Lukas Foss, the renowned conductor and composer who has taken hold of the baton of the Music Festival of the Hamptons this year as artistic and general director, is promising a series that will take a fresh approach to classical music and offer a healthy amount of modern music.

"Toscanini said 'tradition is the last bad performance,' " Mr. Foss said last week, as he discussed the spirit with which this year's festival, his first, had been planned. The classical offerings, he said, will be done not with "clich‚d reverence" but in "adventurous" ways - "as if the ink were hardly dry."

The contemporary music, interspersed among the more familiar, will be given "the awe and respect given the classics," he said.

Real And Surreal

With Mr. Foss at the helm for the next three years, "there's no question" that the festival is moving more in the direction of contemporary music, said Eleanor Sage Leonard, its president and founder. She called Mr. Foss a "champion of the 20th century."

An example of Mr. Foss's programming is "Bach: Real and Surreal," which will be the concert preceding the event's benefit dinner party on Saturday, July 19. The concert and dinner will take place at the festival's Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, location.

Besides traditional Bach, the program will include Claude Bolling's "Bach to Swing," in the jazz idiom, and Mr. Foss's own "Non-Improvisation: A Bach Nightmare."

"It's kind of frightening," Mr. Foss said of the latter piece, ". . . big clouds of sound using Bach's notes."

Commentary

Mr. Foss will provide commentary about the Bach works while conducting from the piano, in a way, he said, that will not be "classroomy," but, he said, should make "the music exciting." The commentary will be confined to the classics, however. "New works should speak for themselves," he said.

More traditional contemporary music will be highlighted on July 25 in a program called "The American Connection." In it, Mr. Foss and Richard Stoltzman, a clarinetist, will showcase the works of some of America's best-known composers - George Gershwin, Charles Ives, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, for example - and share personal memories about some of the composers. Music by Paul Hindemith, with whom Mr. Foss studied at Yale, also is on the program.

The music of Schubert and Brahms as well as of Bach will be the focus of three concerts by the festival's resident chamber ensemble. It is new this year and includes outstanding young musicians, including some from such schools as Juilliard.

The festival will provide "an opportunity for promising young musicians to live and play with accomplished musicians," Mr. Foss said.

A celebration of Brahms will take place on July 26, the 100th anniversary of the composer's death. Mr. Foss will perform with the ensemble on July 23 in "Franz Schubert: With and Without Words," a program that will present two versions of each piece - one with the vocal score and one without it. Emily Golden, a mezzo-soprano, will be the soloist.

Final "Event"

"Every concert should be an event," Ms. Leonard said she was told by Mr. Foss, and she has tried to make it so.

The last evening of the festival will be an event, no doubt, with a performance of Stravinsky's "L'Histoire du Soldat." The Faust legend will be narrated by Gene Saks, a well-known theater director. Larry Rivers, an artist and jazz saxophonist, will take the role of the soldier, and Peter Stone, who just won two Tony Awards for his book of the musical "Titanic," will be the devil.

Three contemporary pieces will complete the program: Leonard Bernstein's "Masque," "Divertimento," by Ellen Zwilich, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and Mr. Foss's own "Curriculum Vitae."

Piano Recitals

This year's program again includes the Benno Moisewitch Piano Recital Series. Named after Ms. Leonard's great-uncle Benno Moisewitch, a Russian-English pianist, the series includes classical concerts by Cristina Marton and Aglaia Batzner on July 20 and Michael Boriskin on July 24, performances on July 22 by Zadel Skolovsky and Jeffrey Biegel, who will play a contemporary piece by the festival's co-director, Jeffrey Johnson, and "An Afternoon With Byron Janis" on July 20.

Mr. Janis's afternoon performance, at the festival tent in Bridgehampton, will be preceded by afternoon tea. The program will include Chopin nocturnes, mazurkas, and waltzes, as well as a preview of selections from his original score for a musical based on "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

"What we're hoping to accomplish is a little Tanglewood by the sea," said Eleanor Sage Leonard, the festival's founder and president. To this end, one of the goals this year is to reach out to children and senior citizens, she said.

Reaching Out

Two programs, a piano recital by Zadel Skolovsky on July 22 and "Ensemble for the Seicento," a July 26 program of Italian Baroque music on period instruments, will be free for seniors.

