The Hamptons: Choking on a Glut of Luxury

When a chic new restaurant recently opened here, it seemed natural that the East Hampton Star, a venerable weekly that has covered this resort town since 1885, would review it. But even the restaurant critic couldn’t get into Maya’s, a pricey newcomer with a branch in St. Bart’s and a celebrity A-list that seemed to materialize overnight.

“I wasn’t able to get a table for two weeks,” said food writer Sheridan Sansegundo, “and that shows you how much the Hamptons have changed. This restaurant had absolutely no advertising, but it got a tremendous celebrity buzz, and people like me found it almost impossible to get a reservation.”

As another money-drenched summer roars to a close in the Hamptons, 1999 will go down as the year of the Big Squeeze. The elegant communities perched on the southeastern tip of Long Island have long been monuments to wealth and luxury. But Hamptons fever has gone several degrees beyond that and is now a glitzy metaphor for the ‘90s infatuation with celebrity, status and new money.

Sometimes, on crowded weekends, things get ugly.

Auto congestion, long a Hamptons curse, has become a nightmare for big shots who want to show off their Lincoln Navigators on Main Street. If you’re thinking of buying a home to rub shoulders with Steven Spielberg, Martha Stewart and other VIPs, the price just got steeper: A modest East Hampton village home in the vicinity of the ocean is now $2.5 million, but that’s chump change compared with bigger houses on the market. The $15 million that Jerry Seinfeld reportedly bid on a mansion wasn’t quite enough to wrest it away from fashion designer Helmut Lang.

During a typical summer week, more than 100,000 visitors join an estimated 25,000 full-time, year-round residents. And while many town officials wring their hands over a growing shortage of space--the local cemetery recently announced that it had run out of room--they have yet to adopt stricter growth controls.

But perhaps worst of all, the hordes of nouveau riche wannabes pouring into the area have sparked nasty contretemps at the markets and elegant shops lining Main Street. The sight of people pushing and shoving in line, fighting over scarce parking spaces and generally acting like spoiled brats has been distressing to residents who try to keep a low profile. It’s as though the collective neuroses of Manhattan somehow migrate here for July and August.

“There’s more glitz and money here now, and some people think they can throw their weight around,” said Ed McDonald, an attorney and former federal prosecutor. “You have guys here who made money on Wall Street and they come with the trophy wife and the gold chain. They act like buffoons in public, they’re arrogant and it’s a reason not to go into town.”

East Hampton and its sister communities have experienced a tidal wave of tourism, real estate speculation and media fascination. Today, there are five newspapers, four magazines and several Web sites dishing news in an area that has captured the imagination and reflects some of the worst excesses of a celebrity-mad culture. Papers in Manhattan, about 100 miles away, treat the comings and goings like state occasions. Columnists spar over which towns are the trendiest, like East Hampton’s Georgica Pond and Sag Harbor, and dump on “lesser” areas, like Hampton Bays.

Outsiders with bucks began swarming into the Hamptons 20 years ago, but many observers peg the current invasion to the arrival of Spielberg and other Hollywood celebrities in the late ‘80s--a trend that began slowly and then became a gold rush in recent years. While the majority of visitors and new residents hail from New York, a growing number jet out from Hollywood, swelling the crowds even more.

“This summer the sheer number of people coming here has stretched us to the breaking point, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said Helen Rattray, editor of the East Hampton Star. “We can’t hold back these forces anymore because this community doesn’t stand up to power and influence like it should. And I don’t know why.”

Maybe it’s because the Hamptons are unlike any other resort in America. Once a peaceful haven for artists, writers and a handful of old-money families relaxing among the potato fields, the Hamptons have historically fought--and lost--a succession of battles against outsiders, according to Stephen Gaines, author of “Philistines at the Hedgerow.”

For years, he noted, some residents had real estate deeds preventing their homes from being sold to “Jews, Negroes and entertainers.” As late as the 1980s, singer Billy Joel had to form a corporation before he could buy his Further Lane house. Today, those restrictions have all but vanished.

“As always, the invaders [have] won,” wrote Gaines, who used the word ironically and has decried bigotry in the Hamptons. But “as to why each generation of newcomers was drawn here in the first place, well, there is little left to remind anyone.”

To be sure, East Hampton’s white sand dunes and Gatsby-esque mansions are as breathtaking as ever, and on a quiet summer afternoon the beach feels much as it did years ago--long before anyone thought to pave Main Street. But that sense of peace is fleeting.

Nowadays, 5,000- and 4,000-square-foot homes are rising on one-acre lots, and controversy has flared over plans by Ira Rennert, who made his fortune in junk bonds and heavy manufacturing, to build a 100,000-square-foot house on one of the last remaining fields near the sea in Sagaponack. With 33 bathrooms, 29 bedrooms and parking space for 250 cars, it would be the largest single-family home the Hamptons has ever seen.

“Have we become a paradigm for money, New Age celebrity and financial excess?” mused David Rattray, the Star’s managing editor and the editor’s son. “I think, sadly, the answer is yes. Nothing lasts forever, but some people act as if the good times will just go on indefinitely, and some here are on their worst behavior.”

In most resorts, people try to decompress. Yet here, on a summer night, the Palm Restaurant and other hot spots are jammed with people shouting to be heard over the din. Crowds of impatient visitors try to bully maitre d’s for better tables, while others are hunched over cell phones, Palm Pilots and beepers that chirp into the evening.

The other night at the restaurant, a woman brushed against a vase of flowers on the maitre d’s desk and complained loudly that the flowers had stained her dress. Soon, she was shouting at him, angered that he didn’t show enough sympathy. Her friends joined in the semi-comical fray, adding that they had to wait too long to be seated.

“People come out to the Hamptons from New York and they think that, since they’ve got a lot of money, they can do whatever they want,” sighed a waiter. “It takes them four hours to get here, they can’t find parking and then they blow up. But isn’t this supposed to be a vacation?”

Usually, beach resorts are isolated from the drumbeat of daily news. But here the proliferation of newspapers and resulting competition has given local life a jolt.

The fact that Katie Couric and Calvin Klein were seen shopping side by side in a market qualifies as a news item. And the community’s legendary zoning battles are themselves a guide to celebrity life. Media baron Mortimer Zuckerman, Revlon billionaire Ronald O. Perelman and Madison Avenue advertising whiz Jerry Della Femina have all had celebrated dust-ups with town planning officials.

The beat goes on: This summer, violinist Itzhak Perlman was denied a permit to locate a music school in Sagaponack. His attorney insisted that the students would not make noise, but one homeowner sniffed: “Silence is the best music of all.”

As for parties, the summer calendar was capped by President Clinton’s 48-hour fund-raising blitz and a glittering bash to benefit local day care hosted by residents Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

“You could go to parties every night here if you wanted to, but a lot of people really don’t like to do that,” said Washington lobbyist and political consultant Liz Robbins, whose beachfront home was the site for one of Clinton’s fund-raisers. “I don’t think anyone wants to make this the mecca for fund-raising, because the place will dry up. It’s fine for New York events, it makes sense, but for other events it can be too much.”

Too much. It might be a new rallying cry for Hamptons residents who think the social whirl and media buzz have gotten out of hand. For some, there is a slim hope that once the economic bubble bursts things will calm down.

“Maybe then we won’t see guys fly-fishing with cell phones in their ears,” McDonald said. “When the market crashes, the gourmet market down the street here will go back to being a two-bit deli, and the Hamptons just might return to normal.”

* CELEBRITY MIXER

Hamptons’ high season goes Hollywood more than ever. F1