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East Hampton Town and a residents’ group have made a bid to purchase the former Star Room property in Wainscott, which has been the focus of community uproar recently in response to plans for a car wash to be built there.
The Town Board has proposed purchasing the approximately 1.1 acre property from owner Isha Kaushik for $2.1 million, though the property is in foreclosure and has a $2.5 million mortgage lien on it.
Scott Wilson, the town’s land acquisition and management director, told the Town Board on Thursday evening that his department has inked a contract with Mr. Kaushik for the $2.1 million deal, even though any sale would have to be approved by the bank that holds the mortgage lien, Business Lenders LLC, which is owed considerably more than what the town is offering.
“This is an interesting situation because this is a property that is being foreclosed on—so we’re negotiating with the estate, we’re signing a contract with the estate … and proceeding with a public hearing to prove to the bank we’re serious,” Mr. Wilson said. “The contract will be subject to the bank approving our offer. It’s possible they could reject us, ultimately.”
The Town Board on Thursday voted to schedule a public hearing on its offer for Thursday, October 5.
The Georgica Pond Foundation, a nonprofit residents group, has pledged to contribute $300,000 of the $2.1 million offer, Mr. Wilson said, so the town’s portion would be $1.8 million, paid for with revenues from the Community Preservation Fund tax on most real estate sales.
The property is owned by Mr. Kaushik and two siblings. They purchased the lot in 2007 when it was the home of the popular Star Room nightclub. The club closed just a year later, however, and the property has sat vacant and deteriorating ever since.
There have been two proposals to construct car washes there, the most recent of which drew waves of protest from residents in nearby residential neighborhoods who claimed the business would worsen traffic on the already congested highway as well as on their quiet streets, and that it would pollute Georgica Pond.
The would-be developer of the property, James Golden, said that he’d been planning to make a bid to buy the land out of foreclosure but was reconsidering after the Town Planning Board had said it would require a detailed, and costly, environmental impact study of the car wash proposal.
The town’s purchase proposal says that the condemned former nightclub buildings would be torn down and the land allowed to go back to a natural wooded state. During recent discussions about long-term planning for the hamlet of Wainscott, some residents had proposed using the property as a park to help beautify the entrance to the highway-side hamlet.
on Sep 21, 2017