Youngsters up to the age of 18 have been invited to attend the festival's first concert, a performance of the Boys Choir of Harlem on July 18, without charge. Ms. Leonard has arranged for buses to bring children from day-care centers from Manor ville to East Hampton to the show. A children's concert featuring "Peter and the Wolf" by Prokofiev and Mozart's "A Little Night Music" will take place on the festival's last day, July 27.

"If I can get the corporate support I need," she said, "I want to create a young concert series as Bernstein had done years ago."

Birthday, Too

In addition, Mauricio Molina, a recorder player, will give lessons during the festival in the instrument to families or groups of up to six people in three series of courses.

The shows will be held at festival tents at the East Hampton Airport, the Bridgehampton Community House and Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, Parrish Memorial Hall in Southampton, and the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. A "meet the artists" reception will be held following each one, and picnic-style meals will be available at some. Dinner packages with nearby restaurants may be available as well.

Mr. Foss's 75th birthday will be celebrated after the final concert at a closing dinner.

People with headaches. People with wheezles and sneezles. People with itchy eyes, so black and blue from rubbing and scratching that they look like Rocky the Raccoon.

You don't need the Weather Channel's pollen index to tell you what's going on here, you can see it on the roof of your car every morning or across the surface of your favorite pond: a fine, grayish-yellow film that looks like dust and is, only of a kind that you can't vacuum away.

It's pollen, and it comes, for the most part, from the pitch pines. This is one of the worst springs for pitch-pine pollen, and hay fever, in a while. God bless you.

Southampton College's 22nd annual Summer Writers Conference will begin on July 7. Early registration has been advised to insure admittance to the events of one's choice.

The eight-day conference provides a forum for writers representing various genres to study and discuss their craft. The lectures feature readings by noted authors, who will comment on their own work, while the workshops involve participatory discussions with writers of fiction and nonfiction, and screenwriters.

Three Workshops

All the workshops will meet once a day, excluding the weekend and ending on July 16. Nahid Rachlin, an author who teaches creative writing at Barnard College, will teach the fiction workshop, from 12:15 p.m. to 2:25 p.m. Her works include: "Foreigner," "Married to a Stranger," and "The Hearts Desire."

Stephen O'Connor will lead the nonfiction workshop, which will meet from 2:30 p.m. to 4:40 p.m. Mr. O'Connor is the author of "Will My Name Be Shouted Out: Reaching Inner City Students Through the Power of Writing" and "The Orphan Trains: Charles Loring Brace and the Migration of America's Poorest Children."

The latter is a discussion of child welfare policy in 19th-century America.

Frank McAdams, an instructor at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema/TV, will offer a workshop in screenwriting. Mr. McAdams's credits include "California Rain," "The Stagecoach Conspiracy," and "Vietnam War Story" for HBO.

There is a $500 tuition fee for the first workshop and $300 for each additional one, plus a $15 registration fee. On-campus housing will be provided for $200, and a meal plan is being offered for $86 a week.

The lecture series, "Writers on Writing," will be offered at 8 p.m. in the college's Ocean View Lounge.

Richard Price, who wrote "The Wanderers," "Blood Brothers," and "Clockers," all novels, and the screenplays "The Color of Money," "Sea of Love," and "Ransom," will be one of the speakers.

Roger Rosenblatt, a contributing editor of Time magazine and The New Republic and the Parsons University Professor at Southampton College, will also lecture.

So will Glenn Horowitz, who owns the eponymous rare-book store in East Hampton; the author Kaylie Jones, an East Hampton High School graduate who wrote "As Soon As It Rains" and "Quite the Other Way," and Sergei Bodrov, whose "Prisoner of the Mountains" was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign film.

Tickets to the lecture series are $50 apiece; workshop participants can attend for free.

Carla Caglioti of the colleges summer programs office can give registration information.

It's party season in the Hamptons. There will be beach parties, garden parties, pool parties, dinner parties, dance parties, book parties, wedding parties, and anniversary parties, but by far the biggest parties of the season will be the benefits.

But where will the fun-loving philanthropists find themselves this summer?

In past years Dune Alpin Farm in East Hampton was the venue for two popular and very well-attended nonprofit events - Guild Hall's Taste of Summer benefit, a culinary extravaganza frequented by the younger set, and the Music Festival of the Hamptons, which was a hot ticket with the more mature crowd.

ABC Hullabaloo

But this year, following the hullabaloo over one event planned for Dune Alpin last July, the farm is off-limits for any large-scale parties. The event that sparked the ban was an ABC Home & Carpet sale, which was to have contributed $20,000 to Podell House, a shelter for teenagers in East Hampton. Millions of dollars' worth of merchandise was to be sold.

