Sag Harbor Apartment Complex Plans in Limbo, Potter Puts Land on Market

Plans for a three-story commercial-residential development behind Sag Harbor’s Main Street are in limbo after developer Adam Potter listed three of the five properties that were the foundation of the proposal up for sale last week.

The three lots, which frame the corner of Bridge and Rose streets north of the village’s main municipal parking lot, have been listed for sale separately or as a package, according to Compass broker Hal Zwick, who has the listing. The total price for the three lots, purchased individually, is more than $8.7 million. Zwick did not say what a combined price for all three properties, which cover less than a half acre, would be.

The lots are in an office district zone, meaning they can be used for certain commercial businesses but also residential in some circumstances.

“There’s a hair salon, a second-floor apartment; 23 Bridge Street has three residential units. One of them is a cute little cottage,” Zwick said. “It’s a very low-key mixed use.”

In 2022, Potter and development partners brought a proposal to the village for a $70 million, three-story, horseshoe-shaped building fronting on Bridge and Rose streets that would have 33,000 square feet of commercial storefronts on the first floor and 79 apartments on the upper floors, including affordable housing.

After Potter’s development partners, Conifer Realty, bowed out amid furor over the proposal from some in the community, he came back last summer with a new, retooled proposal for a smaller mixed-use building with just 10,700 square feet of commercial space and 39 apartments, 19 of which would qualify as affordable, and an adjacent community center building with performance space, offices for nonprofits and a youth center.

By fall, the community center component, which had been dubbed “The Complex,” had been dropped and new plans presented to the village for only the three-story commercial and residential building remained.

Potter, reached by phone last week, said he was on vacation with his family and declined to comment on his plans, or change thereof, for the property.

Zwick said he does not know whether the listing means the ambitious development plans are dead, only that he’d been asked to list the three lots — one of which is just one-tenth of an acre in size.

Mayor Tom Gardella said that Potter had told him that he was rethinking his plans for the parking lot parcels.

“He told me he was putting those properties on the market and was thinking of reconsidering his plans for what he wants to do there,” Gardella said. “I’m not a real estate speculator, and I don’t know what Mr. Potter’s thinking was, but I do know that it was probably difficult. Some of those structures there are historic, which I imagine complicates matters, and the groundwater table there is very high, so that particular area is complicated.”

Gardella offered no judgment on whether he’d be sorry to see the proposal go.

“I have no opinion on it either way — I’ve only said that what I think is healthy for the village is that we have to be careful when it comes to developing certain properties,” the mayor said. “We have to be careful because there’s only so much that a small village like ours can handle.”