Amagansett's West End: Twelve Storefronts Proposed, Four Businesses Opened

"Let's be honest: Amagansett is happening right now," the town councilman shepherding a Main Street sidewalk project told his colleagues at a March work session. "It is a wonderful hamlet, historical hamlet, great stores, great activity, and the sidewalk there right now is not the width for the use of it."

He was talking about pavement. He was really describing something bigger: a stretch of Main Street that spent years as the part of Amagansett you looked at through a windshield, and that this year, without anyone planning it this way, became a place people park the car and walk.

The Twelve That Never Came

Four years ago, an investment group that had acquired the 1920s building at 136 Main Street, along with the red barn behind it, brought the East Hampton Town Planning Board a proposal to demolish both structures and replace them with a mixed-use complex: a new 7,200-square-foot building, twelve retail storefronts, four affordable housing units upstairs, and 53 parking spaces. The building sits at the western entrance to Amagansett's business district, next to the Mobil station, on a stretch that had drifted between tenants for years.

The board's reaction was not warm. "My initial reaction is, it's too much, it needs to be scaled back a bit. It should be more Amagansett-y," said the planning board chairman. Another member worried the traffic study underestimated how hard it already is to turn left onto Main Street. A third suggested the applicants look at what had worked at Amagansett Square instead: lower density, more green space, fewer curb cuts. The board sent the proposal back, and it never returned in a form anyone approved. The parcel went up for sale.

That is where the story would end in most hamlets. A rejected plan, a for-sale sign, a building that sits empty until someone with more capital and a bigger idea comes along.

What Showed Up Instead

What actually filled the space was four small, independently owned businesses, leasing what was already there rather than waiting for something to be built.

John and Kelly Piccinnini, who own Clam Bar and previously ran The Corner in Sag Harbor, opened Sett Coffee on Main Street. Next door, siblings Kristen and Charles Billings opened Sea Dragon Books with their mother, Tricia Hoefling, a family based in Sagaponack that decided the hamlet needed a bookstore and built one on a two-year lease. "It's very personally curated, which means that we can definitely speak for every book," Billings told the East Hampton Press. Around the corner, Jamagansett started selling small-batch jams made from whole seasonal fruit, sold across town at Spring Close Farm, Amber Waves, and used by Rosie's restaurant for its scones. On the ground floor of the barn building, a salon called LaParlour opened as well.

None of it required a variance. None of it added a parking space. The building nobody could agree how to redevelop got occupied anyway, tenant by tenant, at the scale the hamlet already had.

Here is what the two versions of that corner actually look like side by side.

The lesson for anyone who has watched a stalled property in this town and assumed its fate hinges on the next big proposal: sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the board says no to scale, the parcel sits, and what eventually shows up is smaller than what anyone drew on paper.

The Walk Changed, Not Just the Storefronts

For years, the walkable heart of Amagansett ran one direction: east, from Amagansett Square out to Amber Waves Farm. That stretch has the Amber Waves market and cafe, Amagansett Square's cluster of shops and Doubles, and Il Buco al Mare in the old center block. West of Hedges Lane was a gap.

That gap is now walkable in a way it was not a year ago, partly because the town rebuilt the ground under it. Alongside the private leasing, the town widened the south sidewalk from four feet to five and extended the same brick-and-tree-box treatment already running along the north side of Main Street, targeting completion just before Memorial Day. Not everyone thought it was worth it. Dan Mongan, a trustee of both the Amagansett Library and the Amagansett Historical Association, argued in public comment that paving over the grass strip sacrificed the softer character of the south side to match the busier commercial north. The board went ahead anyway, citing snow removal, tree health, and the volume of foot traffic the corridor was already absorbing.

The practical effect: a resident who used to get coffee at Jack's Stir Brew and call it a morning can now get coffee at Jack's, walk west for a few minutes to browse at Sea Dragon, and be back at the Square before the bag from Cavaniola's Gourmet has cooled off. Amagansett Square still holds the businesses that have anchored the hamlet for decades, Vinnie & Nick's Barber Shop among them, a cash-only, first-come shop that opens at 6:30 in the morning. What changed is that the Square is no longer the end of the walk. It is the middle of one.

There is a second-order effect too, one that shows up on an ordinary Saturday rather than a marquee weekend. Parking that used to concentrate entirely at Amagansett Square now spreads across a longer corridor. It is not the kind of change that solves a packed August Saturday. It is the kind that makes a Tuesday morning easier, and in a hamlet whose year-round population is a fraction of its summer one, that is the rhythm most days actually run on.

The weekly rhythm has its own fixed points now too. The Amagansett Square farmers market runs Thursday afternoons, 3:30 to 6 p.m., through the end of September, with live busking and a lineup that runs from local produce and breads to gin tasting. It is a later slot than most Hamptons markets keep, which changes who shows up: fewer day-trippers, more residents rolling through after work.

The Part That Still Isn't Settled

None of this means the question at 136 Main Street is closed. The parcel is still on the market, with an asking price of $19 million. A future buyer could revive something closer to the original twelve-storefront plan, or something else entirely. What exists right now, the coffee shop and the bookstore and the jam maker and the salon, is a use of the space, not a permanent one. Piccinnini, for his part, described what he is building at Sett Coffee as responsive rather than architectural in comments to The East Hampton Star: "We're creating things that we know people are looking for. There's no ice cream in town, and now the guy from A La Mode is selling ice cream here."

That is the honest way to read the whole west end right now. It filled in after a board said no to something bigger, as a handful of people with existing East End track records took leases in the smaller footprint. Whether it stays this way is a question the market, not the planning board, will eventually answer.

For a hamlet that measures change in decades rather than seasons, that is still worth noticing while it is happening.

If you are thinking about what a stretch of Main Street like this means for property values nearby, or you want a read on how Amagansett's business district affects a specific listing, David Tenenbaum is glad to talk it through. Schedule a Showing whenever you are ready to see what is actually for sale on this end of town.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.