The Town of East Hampton revoked its gathering permit after local merchants complained that the sale would hurt their businesses and was more for profit than not.

The town's scrutiny of public gatherings shifted into high gear, prompting a set of written standards for reviewing permit applications. And, as the town looked closer at Dune Alpin, it discovered that highly restrictive easements placed on the property when it was subdivided more than a decade ago prohibited putting up structures there at all. Good-bye tents, good-bye parties.

Closer Review

"We're really upset to have lost the right that we always had to use those fields for community events," said Charlot Taylor, the president of the Dune Alpin Farm Property Owners Association. She recalled that the Hampton Classic Horse Show, before it moved to Bridgehampton, had been held on Dune Alpin land, with its tents, latrines, and fences, for years.

The Taste of Summer benefit and music festival were thrown into the scramble for a spot to call their own in the busy summer party season.

Competing For Venues

"In the summer it's such a competitive arena," said Linda Shapiro, an event coordinator. Around here, she said, "everything needs to be like a Broadway production. Every little thing is so important, especially the venue."

"There are 12 weeks in the season and everyone wants to have their benefit then," Ms. Shapiro said.

It appears at times that the number of parties is growing, while the causes they support are being pushed into the background.

Tracking permit applications can seem like a full-time job some days, Councilman Tom Knobel, who wrote the standards for reviewing gathering permit applications and has been in charge of the review process this year, said. Applications are so voluminous this season not only because there are more parties, but there's a greater awareness that permits are required.

"Balancing Act"

"It's a balancing act," the Councilman said of the review process, in which the town often has to determine how to categorize events. "We're asked to make a choice what is a benefit, what is a party," he said. Sometimes the lines blur.

Then, said Councilman Knobel, you have to ask, "What is the town's interest here?" The answer, he said, is to prevent activities that have a detrimental impact on neighbors, the environment, and local businesses.

Ms. Shapiro, the professional fund-raiser who applied for the permit for the ABC sale, organizes scores of other charity events, including the annual Take Off benefit for the Long Island Association for AIDS Care.

Perfect Party Spot

That's another event that, like Guild Hall's Taste of Summer, draws a younger crowd ready to dance. A must-attend for young benefit-goers, Take Off will celebrate its fifth anniversary at the East Hampton Town Airport this year.

It was the trendsetter for parties at the airport. After all, the airport has plenty of parking, few neighbors, the biggest backyard in town, and a spruced-up hangar building that can hold hundreds. Perfect spot for a party, no? Guild Hall and the Music Festival of the Hamptons think so.

With Dune Alpin a no-no, the airport seems to be one of the season's most popular locations for large-scale benefits. So much so that the town agreed this month to lift an old restriction prohibiting more than two parties a year at the airport.

Concerts At The Airport

So far Town Councilman Knobel has received four applications to hold parties at the airport and expects to get more.

The Take Off benefit will be held at the refurbished East Hampton Aire Hangar, which is leased to Ben Krupinski. The new hangar now is 10,000 square feet, and LIAAC will add a 5,000-square-foot V.I.P. tent outside.

Ms. Shapiro is also organizing a joint benefit for Podell House and the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program APPLE (A Planned Program for Life Enrichment), which will be held at the East Hampton Aire Hangar.

Joining these events are Guild Hall's Taste of Summer benefit, which has found a new home in a tent outside the East Hampton Aire hangar, and two nights of the Music Festival of the Hamptons, which will be under a tent in the no-fly zone at the airport on a Friday and a Sunday night.

Noise Concerns

"We thought about the East Hampton High School lawn, but they don't permit liquor there . . . not doable," the festival director, Eleanor Leonard, said. "We thought about the vineyards, but that wasn't possible either."

Dune Alpin, she said, "was like our home." The airport will be an adjustment.

Other music events will be held near the Hampton Classic grounds in Bridgehampton, off Snake Hollow Road. Finding these spots took a lot of time and effort.

Ms. Leonard is a little worried about the noise at the airport, something that's hardly a factor with dance-type parties like Take Off and Taste of Summer.

"When the great Lukas Foss is playing Schubert and you have a plane going overhead, it's not that great," she said. The festival, however, worked hard to find a new location this year, and she is relieved it can finally move forward.

Monumental 'Faces'

Like her artwork, Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas defies gravity. A small, commanding woman with delicate hands and a patrician manner, she could easily be taken for a watercolorist or a calligrapher. In fact, she creates monuments of steel or bronze.

