A $53 Million Sale Just Under The Wire

Slipping in just before the new year, two adjacent properties totaling almost 6.5 acres on Gin Lane in Southampton were purchased by an unknown buyer for $53 million. The buyer reportedly plans to combine them to create one considerable estate.

The lots had been part of the Wooldon Manor estate, which once spanned about 14 acres. The property has had a line of notable people who lived there, including members of the Woolworth family and Edmund Lynch, a founding partner of Merrill Lynch.

In December 2013, hedge fund CEO Scott Bommer purchased Wooldon Manor from Vince Camuto, the shoe designer, for $75 million. Not long thereafter, Mr. Bommer subdivided the property and sold it in two transactions for more than $80 million.

One of these sales included a 10,000-square-foot Tudor-style home, which sold, with an adjoining lot, to a New York family for $50 million in July 2014. The other sale featured three lots that sold to local developer Jay Bialsky for more than $30 million, according to Harald Grant, an associate broker at Sotheby’s International Realty in Southampton.

Last week’s transactions involved 24 and 28 Gin Lane and were overseen by Mr. Grant. Mr. Bialsky sold the former, a 2.7-acre vacant lot that backs up to Gin Lane, for $13 million earlier this year. It had been listed for $16.25 million.

Meanwhile, with 3.7 acres, 28 Gin Lane is oceanfront and features two Tudor-style homes that will likely be torn down. It sold for $40 million to the same unknown buyer. The property, which had been in William G. McKnight’s family since the 1950s, was listed in August 2014 for $50 million.

Mr. McKnight told the Wall Street Journal that the houses on his property had been built as the Wooldon carriage house and caretaker’s cottage for the estate around 1900. The structures have been altered over the years and are therefore not considered historically significant, he said.