Beechwood Building Two New Housing Developments In Westhampton Beach

Developer Michael Dubb’s Beechwood Organization is bringing two new projects to Westhampton Beach, a village where he’s had a home for 25 years but hadn’t built in before.

On Depot Road, at the site of the former Wholistic Tennis Academy, Beechwood will build 22 single-family homes with sales prices in the range of $2.2 million to $4.6 million. The second project includes four homesites on Moriches Bay.

Dubb said during a recent interview that he played at Wholistic Tennis often and was friendly with owner Happy Bhalla, who told him he didn’t want the responsibility of the day-to-day operations of the tennis facility anymore and was ready to sell the property. That got Dubb interested in developing the land.

Dubb originally applied to build 78 townhomes on the 13.5-acre site, based on the same zoning that Patio Villas to the south and a Timber Ridge development to the north have.

“I thought it would be a nice townhome site,” he said. “However, the village, I think, felt there were enough townhomes, and they requested that I put in for single-family homes as per the current zoning, which was one house every half acre.”

The tennis club buildings have been demolished, and clearing is about to begin, Dubb said. Three model homes are planned. “We’ll probably build a few homes on spec also for people who want to have quick closings,” he added.

The three models are named Commodore, Beacon and Atlantic.

“Although we’re starting with three basic floor plans, every floor plan has several different exterior facades so that no two houses would ever look alike, and we also are going to do some other models down the road to augment that,” Dubb said.

The community, which will be known as Country Pointe Estates, is located between Depot Road and Old Riverhead Road, and accessed by Depot Road only, though there will be a crash gate at Old Riverhead Road in case of an emergency. The development’s new streets — both cul-de-sacs — will be named Happy Lane and Margareta Lane, after Bhalla and his wife.

The waterfront development is named Oneck Landing, and it is on the 4.5-acre site that was, up until a few years ago, host to a 12,000-square-foot masonry residence with a red terracotta roof that was a landmark for boaters on Moriches Bay. Formerly known as the Oneck Estate, the site was low-lying and subject to frequent flooding. It was sold for $6.5 million in 2018 and the residence was demolished.

“The house was 60 or 70 years old, and it was built at an elevation that you just don’t build houses out anymore,” Dubb said. “In other words, it was built so that the first-floor elevation was 3 feet above sea level. And now — with the flood zones that didn’t exist when that house was built — in that area, first-floor elevation is required to be 11 feet.”

Beechwood will bring in fill to raise the entire site so the land will be 6 to 7 feet above sea level and the first floor will meet the 11-foot requirement, Dubb said.

Elevating building sites is nothing new for Dubb and Beechwood. He noted that when Beechwood built the 2,000-unit Arverne By The Sea development in the Rockaways, half a million yards of fill were bought in, making it the highest point in the Rockaways. “So when [Superstorm] Sandy hit, although the Rockaways was underwater, our site was not underwater.”

Dubb said he has sold one of the four Oneck home sites to a friend he plays tennis with, who will build his own home, and another site, where Beechwood will build a home, sold for $4.6 million.

One waterfront site and one waterview site remain for sale. Beechwood is currently building a 6,500-square-foot spec home on the waterview site, and a 7,500-square-foot home is planned for the waterfront site with an expected price tag of $12 million.

“There really is limited new construction in Westhampton Beach, unless it’s a house that somebody’s knocked down,” Dubb observed. “And if you talk to the brokers like we have, they will tell you supply is at all-time lows. So everybody seems very happy that there will be some new inventory coming to market.”

Based on inquiries to Beechwood’s website and office, he said he expects demand is going to be great. “We don’t have the same hysteria we had when the pandemic was in full force, but I think there are people who still want to know if something comes up they have a place out of the city to go to in a more rural area,” he said.

It will take longer than usual before the residences are complete.

“The time frame is ever expanding due to supply chain issues,” Dubb said. “So where we used to try and compress the schedule into about a year, now it’s stretched out to between 16 and 18 months.”

Kitchen cabinets, windows and appliances lead the pack in terms of delays, according to Dubb, followed by engineered lumber, such as trusses.

“The factories that make the trusses are backed up months and months, and that’s just been due to demand and, you know, lack of labor and then trucking issues on top of it,” he said.

Inflation is also affecting the industry, with the costs being passed on to home purchasers.

“We have been fortunate enough, up till now, to build the cost into the home, and the market — meaning what people are willing to pay — has absorbed it,” Dubb said. “I don’t know how much longer that will go on for. … The thing that a lot of buyers don’t understand: They see me raising prices, and they think I’m making more money. Actually, as I’m raising the prices, I’m trying to keep up with my increased costs, but in some cases, I’m not even.”

Beechwood’s other current South Fork project, The Latch Southampton Village, is sold out.

“We’ve delivered about half of the homes, and we’re completing the other half for delivery over the next several months,” Dubb said.