Amagansett Is Still Serene
As part of The Star's ongoing series on real estate, each week will include a brief look at the market in a particular hamlet. Amagansett is in the spotlight this week.
"People are pouring millions of dollars into Amagansett," Peter Hallock, the president of Allan M. Schneider Associates, a prominent East End real estate agency, reported this week.
Nonetheless - and maybe this is why - the hamlet still retains that je ne sais quoi that used to mean "Hamptons," before sprawl, farmland development, and that hectic city feeling began afflicting communities just west.
"There are more shrinks per square foot in Amagansett than anywhere in the Hamptons," said Robin Kaplan, a manager at East Hampton's Tina Fredericks agency. "There's so much water, it's very serene."
Serenity has its price. Brokers say there is very little prime land left in the hamlet, particularly south of Montauk Highway, and no one in the business seemed fazed by the $675,000 price tag on a buildable Bluff Road acre, complete with ocean view, that recently came on the market.
Line In The Sand
Demand is "pushing east," said Mr. Hallock. Indeed, development in Amagansett's dunes has reached the final frontier - Shipwreck Drive, which borders the fragile ocean dunes preserve that makes up Napeague State Park.
Approximately 36 percent of Amagansett's 2,370 acres, which include Napeague, is preserved open space, a notch above the town's 32 percent, according to Lisa Liquori, the planning director.
From Atlantic Avenue east to Shipwreck, whatever parcels remain run from $200,000 up. The "next wave," according to Arlene Reckson, a Schneider broker, will be "rehabs and teardowns" of older, smaller cottages - something already happening in a big way on the little streets off Bluff Road.
North Of Highway
Privacy, lush land, and rolling hills still can be had north of the highway -in a 12-lot development near Fresh Pond, in Hawk's Nest, and in the Bell Estate, where brokers say lots priced from $600,000 to $1.2 million are "trading briskly."
"There's something for everyone in Amagansett," said Kevin Conboy, the manager of Schneider's office there, which opened five years ago. Some of the hamlet is still "undiscovered," he said, pointing out that properties on "the lanes" offer proximity to ocean, village, and Hampton Jitney at half the cost of similar convenience in East Hampton Village.
The rest stop the Montauketts named Amagansett, or "place of good watering," for its underground springs, seems still to hold true to its name - especially for those who love New York City, but find it difficult to be there full time.