The Montauk Yacht Club is back to its traditional name this summer after Gurney’s sold the property to an international marina company last year. Now we finally know how much money it took to seal the massive deal – and it’s record-shattering.
The properties sold for a total of $149,400,000, according to Suffolk County deed transfers available just this week from Suffolk Vision. The price reveal catapults the trade to not only the biggest commercial sale of 2022, but in Hamptons hotel history. The previously biggest known sale was the $77.5 million sale of Marram Montauk, a 96-room boutique hotel on the ocean, also in 2022.
Safe Harbor Marinas, which owns and operates the world’s largest boating network, quietly purchased what had been called, since 2018, Gurney’s Star Island Resort & Marina on July 1, 2022, , but the single deed transfer for the eight lots only just became public.
The sale price spiked 157% since the properties last sold in 2018. According to 27East, at the time Gurney’s spent $56.7 million on the same lots. The four contiguous properties, since combined, made up about $50 million of that total.
In 2007, the properties had traded for $34 million, The New York Times reported.
Gurney’s changed the name to Gurney’s Star Island Resort & Marina and reportedly invested $13 million.
The lots included in the transfer go beyond just the 35-acre Montauk Yacht Club. There are four lots on Star Island Drive and three piers attached to 32, 48 and 58 Star Island Drive. Also, a motel property further south near the ocean at 88 South Elmwood Avenue was also part of the transaction.
Safe Harbor Marinas just completed “nine months of investment and preparation” at the Montauk Yacht Club, according to a statement issued earlier this month, and have returned it to its original name.
Safe Harbor Marinas did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sale price.
Situated on a peninsula that juts out into Lake Montauk, the property boasts 107 guest rooms and villas, three pools, two restaurants, indoor and outdoor bars, tennis and pickleball courts, a private beach and more than 200 boat slips.
Gurney’s Investments
This is the second property that Gurney’s sold in 2022. Gurney’s Newport Resort & Marina on Rhode Island’s Goat Island was sold to Pebblebrook Hotel Trust for $174 million, The Newport Daily News reported in October. Gurney’s had purchased the 257-room hotel in 2016 for an undisclosed amount.
Gurney’s Resorts dates to 2013 when Montauk homeowner George Filopoulos of Metrovest Equities, Inc., led an investment group, along with Lloyd Goldman of BLDG Management Co, Inc., to purchase the original Gurney’s Inn on the ocean in Montauk.
Now known as Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa, the property has undergone renovations and expansions, including a $16 million reimagining of its famous spa, which reopened last year.
The investors bought the adjacent 10-acre Panoramic View for $63.9 million in December of 2015, according to The East Hampton Star, turning it into the Residences at Gurney’s Montauk. The Panoramic View, then a 65-unit beach resort that included townhomes and a motel, had been part of a Ponzi scheme, seized by the federal government and sold to recoup money for investors.
Following the purchase of the Montauk Yacht Club in 2018 in the $56.7 million deal, Gurney’s Resorts was running two waterfront hotels in Montauk, the adjacent Residences and the Newport hotel.
Then, in 2021, Gurney’s also purchased a resort property in Scottsdale, Arizona, now called Sanctuary at Camelback Mountain, a Gurney’s Resort & Spa. A major renovation is planned.
Top Commercial Sales
Before the price of the Montauk Yacht Club sale was revealed, the biggest sale in 2022 had been the $77.5 million sale of Marram Montauk.
So far in 2023, the biggest commercial trade on the East End has been the $70 million sale of a shopping complex in Riverhead.
In the Hamptons so far this year, the biggest commercial transaction has been $22 million when Bernard Arnault, the French billionaire businessman who is, according to Forbes, the richest person in the world, purchased 1 Main Street in East Hampton from fashion designer Elie Tahari and his son Jeremy Tahari in late March. Louis Vuitton is opening a store there on Friday, May 26.
For a little perspective, the biggest residential trade ever in the Hamptons for a single property was Jule Pond, a 42-acre waterfront estate nearby, with unobstructed views of the Atlantic Ocean and Mecox Bay. It sold for $105 million in October 2021.
In 2014, hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein famously paid the most ever for an estate when he shelled out $147 million for three separate, yet contiguous parcels on Further Lane. The biggest of the properties at 62 Further Lane traded at just $97 million.
Also in 2021, four contiguous properties in Water Mill traded for a combined $118.5 million, the second-highest trade in Hamptons history. The combined deal south-of-the-highway in Water Mill also catapulted it to the top of the list of the priciest sales for 2021.
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