Sagaponack Village officials mixed bemused smirks with furrowed brows this week as they reviewed a proposal for what would be the second-largest private estate in the tiny village—which already features one of the nation’s biggest homes.
The house proposed would utilize the maximum square footage allowed by village building codes, just over 12,200 square feet of primary and accessory structures, and would nearly double that space below ground, with a cavernous lower level that actually would be larger than the footprint of the main house. Extending more than 20 feet below the surface, it would boast a basketball court, movie theater and viewing windows into the bottom of an outdoor swimming pool.
Constructing the sprawling underground areas would require engineers to excavate 17,500 cubic yards of sand and soil from the property—more than 20 tons. Much of the sandy material would be used to rebuild dunes along the property’s oceanfront, while the rest would be used for re-grading certain areas of the property during the development.
Before the foundation could be poured, the excavated hole would then have to be “de-watered”: tens of millions of gallons of groundwater would have to be pumped from the shallow water table. The de-watering—although it is possibly not even the biggest such effort in the village’s development history—would require more than 850,000 gallons of water to be pumped from the ground each day for two months. The water would have to be retained on the property and then returned to the ground once the foundation was poured.
A similar de-watering storage at a new oceanfront mansion on Gibson Lane was overwhelmed and collapsed during the July 4 rains from Hurricane Arthur, setting off a scramble of heavy machinery to bolster the retaining walls.
Village Engineer Drew Bennett warned of a few potential problems from the de-watering, beyond the retention issues, including possible saltwater intrusion into the water table and impacts on groundwater supplies to neighboring properties. He said the village should confirm that all of the neighbors are hooked up to Suffolk County Water Authority supply mains.
The property, reportedly purchased by an unnamed hedge fund manager through an LLC, totals 18.4 acres. The property was purchased by STEM Partners LLC in 2011 for $38 million.
By acreage, it is just a fraction of the infamous 63-acre estate owned by Ira Rennert, two properties to the west on Daniels Lane. But as the village has been increasingly chopped up into as many buildable parcels as possible, the long, narrow property would constitute, village officials believe, the second-largest single-house property in the town. A proposal for a single house on a 44-acre lot between Mr. Rennert’s compound and the Stem Partners property is pending before the village, but officials are working on the assumption that that property will be further subdivided in the future to create three additional lots along the oceanfront.
At more than 18 acres, the Stem Partners property could technically be subdivided into as many as four lots, though 65 percent of the property would then have to be preserved as agricultural land.
The construction of the house itself, which isn’t particularly remarkable among Sagaponack’s recent developments, wasn’t the Village Board’s biggest concern at Monday’s planning work session.
Despite the owner’s representatives offering to leave some 8 acres of the land wholly empty of any development, officials still groused at some of the plans for the landscape design. A “grande allee” lined with trees leading hundreds of feet back into the property, and a maze of orchards and ornamentally landscaped walkways leading throughout the property were wholly out of character with the few vestiges of the village’s rural, agrarian past that officials have labored to preserve where possible amid the tsunami of new development in recent years.
“It just looks so unnatural,” Village Trustee Lisa Thayer said.
Mr. Gaudiello noted that the plans for the allee had already been trimmed back since the first plans for the property were submitted last month, leaving a gap between the entrance gate and the start of the rows of trees, so as to lessen some of the impact on views across a neighboring farm field, which is protected by an agricultural easement.
“It’s much better, but it is still so insensitive to this area,” Village Mayor Don Louchheim said. “We’re trying to keep this somewhat rural look, and this is anything but. It is a grande allee, though.”
Mr. Gaudiello pointed out that there would be no driveway gates of the sort common at most new village estates, and said his client would be willing to push the start of the allee back another 75 feet if the village saw necessary. He also noted that the trees would be less of a view obstruction than hedges, like those used at most estates, would be.
The village mayor acknowledged the considerations and said that every bit the row of trees is shortened would be better than if it weren’t, but he still questioned why such a feature is necessary in a house being built on oceanside farmland.
“It’s the unrelieved march of trees right down this road,” he said, “where the only purpose seems to be to stress someone’s importance.”
on Jul 16, 2014