Many of her works pivot on a fine point, looking as if they might topple over in the next breeze. Actually, they are stabilized by a 500-pound concrete base, a hidden pole, or some other device.

"Obelisk," a seven-foot, one-eyed profile in bronze, intently watches the sky from above the gates to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn. "Two Face Telescope," 14 feet of fabricated aluminum, was on the lawn of the Benton Gallery on County Road 39 in Southampton for about two years. It is now permanently installed at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J., an art park built by the Seward Johnson Foundation.

Intricate Infrastructure

"One Eye Wall" took first prize in Guild Hall's 1985 Artist Members Exhibit, and "Arch III," a hollowed-out lozenge, stood, 10 feet high, on the lawn there for some time.

Her models are supported by metal and wire armatures so intricate as to be admirable on their own, and later covered with a precise thickness of plaster, a process requiring their diminutive creator to climb about on ladders and scaffolding wielding large tools.

With the aid of helpers and hoists in the ceiling, Ms. Strong-Cuevas moves the models around her studio, in the woods at Stony Hill in Amagansett. She sends them to an upstate foundry in a truck that is loaded through a huge bay door at the back of the studio.

"People are shocked when they see what I do. They don't like the fact that a woman does this. But I do believe in the idea of each of us having both a masculine and a feminine side," she said.

She recalled once going to the foundry to make a special tool and hammering the molten steel herself, hundreds of times. Her shoulder was crippled the next day, but, she said, she was happy.

"I felt I was connecting to earliest man, this way-ancient past, this way-ancient method for making tools. I felt an enormous satisfaction over nature."

Unconventional Upbringing

One of two children of an unlikely marriage between John D. Rockefeller's favorite granddaughter, Margaret Strong, and and the Marquis de Cuevas, a flamboyant Chilean with an acquired title, she was born Elizabeth de Cuevas in France. She spent a good part of her childhood in fancy hotels there and in New York and Italy (her father ran a famous ballet company), and many adult years sorting out the financial conflicts stemming from her mother's second marriage, to a young proteg‚ of her first husband.

She describes her upbringing as "Victorian, in the sense that we were all over Europe, and I was alone a lot with my brother, in gardens, in Florence for a while, where there is all this beautiful sculpture."

Her parents were "marvelously theatrical. They left me very free and able to think for myself."

The Human Face

Such an unconventional upbringing, she remarked, nurtured grand ambitions. It followed that she would make a career of creating large things.

"I like to be awed, as at the Pyramids in Egypt. It gives me joy and peace. And I like things to be magical, mythological. If something is your size, then it's just another human being."

Though all her works are of the same seemingly mundane subject, the human face, they possess no Rodinesque wrinkles, no open-mouthed agony, no sign of human fallibility. Strong-Cuevas, as she signs her work, creates powerful icons that gaze outward and upward, as if transmitting thoughts to and from the gods.

At the same time, heavy eyelids, thick lips, and the juxtaposition of profiles in negative silhouette against positive, lend an inward, contemplative attitude. One is reminded too of Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, and Easter Island, built by primitives as monuments to the cosmos and to their own earthly icons, the priests and astrologers.

Mentor

"I love echoes of the past. I've often thought I was a link, but a link between what and what, I've never been sure," said Ms. Strong-Cuevas. She wondered out loud if, from her Chilean father, she might have inherited Mayan blood, and distilled it into her art.

At about 30, she studied at the Art Students League under John Hovannes, an Armenian refugee who liked to speak in parables. Like her mother, she said, Mr. Hovannes "never allowed me to be too pleased with myself. They kept me on a tightrope. So I had these two teachers who kept me on the straight and narrow."

Finding him "a marvelous inspiration," however, she studied with him for four years and worked another four in his studio, "a black space on 33rd Street."

Exacting Teachers

He ordered her to carve stone, "and it scared me to death." A head seemed to her the best subject for a block of stone. She tried a torso once, but cut off its head when the two didn't feel as if they belonged together.

"So I worked with the face, and I was urged on by this man who wanted me to search, search, search - not to do what I already knew." Hovannes died in 1973, and Ms. Strong-Cuevas went adrift for a year.

In about 1975, she began working with Toto Meylan, a Swiss jewelry and watchmaker. They spent five years working in her studio, a dilapidated old schoolhouse on East 28th Street. He did the metal work, building the armatures.

