Leases Renewed at Sea Spray Cottage

    The 13 Sea Spray Cottages at Main Beach will remain in the hands of their current tenants for the 2013 season, rather than having their leases auctioned as they were in 2010.

    The East Hampton Village Board held a live auction that year for 3-year leases on the cottages, which are owned by the village, and prices paid were “very competitive,” said Larry Cantwell, the village administrator. All tenants have remained for the duration of their leases, so “the board has negotiated renewal leases with an increase in rent every year,” he said. Rather than holding another auction, “the board’s feeling is that the first auction set the market for those prices. The tenants are all paying their bills, so the board felt they should hang on to them and increase rents every year,” Mr. Cantwell said.

    The cottages are a source of substantial revenue for the village — a total of $932,093 will be collected in 2013, with an increase of 3 percent set for both 2014 and 2015. Rental rates this year range from $34,067 to $108,150.

    Nearly all of the cottages suffered roof damage between Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent northeaster, Drew Bennett, a consulting engineer working on behalf of the village, told the board at its Jan. 3 work session. Mr. Bennett advised the board that it would have to consider reroofing the buildings and suggested a piecemeal approach.

    The brick chimneys featured on some of the cottages have weathered substantially above the roofline, Mr. Bennett said, and their caps were damaged by the hurricane.

    “We are going to get prices on doing two of the roofs,” Mr. Cantwell said Monday. “There was some damage to the roofs, to shingles of all the cottages,” which he described as fairly minor. “We’re doing bids to redo roofs on two cottages, and the plan would be to do them all, a couple at a time, rather than a shingle here and a shingle there.”