July 31 -- The demolition of the portable classrooms at the Eastport Elementary School began in late July. For more than 30 years, three portable buildings, referred to as “annexes” by the students and staffers, stood on the Eastport Elementary School grounds. They were supposed to be a temporary fix for overcrowding when they were installed, but students continued to file in and out of the classrooms for the next three-plus decades until this past spring, when a second permanent building was finally constructed just a few hundred feet to the east. That building—the $26 million Tuttle Avenue Schoolwas opened to students earlier this year.
Marion Diener, of Manorville, addresses the board about Superintendent Mark Nocero's retirement. AMANDA BERNOCCO
The fate of the historical Morpurgo House on Union Street in Sag Harbor may have been sealed June 24 at Southampton Town Hall.
The home was sold at public auction to a developer for $1.325 million. Mitch Winston, of Nyho LLC, an equity group, placed the winning bid.
There are currently no plans to tear down the entirety of the home, which was in foreclosure, he said.
The village had postponed a public hearing on the demolition of the home, prompted by safety concerns, in case there was a successful bidder at the auction.
“When you look at the economic equation here, the value is in the historical retrieval and being able to pull back what was there,” said Scott Strough, a broker from the Compass real estate agency who worked with Mr. Winston. Mr. Strough, along with Christian Lipp, are the brokers for the home who brought in Mr. Winston. They had known about the property for years and had been eyeing it for about the last year, Mr. Winston said.
The majority of any historical preservation will be done on the exterior of the home and what Sag Harbor Village officials are concerned with in terms of preservation. It will be a working partnership with the village, Mr. Strough said.
It would not be possible to rebuild another approximately 4,000-square-feet structure under current regulations if the home was torn down and builders started from scratch, according to Mr. Strough.
The next step is to evaluate the structure along with Sag Harbor Village senior building inspector Thomas Preiato and resolve any safety issues.
Mr. Winston was not the only bidder at the auction, to his surprise. A man representing Atlantic View Holdings LLC, the mortgage holder of the home, drove up the bid to $1.2 million after Mr. Winston’s initial bid of $1.146 million. The man would not give his name, after bidding again at $1.25 million.
“He’s not an individual, he represents the bank,” said Joel Zweig, an attorney who represents Atlantic View Holdings.
Mr. Winston and Mr. Lipp of Compass stepped to the side for a few minutes to talk, and came back with the final and successful bid of $1.325 million.
“It was tense what happened there at the auction, I didn’t expect that,” Mr. Winston said. Even so, he came prepared with multiple checks for bids.
After the auction, he mentioned that he had a sort of sign from his late father, Marshall Winston, giving him the confidence that his bid would win. His father, he said, was buried with a golf ball that had the International House of Pancakes logo on it. Since then, the son would often check eBay to find an identical ball, and just before the auction one appeared, he said.
Kelly Zegers on Jun 24, 2016