The North Fork has a new record sale with the trade of roughly 110 vacant acres in East Marion, which includes developable lots along the shoreline, as well as property that has been preserved. The deal totaled a combined $23.5 million.
The area, known as Cove Beach, west of the public Truman’s Beach, was sold to a single buyer in late November. The buyer’s name was not publicly disclosed as details of the transaction remain confidential,
“It’s a number we haven’t reached on the North Fork,” says Joan Bischoff van Heemskerck of William Raveis, who, with Nicholas Planamento, represented the seller Raoul Witteveen, a Dutch businessman in real estate and container shipping who has owned much of the property since 1994. “This unique property is among the few properties in the United States that are undeveloped,” he adds.
“The heart of it,” along the Long Island Sound, was owned by Billy Joel, who purchased approximately 70 acres, including the waterfront parcels, in March of 1985, the same year he married Christie Brinkley. Less than two years later, the Piano Man sold the property to the developer Harold Reese.
A total of 17 properties sold; the highest for $4,095,000 and the lowest for $50,000, all to limited liability companies beginning with NFH JC, followed by roman numerals to differentiate the properties. The buyer’s name was shielded by the Delaware-based LLC.
What the new owner plans to do with the properties is unknown, but the hope is he will continue to keep the properties intact as Witteveen did.
Witteveen, who van Heemsherck has known since they were kids on a field hockey team in the Netherlands, has been very “conservation oriented,” selling development rights and preserving open space. He enjoyed taking his boat from the Hamptons, where he owns a home, to Cove Beach and camping on the beach with his family, van Heemsherck recalls.
In the late 1990s, Witteveen slashed plans for a 34-lot subdivision to 10 lots on 30 acres along the Sound, while donating a conservation easement over the 65-plus remaining acres to the Peconic Land Trust, in return for tax benefits, The Times reported then.
His donation added to the Ruth Oliva Preserve at Dam Pond, now a collection of 118 acres, jointly managed with the county and town preserve. The pond and its surrounds are a prime source of fin and shellfish, and habitat for birds and wildlife, some of which are on New York State’s list of rare and endangered species, according to the Peconic Land Trust. “The conservation easement gifts protected rare maritime red cedar forests and oak hickory forests, as well as a significant amount of waterfront: 650 feet on Long Island and 450 feet of Dam Pond,” the land trust said in a history of the property in 2012.
According to an article in The New York Times in 2000, more than two-thirds of what was then 95 acres of land Witteveen had amassed were preserved.
He since bought more properties. According to van Heemskerck, there are now 18 along the shoreline — a rocky beach with a low bluff provides panoramic water views — that can be developed. They are accessible from a private, two-thirds-of-a-mile-long road off Route 25 through an oak forest.
Over the last 25 years, they were marketed as the Cove Beach Estates, 10 lots at about 2.5 to 2.65 acres each, with beach frontage ranging from 150 feet to 225 feet. They were priced from $750,000 to $1.5 million over the years. A larger 2.65-acre property was asking $2 million
The land recently sold encompasses this deal was once owned by founding North Fork families, such as the Trumans, Tuthills, and finally the Schelingers.
In 1893, the St. Thomas Summer Home was founded as a retreat for children growing up on Manhattan’s 60th Street, a mostly German community at the time. The program ran until about 1925. Dormitories, a chapel and other buildings on the property were lost to a fire in 1938, and the property returned to its natural state.
It’s unclear what the new owner plans to do with the property.
The uniqueness of the mix of properties available made the deal challenging to put together — and for the right figure — that was several years in the making. “It was a good deal for both the seller and the buyer,” van Heemsherck comments.
“For more than 20 years, Nicholas Planamento and Joan Bischoff van Heemskerck have brought exceptional professionalism, sound judgment, and integrity to our work together,” Witteveen says in a statement. “Their stewardship of this transaction reflects a rare combination of market expertise, discretion, and genuine respect for the land and its legacy. They were instrumental in assembling the right team to bring this effort to completion. I am deeply grateful for their guidance over the years.”
Email tvecsey@danspapers.com with comments, questions, or tips. Follow Behind The Hedges on Facebook, X and Instagram.
