Photo: Stephanie Krikorian
After a protracted (and very public) battle about Scott Sartiano’s club-turned-restaurant operating in the Village of East Hampton, it looks like its Hedges Inn incarnation is already closed.
“He’s out,” said a source close to the involved parties who asked not to be named. “He had until the weekend to clear his things out.”
Sartiano triggered a full-on frenzy in the Village of East Hampton when he leased the historic Hedges Inn this summer, initially hoping to to turn it into an outpost of his celebrity city club, Zero Bond. Meetings were held. Lawyers were engaged. Residential neighbors were apoplectic.
But faced with ordinances that essentially prevented a private club from operating in the historic district, Sartiano opened instead a restaurant in the space (whispers were that dinner was by invitation-only, but Sunday brunch reservations were available in August online). He then tried to win in the court of popular opinion by inviting locals to dine, and it worked, kind of — he befriended many, including those living outside the historic district and less likely to be disrupted by it being next door. People who ate at the restaurant felt Sartiano was being bullied. They said he was willing to “sign an affidavit” promising never to open a club. “It’s a joke that some of these people are Maidstone Club members [a private golf club] who now don’t want a private social club,” said one person who frequented the restaurant, but asked not to be named. (Many of those who seemed to side with Sartiano also had in common a dislike for the polarizing village mayor, Jerry Larsen).
But the wine-and-dine campaign didn’t work with everyone. Certainly not with the neighbors, many of whom are members of families with generational history in the Hamptons. When Sartiano invited Mayor Larsen to come in for dinner, and repeatedly asked for a meeting to talk about the restaurant’s future and further hear out the town’s concerns, Larsen declined.
At the same time, said Marcos Baladrón, the Village Administrator, Sartiano simultaneously attacked the mayor in public, and in the press and with people dining at his restaurant, he made himself out to be the victim of a targeted campaign of harassment by the village police and overzealous neighbors using the guise of noise violations to shut down his restaurant.
Eventually the mayor agreed to a late summer meeting and told Sartiano he’d be bringing some of the neighbors, since the battle had little to do with the village and more to do with them. Sartiano subsequently canceled the meeting.
“The neighbors aren’t falling for it,” said Baladrón. “They know who is behind these hit pieces in the New York Post,” he added. He said that Sartiano was using nightclub tactics to pressure the village. “That’s gangster type stuff.”
One of the frustrated neighbors, Ken Lipper, said there was no chance the social club concept would ever have happened. “The village of East Hampton—officials and residents—were not going to change the laws because some guy thought he could charm the town,” said Lipper. “If he just wanted to run a restaurant, go ahead. That was not what he wanted. He wanted to break the law and exploit the village for his own pockets. It was illegitimate.”
After a summer of 911 calls and noise citations, any notion of Zero Bond opening at the Hedges Inn came to an unceremonious end when the lease, which expired at the end of summer, was not renewed by the Hedges owner, John Cummings.
The threat of social exile might have been a key factor — many of the neighbors pressuring Cummings to not renew are powerful in the town. But the economics of running only a restaurant at the Hedges might not have made sense to Sartiano either.
Some neighbors speculate Zero Bond will open elsewhere in the Hamptons, just not in the historic district. Many said they had heard Sartiano had wanted to buy the Hedges Inn. Mayor Larsen said in April that he suggested to Sartiano that he buy the movie theater in town instead: “You can have five nightclubs in there and you’re not going to bother anybody.”
For those who live in the more exclusive village of East Hampton, the attempt to preserve the historic district, which the Hedges Inn belongs to, is an ongoing fight. Mayor Larsen said if they learned anything during the pandemic, it was the value residents placed on restaurants. If a restaurant goes private, “you’re barring the public from access,” he said.
In an effort to stop the next Zero Bond from converting a historic inn, Larsen said the village will look into buying one or more of the five historic inns as they come onto the market in order to preserve their historic status.
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