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Southampton Town Councilman John Bouvier in front of the former Manhattan Motorcars of the Hamptons and Annona Restaurant. DANA SHAW
Landing the old Manhattan Motorcars building on Old Riverhead Road in Westhampton for a new community center would be “a score,” noted Craig Catalanotto, the vice chairman of the Citizens Advisory Committee West.
Southampton Town Councilman John Bouvier agreed. “This is a deal you just can’t pass up,” he said.
On Tuesday, July 14, the Southampton Town Board voted to hold a public hearing on a proposal to lease the building for $200,000 per year, with an option to buy later for $4 million. The hearing is slated for August 11 at 1 p.m.
The owner of the building, located at 112 Old Riverhead Road, is listed as 112WHB, LLC. It was once home to Manhattan Motorcars of the Hamptons, a luxury car dealership that also contained the Annona Restaurant.
It’s approximately 22,000 square feet, Mr. Bouvier said Tuesday morning, during a tour of the site. A concrete and steel structure, it boasts three floors with elevator access at two places, plus a two-story glass rotunda.
There are about 60 parking spaces. It has geothermal heating, a flat roof that could accommodate solar panels, and the potential to be connected to the sewage treatment plant at the nearby Francis S. Gabreski Airport.
“All the infrastructure is in place,” Mr. Bouvier said.
Everything for a kitchen, except appliances, is already in the building, he said, anticipating the town might spend $500,000 on renovations beyond those the landlord will undertake.
Lots of windows make it “nice and bright,” Mr. Catalanotto added.
Located on Old Riverhead Road, the building is “easy to access and easy to find,” he said. It’s not far from the school, if youth services are offered there, he explained. It’s less than a mile from the school in the village, and “a quick bus ride to the community college pool,” Mr. Bouvier added, speaking of the pool on the eastern campus of Suffolk Community College.
While the priority is offering a place for senior citizens to gather — 29 percent of the population in the greater Westhampton area are seniors — the building offers enough space for a variety of uses. Tenants could help defray the lease cost, a cell antenna could bring in additional revenue, and a town annex might be considered. “We’re going to grow into this,” Mr. Bouvier said. “The potential is amazing.”
“If we had to build this, it would be $25 million,” Mr. Bouvier said. The building has been on the market, “for a while,” the councilman said. The $200,000 lease breaks down to $9 per square foot of space.
“Our CAC has been talking about a community center for awhile,” Mr. Catalanotto said, adding that members will be thrilled to learn one could be on the horizon.
“There’s definitely a need for it,” he said, musing that a center for both youth and seniors would be “a nice thing to have.”
Mr. Catalanotto toured community centers in both Flanders and Hampton Bays, and said, “if we can bring something like those to the area, it would be terrific.”
The quest for a site for a community center to serve residents in the western section of Southampton Town has been a long one.
“We worked hard to try to find a building,” Mr. Bouvier said. He also toured vacant properties trying to find a site.
The old community center, located next to the post office and 7-Eleven on Mill Road was condemned in 2015, and sat vacant for years. Town officials considered restoring the 2,640-square-foot building, but its extreme state of disrepair led them to agree that the building needed to either be sold or torn down. When attempts by town officials to auction it off failed, in 2019, the board voted to demolish the eyesore.
Another effort to establish a center failed to achieve fruition. In 2018, town officials began preliminary discussions on the concept of building a community center at the airport with Rechler Equity Partners, the real estate and construction development company that operates the Hampton Business District.
The Rechlers would have built a 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot structure on the north side of the business district, saving the town up to $5 million in construction costs, then leased it to Southampton. As discussions continued, however, the asking price for the lease was greater than officials felt feasible.
