Andy Cohen Joins Effort to Save Sag Harbor Cinema

Fund-raising momentum is building for the purchase of the Sag Harbor Cinema property. Last week, boldface names such as Billy Joel, who owns a house just a few blocks away, Martin Scorsese, an occasional visitor to the area, and Harvey Weinstein, who owns a house in East Hampton, were revealed to have joined the campaign. This week, Andy Cohen, who has a house on Noyac Bay, announced his support as well.

“Seeing a film at the Sag Harbor Cinema was truly special, as it made you feel like you were a part of the community,” Mr. Cohen, a TV talk show host and producer who has been coming to Sag Harbor and the East End for more than two decades, said by email on Monday. 

He said he felt a real sense of loss when he saw the site for the first time after the December fire that destroyed the cinema. “It’s devastating to see a hole” in that space, he said, adding that he always thought of the theater as an iconic landmark. “It welcomed you to the village. When you saw it, you knew you were home. You couldn’t miss that big red sign that brightened Main Street!”

The Sag Harbor Partnership, a community group that has inked an $8 million deal with the current owner, Gerry Mallow, to purchase the property, announced this week it will erect a 42-foot wall at the site. It will honor first responders and include a request for help in rebuilding the theater. The wall will incorporate some renderings of the structure’s new design by NK Architects and Croxton Collaborative Architects.

The partnership will also name the cinema’s popcorn stand after Mr. Joel in honor of his donation. While it would not reveal how much Mr. Joel had contributed, a $500,000 donation was listed as a naming opportunity for the popcorn stand on the partnership’s website.

“He knows exactly how much the sign and the cinema mean to all of Main Street,” Nick Gazzolo, the president of the partnership, said. “It’s so encouraging that he answered the call to help restore this landmark with such a generous gift. So many of his songs show his understanding of how much specific places mean to people, and we are so grateful that he agrees the Sag Harbor Cinema is a special place worth fighting for.”

In the days after the fire, Mr. Joel paid tribute to the cinema during a concert at Madison Square Garden, playing Ennio Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso” on the piano.

The partnership has to raise the money to purchase the property and has until the end of the year to close the deal. The group needs about 75 percent, or $6 million, in donations and pledges by July 1. When it announced that it had reached an agreement with Mr. Mallow in April, it already had $1 million from an anonymous donor. So far, $2.25 million has been raised.

Plans include rebuilding the facade, repairing the Art Deco neon sign, and rebuilding and repurposing some of the space. The group wants to establish a Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center, a not-for-profit that would expand on the cinema’s tradition of art house film programming with educational initiatives for school-age children and residents. The partnership’s April Gornik, an artist and activist who lives on North Haven, said estimates for the construction project are $4 million to $5 million at a minimum.

Preliminary plans include creating two theaters and a private screening room, all with state-of-the-art equipment and a new sound system. The theaters are to feature projection ratios “that will allow film to be shown as it was intended, and give the house the ability to show digital, 35-millimeter, and even 16-millimeter with astonishing resolution, so that the viewer experience will be as the filmmakers had intended,” the partnership said in a press release. “This will be a plus that few other art houses anywhere offer, and will make the emphasis on offering film history as well as contemporary movie-making a reality.”

“For as long as I can remember, the Sag Harbor Cinema has stood as a beacon of culture on Long Island,” Mr. Scorsese said in the release. “On the evening it was destroyed, the cinema was showing two European films, neither of which were considered blockbuster hits, but that wasn’t the point. This theater was about art, and the ability for film to inspire people to persevere in the face of adversity. I hope people from all over the East End will join in this fight to save Sag Harbor’s center of culture.”

An advisory board is developing the plan for the cinema. Members include the Oscar-winning actress, singer, and author Dame Julie Andrews, Anne Chaisson, the executive director of the Hamptons International Film Festival, and Andrea Grover, executive director of Guild Hall. Other community members who are contributing to the effort are Elizabeth Dow, John Battle, and the Topping Rose House. A Party for the Cinema will take place on July 16 on Long Wharf with food, drink, and an auction of art provided by local businesses.

“Not everything can be replaced,” Mr. Cohen said, “but I do have faith . . . we can rebuild and also maintain the authenticity and charm that is Sag Harbor.”

All donations are tax-deductible and can be made online through sagharborcinema.org. If the campaign goal is not reached by the end of the year, all pledges will be canceled and all donations refunded.

With Reporting by Jennifer Landes