Brown Harris Stevens reopened its original Sag Harbor Village location last week, more than two years after the Main Street real estate office was decimated in the same fire that destroyed the Sag Harbor Cinema.
After the December 2016 fire, the staff temporarily relocated from 96 Main Street, which is next door to the cinema site, to 133 Main Street.
“Now after all this time, we’re excited to be back to our old original office—all completely rebuilt—and we’re proud to announce we have taken the second floor, so we have the entire building,” said Robert M. Nelson, Brown Harris Stevens’s senior managing director for the Hamptons.
The second floor was an apartment before the fire. With the additional space, Brown Harris Stevens has added a lounge area and two conference rooms.
“It’s more of like a forward-thinking office, instead of like a law firm,” Mr. Nelson said this week. “It’s more inviting.”
In the fire, agents and other staff members did not just lose an office, but files, histories, photographs and personal effects.
“There were things that were very dear to certain agents,” Mr. Nelson said, explaining that some employees had worked in that office for decades throughout the mergers and acquisitions of various real estate brokerages before Brown Harris Stevens came in.
Among the personal things lost: “A candy dish that was always available on their desk for clients and other agents and passersby to come in and have a candy.”
The office staff includes 24 agents and two others. Mr. Nelson said the store owners on the block are also excited to see that the office is open again after the area had been “dead” for some time.
Now all that’s missing is the reopening of the cinema in its new incarnation, the nonprofit Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center. That could happen as soon as this fall, depending on the pace of fundraising and construction.
“Then we’ll have a full vibrant sidewalk again,” Mr. Nelson said.