Like her mother and Mr. Hovannes before him, Mr. Meylan was exacting - a friend has said Ms. Strong-Cuevas "went through the Marines with him" - but again she found a generous spirit.

The Watchmaker

"Meylan, who had never before worked on anything so big, was fascinated . . . . There are people who won't work on other people's ideas, but he worked like an angel with me."

She refused to let him weld inside her old firetrap of a studio, so they made holes in metal slats, bent them, and held them together with screws.

"As a child, I said to myself that I knew I was good with my fingers, and felt I could make a watch. And many years later I met the watchmaker."

Twelve years ago, Ms. Strong-Cuevas gave up the firetrap and moved full time to Stony Hill, where she had spent the previous 23 summers.

Mr. Meylan died this year, having claimed to be 55 years old for about 25 years. One of his armatures is now preserved, unplastered, in a corner of her Amagansett studio.

"Most armatures are pretty crude, but Meylan's showed the skill of a jeweler in art," said Ms. Strong-Cuevas.

With him, she did a series of five heads, each about a foot high. They were eventually built to be five feet tall, cast in stainless steel. Each has a hollow, skull-like helmet, with a profile on an axis - chin, mouth, nose, and one eye - suspended in the opening.

She once spent an entire summer polishing them.

"Head II" has two profiles that swing on hooks like bell clappers, their weight keeping them swinging for 10 minutes per push. "Head IV" has an opening behind the bridge of the nose; she made it in plaster, not knowing that in stainless steel it would draw light inside the head.

Similarly, she did not realize until after they were cast and assembled that the heads are also soundboxes that amplify her voice into a solemn boom.

Side By Side

"Small, they looked grotesque, but I knew if the heads were bigger they would come into their own," she said, adding sadly that only one of the series was ever bought.

The late Evan Frankel, who once owned a good part of Stony Hill, commissioned "Head V," whose profile swivels to show its eye open on one side and closed on the other. It stood for years in his 11-acre garden on Hither Lane, East Hampton. When he died, he willed it back to its creator.

"I imagine them all together in a sort of temple, with no artificial light," she said. "Just the reflection off the stainless steel. They belong together."

They are, for now, side by side in her studio, where she has a gallery of sorts for a few visitors.

Tabletop Models

Exhausted after completing the five heads, Ms. Strong-Cuevas went to work in 1980 on variations on a theme. Some are tabletop models of pieces she hopes someday to make larger, others are giant slabs with profiles in silhouette, a couple are arches big enough to drive a car through.

"Four Faces Mobile" comprises four profiles in the negative and positive and a lens in the middle that suggests a gong or a giant eye. Ten feet high, 11 feet wide, weighing about 800 pounds, it stands inexplicably yet sturdily on a narrow aluminum frame, defying gravity.

To a visitor it suggests a Buddhist temple, with giant monks in attendance. To its creator, it represents thought travel, communication, a lens offering a look at the heavens.

Almost nobody will be aware of it, but on Monday just before 8 p.m. official timekeepers all over the world will stop their clocks in order to add an extra second, a leap second, to the calendar.

The added moment will keep clocks in sync with the Earth's rate of rotation, which varies by a microfraction each day and needs to be nudged back to Ground Zero, so to speak, every little once in a while. Or, as the United States Commerce Department explains it, "Since we can't speed up the Earth, we have to slow down the clocks."

If, however, you happen to be in charge of an electric power grid, a computer network or other communications system, navigation equipment, or a similar scientific device, you had better be prepared to make a pretty crucial adjustment.

What they say is true, for some people, a whole lot more than for others. Every little second counts.

North Haven voters spoke last week, putting two women on the Village Board who are not opposed to hunting as a method of deer control. Nevertheless, exactly what the outcome will be of the village's most pressing issue remains to be seen.

Patricia Frankemoll‚, the only member of the North Haven Village Board who voted against authorizing a deer hunt last year, lost her seat, finishing third in a four-way race. Ms. Frankemoll‚ ran well behind the top two candidates.

Each of the front-runners, Katherine Miller and Laura Nolan, is a moderate, in favor of culling the herd - as was done last year over the vocal objections of what would now appear to have been a minority - but also willing to listen to arguments for the alternative, a temporary form of sterilization, as a possible future solution.

In carefully controlled hunts in 1996, some 250 deer out of an estimated 600 were killed. The outgoing board had given the animals that survived another year's grace, deciding last winter not to allow another hunt for at least two years. Is it possible that what is left of the herd will not cause enough damage in that time to warrant hunting so soon again?

