At the end of September, Jeremy Morton, the real estate developer behind the purchase and sale of many commercial properties across the South Fork in the last few years, dodged when asked if he was purchasing two of Sag Harbor Village’s most visible properties: 2 Main Street and 22 Long Island Avenue.
“Even if I was involved in the properties,” he said in late September, “I’m not in a position to comment. I’m quite active in the Hamptons. If you know about something, that’s not good for me.”
Now Mr. Morton has stepped out of the shadows via a letter to the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board in which he described himself as the “principle of the contract vendee” for the two properties. The letter, discussed at a board meeting on Tuesday, introduced the plans for the two properties in only the most basic way. They include additional second-story space and new facades for both buildings.
The board scheduled a more extensive “pre-submission public hearing” for Nov. 26, the week of Thanksgiving.
At 22 Long Island Avenue, colloquially known as the 7-Eleven building for one of its former longtime tenants, “We will be keeping the height of the building the same as it is, simply adding the remainder of the square footage on the top level to the existing second-story office space,” Mr. Morton wrote.
For the U-shape building at 2 Main Street — known for many years as Fort Apache and currently occupied by the restaurant K-Pasa, Espresso da Asporto, Yummilicious, and a UPS Store — changes would be more extensive. The empty part of the U will be filled in “with new structure” and an additional 4,600 square feet would be added to the second floor. The “steep vertical mansard roof” would be adjusted.
The two properties are listed for sale separately, but “we kind of intended for them to go together,” Hal Zwick, a commercial real estate agent with Compass, said in September. The larger of the two, the 7-Eleven building, was last listed for $25 million. It was purchased in October 2020 by the nonprofit Friends of the Bay Street Theater, controlled by the developer Adam Potter, for just under $13.1 million. Number 2 Main Street last sold in 2021 for $18 million to 2 Main L.L.C., of which Mr. Potter is an investor, and is listed at $9.45 million.
Just three years ago, Mr. Morton purchased Rick’s Crabby Cowboy and Ruschmeyer’s, both in Montauk, for about $30 million combined. He said in late September that he is no longer involved with either business.
Mr. Morton also bought the old Cyril’s Fish House on the Napeague stretch, renovated it, reopened it as Morty’s Oyster Stand, and then sold it. And in Water Mill, he purchased the Mill shopping complex and was a partner in the now-shuttered Provisions there. He was also behind a redevelopment at a Hill Street property in Southampton that is now home to the Barryville General Store.
Tora Matsuoka, a co-owner of Tip Top Hospitality, which operates K-Pasa, the restaurant eatery at 2 Main, said in a text that he plans to stay in the space and work with the new owner. “We still have many years left on our lease, with an extension. The hope is we can expand, but let’s see what the bigger plans look like.”
“These buildings are a focal point of the village, and we are very excited to create a new look . . . that takes into account the historical beauty of the Sag Harbor downtown,” Mr. Morton wrote to the board.
During the planning board meeting Tuesday, Kathryn Eiseman of Nelson Pope Voorhis, engineering consultants to the village, also noted some additional steps for the project. It will require a full environmental assessment form, she said, and “the sooner that gets in, the sooner we can move forward with SEQR” (State Environmental Quality Review).
Additionally, Ms. Eiseman said that the properties are in the waterfront overlay district, which “has a whole set of additional standards.”
“We’ll be watching [the project] with great interest through the regulatory process,” Bob Weinstein, a co-director of Save Sag Harbor, said by phone Tuesday night.