Anything can happen in a year. Meanwhile, let's hope North Haven's new board, undistracted by activists or the media, can turn its attention to the village's other topic of hot debate: how much of the trail on the Stock Farm Preserve to open to the public. It's time that question was resolved.

East Hampton Village took a big step this week toward alleviating its summer traffic crush, one that ought to catch on like a bonfire.

The village has arranged for a small shuttle bus to make continuous rounds of the shopping district from dawn to dusk (well, 7 to 7) daily. The service will start on Tuesday and continue through Labor Day. There will be no charge to ride, and, because the route will be relatively short, the wait between buses should be too: no more than 15 or 20 minutes. That is less time than it often takes to find a parking place closer to the shops, and surely far less bother.

The underutilized Lumber Lane parking lot will probably be where most riders get on. From there, the bus will stop at several points along Newtown Lane and Main Street, all the way to the flagpole at Dunemere Lane, where it will turn around and head to the Post Office before returning back to Lumber Lane. (The route is described in a story in this issue.)

The Village Board clearly took the needs of both year-rounders and visitors into consideration when voting for the shuttle. The Post Office stop in particular ought to draw riders to the shuttle, leaving that many fewer cars to fight the snarl on Gay Lane.

It was wise, also, to start the run on a small scale, giving thought to the kind of transportation most suitable for the village, as well as the kind riders would find most congenial. A full-sized bus, though it could hold more passengers, would have been far less appropriate than the 25-seater that was chosen, certainly as a first step.

If the shuttle catches on, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. indicated this week that it might be pressed into service for a few major fund-raisers that run into the evening hours, such as the barbecue and square dance that follows the Ladies Village Improvement Society Fair in late July.

The whole idea is to make village life as comfortable as possible for as many people as possible, and to make certain that the business district doesn't choke on its own success.

The shuttle is a positive signal that the Village Board is trying.

This is the ninth article in a series examining various aspects of real estate on the South Fork.

Ask five insiders what's happening with the South Fork's commercial real estate market these days and four of them will start off by recalling last year's sale of the former Whitman Gallery building on East Hampton's Main Street. For many, that sale seems to typify the current situation.

The gallery's owners, the heirs of the late Grace V. Rose, were one of the few local families who emerged from the boom years of the 1980s still holding the deeds to commercial properties acquired by their parents or grandparents.

And, like others, they waited until the market began to show dependable recovery, sometime around 1993, and then waited a little longer, before putting the word out that they would sell for the right price.

Investors Compete

Talk is they quietly approached three or four players with capital. A small bidding war ensued and David Fink and Carl Levine prevailed, paying $1.24 million. It was 67 times the late Mrs. Rose's original $18,500 investment, made in 1960.

The new owners are part of a highly competitive group of investors, perhaps a half-dozen, who are quietly gaining control of the commercial market. Zoning limitations and inflation are tilting the supply-and-demand curve in favor of Robert Ratteni, Leonard I. Ackerman, Ben Krupinski, Mr. Fink, and one or two others with capital enough to pay UpIsland prices and patience enough to take the long view.

"Most of what is for sale is very quietly for sale. No signs out front. That's how much of the commercial business is done here," said Judy Desiderio of Cook Pony Farm, one of just a few South Fork brokers who specialize in retail, light industrial, and office spaces.

Quiet Sellers

Most of the time she waits in the car while prospective buyers take a first look around, because, she said, sellers do not want customers to recognize her and surmise the place is on the market.

"An owner-operator, especially, doesn't want to disturb things, doesn't want the word to get out, unless his price is met," she said.

Indeed, owners of commercial property who want to sell rarely go public unless they're desperate.

Duke's, later the Aqua Grill, was a highly successful Tex-Mex restaurant for eight years before it was sold to its current owners, for $793,000. After they spent a fistful transforming the rough-and-tumble barn into a Tuscan villa that shimmied right up to the highway, the restaurant struggled for two seasons.

It is now one of just two or three businesses in town with a For Sale sign out front.

No Takers

The asking price is $1.8 million, a bit ambitious even in today's market. The pitch: high visibility, seats 200, plenty of parking, two cottages for staff housing, barely used equipment, truly a turnkey operation.

It shows well, but so far no takers. It seems that just as the presence of a broker could cast a chill on a thriving business, a shortage of customers is sure to throw a property into the deep freeze.

But by all accounts the commercial market is performing well for a chosen few. The major players are, as Ms. Desiderio put it, "repeat customers who are all in the acquisition phase," paying purchase prices and charging rents that are growing comparable to those in year-round communities.

New Players

"A shopping center in the middle of the Island may get a greater short-term rate of return, 18 percent on a cash-on-cash return instead of 10 percent here, but here we have enormous returns over the long haul. As a result, there are these new players in town who view our commercial properties as an untapped resource, if you can wait 20 years or more," said Ms. Desiderio.

Mr. Ratteni specializes in Main Street acquisitions, buying buildings such as the one in East Hampton that rents to the Coach leather store and the Bridgehampton one that includes the Golden Pear.

"I'm willing to forsake a little income now for a good return when the mortgage is paid off," he said. "It's a steady, long-term investment. Considerable outlay, minimal profit potential at first. Breakeven or less for two to five years, but 20 years from now your daughter will be interviewing my son about why he's selling."

Zoning's Role

Zoning that values residential property as least likely to damage the environment has deliberately limited the size of commercial and business districts, thereby pushing up prices and rents.

Town Assessors' records confirm the limited growth. For example, they show 70 motels, hotels, inns, and resort complexes in the town and village in 1994 and 73 this year.

"Through zoning, government has cut off the supply. They couldn't do more to increase the value, so we should be giving them a big thank-you," said Mr. Fink.

The downside is that the demand for tax-funded services is growing in proportion to the population, most notably in the public schools, and the commercial tax base here is not keeping pace.

"There's been no growth in Springs, and very little in Amagansett in the last few years," said Town Assessor Fred Overton.

Wainscott Upzoning

Town Councilwoman Nancy Mc Caffrey recently opposed the upzoning of hundreds of commercially zoned acres in Wainscott, saying more residential development there would mean more children enrolling in the one-room schoolhouse, where she is also District Clerk.

The upzoning to residential use was put on indefinite hold, pending an impact study, after opponents charged it would kneecap the business community's chances for future growth. And, the idea of swapping the rights to commercial-industrial development with properties elsewhere in town is gaining momentum, added Assessor Jeanne Nielsen.

Upzonings anywhere would, some noted, also have the unintended but obvious benefit for the investors of further limiting the supply and increasing the value of what remained.

Investor Confident

Mr. Fink, a Manhattan lawyer who said he rounds out his portfolio with commercial properties in the city and on Main Street in East Hampton, predicted there will be a growing and constant demand for rental space, due to a combination of zoning and economic inflation.

"Every time I feel as though we've hit a ceiling, we punch through to a whole new level," agreed Ms. Desiderio. "The market across the country shows East Hampton is not just the cream. It's the cream of the cream."

But, borrowing a phrase from Alan Greenspan, Mr. Fink cautioned that brokers and players ought not become too optimistic, in a replay of the "irrational exuberance" of the early 1980s.

Whitman Building

"Prices are peaking and, if history is a guide, then we'll see prices coming down again," he said. He now charges rents of about $60 a square foot for street-level retail and $15 a square foot for office space on the second floor.

From his perspective, the Whitman building was a bargain at roughly $280 a square foot.

East Hampton's former Village Hall, he said, had sold not too long before for a price approaching $500 a square foot.

"We bought [the Whitman building] because it was very cheap," he said, adding that "the real land barons are the old families who have owned certain properties for 30 years or more."

Downtown Montauk

As for vacant commercial land, the prevailing opinion is that there isn't enough.

Frank Tuma was named by three other Montauk brokers as the hamlet's expert on the commercial market there, and he said zoning made it tough these days to build anything viable. There are two or three tiny lots for sale downtown near the Montauk Post Office, each about 40 by 100 feet, but "it's been hard to get anyone to look at them."

The same is true at the docks, where Mr. Tuma said he last saw activity about two years ago when he sold one for $150,000 and the other for $85,000. Both are back on the market, still undeveloped, for $125,000 and $150,000 respectively.

Standing Room Only

The developed business districts in Montauk are all rented, as elsewhere in the area. "Four or five years ago there were many, many empties, but now it's standing room only. The season is gradually stretching out, April through Thanksgiving, and this is becoming more and more a year-round community," said Peter Hallock, president of Allen M. Schneider Real Estate.

While there is an obvious demand for commercial-industrial land, to build a carpenter's workshop, for example, "there's no zoning for it in the land that's remaining," said Mr. Tuma. As a result, he said, landscapers and carpenters are forced to operate illegally out of their garages at home.

Most of the vacant commercial land on the South Fork is in Southampton, with a little on the tracks in Wainscott. "But even that is not really available. It's tough to pry it loose from the owners," said Judy Desiderio.

Can't Be Done

Take the case of the Talmage family, who argued passionately against the Wainscott upzoning. They said they bought their 5.8-acre parcel on the tracks as a place to expand their construction company.

Steve Mahoney sold a one-acre parcel near there, with a work building and an office, to Delfino Insulation for about $400,000. The Talmage land is worth far more as commercial-industrial; considerably less, especially given the unattractive location, as a house lot or two.

"Our zoning is laid into place in such a way that commercial opportunities are few and far between," said Mr. Hallock. "The questions we get the most of, every season and even year-round, and always from someone who doesn't understand the Hamptons, is, 'Where can I build a hotel?' and, 'I found this lovely building. Can I turn it into a restaurant?' I have to tell them it can't be done."

Mom And Pop

Mr. Tuma likewise reported from Montauk "a big demand and very little supply," a situation that has pushed that hamlet's retail rental prices to over $20 a square foot.

Mr. Hallock said the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Southampton was maximizing the limited space available there by taking over two adjacent units for an expanded men's department and using its existing store to expand the women's.

It's not news, only more and more true as each season passes, that the prevailing rents are beyond the means of the mom-and-pop stores that used to line South Fork Main Streets. Only specialized boutiques and major outlets can afford the rents now, and the locals are shopping in the Tanger Mall.

"There's no turning that clock back, because when someone buys a building and pays between $800,000 and $1.4 mil, they have to cover that. They can't rent to mom and pop," said Mr. Hallock.

Weekenders' Island

North Haven, with its waterfront bluffs, creek inlets, private communities, and, yes, even its deer, is a popular choice for home and land buyers, according to realtors.

"North Haven is proving to be an exciting place," said Simon Harrison of Harbor Cove Realty in Sag Harbor. "It has the dynamics of an island, with spectacular summer houses on the edge and smaller houses in the middle."

The community's well-established neighborhoods, dearth of commercial zoning, and primarily two-acre zoning are also positive aspects for prospective residents, Mr. Harrison said.

Waterfront property in the village, including its two newest subdivisions, West Banks and North Haven Point, has been snatched up, with "maybe seven pieces remaining," said Alfredo Merat, a broker at Overseas Connection in Sag Harbor.

In The Millions

The prime locations do not come cheap, however. List prices for waterfront houses top out at $8.9 million for a 16,000-square-foot "contemporary stone manor" on 6.5 acres in West Banks. A house that needs sprucing up but has 142 feet of bay frontage goes for $850,000. One of the cheapest waterfront listings is a four-bedroom older ranch home on a half-acre, for $350,000.

According to David Bray, the principal managing director of Allan M. Schneider Associates, houses in the "high one million to two-million plus are the norm."

Particularly in the Fresh Pond area, said Mr. Merat, buyers have been tearing down small two-bedroom cottages and replacing them with larger houses.

"Smaller, less expensive houses are harder to find," said Jane Holden, a broker at Sotheby's in Sag Harbor. Those houses, too, are popular, she said, as homeowners in the private communities are entitled to beach and dock rights.

Out Of Towners

"Most of our market is generated from out of town," said Mr. Bray. Some local residents seeking to "upgrade" look to North Haven, Ms. Holden said. Clients seeking proximity to Sag Harbor and a central location also find it a viable choice.

Many North Haven buyers are "doing the weekend bit," Mr. Bray said, while planning for a future full-time move to the South Fork.

Though the realtors agreed that the problem of the village's oversized deer herd, ticks, and the danger of Lyme disease did not deter potential buyers, Ms. Holden said she knew of a few "deer-friendly" residents, unhappy with the sanctioned deer hunt, who had put their houses up for sale.

Bridge Worries

Also, she said, "a lot of people are worried about the bridge, and about increasing back-roads traffic."

The New York State Department of Transportation plans to replace the bridge over Route 114 linking the village and Sag Harbor. Construction may mean it will have to be closed for a time, and could result in a wider bridge that can accommodate increased truck and automobile traffic.

As for summer rentals, brokers agreed that the market, termed "moderate" by Mr. Bray, was similar to that of other towns. Some renters, said Mr. Harrison, will rent only if they "get their price."

Allan M. Schneider's priciest summer rental lists for $250,000, though summer rentals in the lower ranges are available as well.