East Hampton’s Face of Retail Has a Gap-Toothed Smile

    Even the lettering above the door had been hastily removed from the brick façade, and inside, it’s bare, stripped walls looked something like Whoville after the Grinch had made his rounds — just in time for the holidays.

    “Everybody comes and goes so fast, there’s no staying power,” said Elise Marmon, a cosmetics buyer who said her family’s purchase of White’s Pharmacy in 1954 was “the best thing we ever did.” If her family didn’t own the building, she said, the business would have closed by now.

    “The rents are so astronomical, and people don’t stay here anymore,” she said, speculating that the high-end retailers that do stay in town are here for the ZIP code — “11937 is the new 90210” — and are probably operating at a loss for the prestige of a presence in East Hampton. “They can afford the tax write-off and have very deep pockets,” she said.

    Meanwhile, “no business is going to go in in November,” she said, adding that she’d heard the rent at one recently closed store was “over $29,000 per month.”

    On Park Place, the windows of the Canine Ranch Pet Spa were covered in brown paper, with a handwritten sign that read, “Thanks for a great season! Please visit us in our New York location,” similar to the sign at Jonathan Adler, a furniture boutique with a presence in East Hampton Village for six years. “He’s moved four times,” Ms. Marmon noted.

    “Thanks for six gorgeous years of giggles and memories,” said one of the computer-generated signs taped to the interior window of Mr. Adler’s store on Newtown Lane, whose windows were also blocked with opaque paper. “Come visit our new location on Greenwich Avenue in the West Village or visit our SoHo or Madison Avenue stores.”

    For a few moments on Monday afternoon, not a single pedestrian could be seen on the south side of Main Street, while across the street a group of teenagers congregated outside of Starbucks and waited for a ride home. On the steps of one store, a standard poodle on a leash panted expectantly as a clerk extended a treat to the pooch, but no one appeared to be inside shopping.

    “It’s kind of depressing when you look out over there,” said Renee Fertig, who has owned Tennis East on Main Street for more than 35 years, as she gazed toward the string of empty storefronts across the way. “The rents across from us are $10,000 a month. A mom and pop can’t go back in, they’ve lost it,” she said, adding that as far as the numbers of empty storefronts go, “I’ve never seen it this bad.”

    Ms. Fertig said she had heard from Ralph Lauren that he still has intentions of setting up a rugby-themed store in the three adjacent spaces that once housed Sideshow, Shoe-Inn, and Long Island Sound. Real estate signs have been removed from the windows, and an application to change the space is still on file at Village Hall.

    “I call it the Laurenization of the Hamptons,” said Ms. Marmon, who explained the phenomenon can no longer be dubbed “Ralphampton” since Mr. Lauren’s daughter, Dylan Lauren, has opened Dylan’s Candy on Main Street this summer.

    Mr. Lauren’s other interests in East Hampton have included a deal to purchase the former Blue Parrot restaurant, which is still empty. According to the building’s owner, the deal has fallen through. Rumors that he has purchased Espo’s Surf Shop, also on Main Street, remain dubious.

    “I’d prefer not to make any comments on anything,” said Jeff Esposito, the building’s owner, yesterday.

    Ms. Marmon, whose store has “changed with the times” by cornering the local market on designer cosmetics, believes “this is what our consumer base wants.” There is a large local population of people in East Hampton, and most of them work in the service industry “for the very wealthy,” she explained, adding that few of them can afford to shop in the village. “The only place you meet local people is in Riverhead at the Tanger Mall,” she said.

    “It’s problematic that most of the people who live here don’t shop here,” said Paul Hollander, a veterinarian who has lived and worked in East Hampton for 14 years, as he made a purchase at BookHampton.

    “It used to be much nicer when the stores were not so pretentious, and you could actually go in and buy things and feel good about it,” he said. Now Mr. Hollander finds himself going into the village for “the food store, the movies, and BookHampton.”

    “We’re just happy to be on this side of Main Street,” commented Charlene Spector, the bookstore’s owner. Last year, BookHampton moved from a larger space on the south side of Main Street to a smaller, more economical storefront across the street. Their former space was renovated, and now houses a BCBG Max Azria women’s fashion boutique.

    According to Ms. Marmon, the economic stress of being surrounded by opulence is depressing for the average consumer, who spends most of his time shopping in Bridgehampton or Riverhead. “You feel poor here if you don’t make a lot of money,” said Ms. Marmon. “A regular person anywhere else feels poor in East Hampton. More and more people are moving out.”

    On Newtown Lane, employees hung designer fashions in the relatively new children’s Scoop Beach, adjacent to its sister store, whose vast, white-painted aisles were also devoid of customers on Monday afternoon.

    Across the street, another storefront with windows covered by paper lay in wait, while the owner of Sam’s restaurant waits for a response from the East Hampton design and review board on an application to turn the former toy shop into a pizza take-out counter.

    The restaurant, one of the few businesses that has been in the village for years, is in stark contrast to the nearby John Varvatos, a high-end men’s fashion boutique that emerged this year and established a rock ’n’ roll vibe in town. (The eponymous owner is planning a spring 2008 opening for his next store at the former CBGB’s, the downtown punk-rock mecca that closed its doors for good in 2006.)

    Next door to John Varvatos, an empty storefront that once housed the Second Star to the Right toy store, had its windows blocked out too. Printed on the glass is an announcement for the spring opening of James Perse, another menswear designer. Mr. Perse’s company has also filed an application with the village design and review board, and hopes to make some radical changes to the store’s exterior and interior facades.

    The former Chase Bank on the north side of Main Street was recently purchased by Brooks Properties for $7.25 million. Across the street, the Manhattan-based ZE Realty Group had signs still hanging in the windows of a former coffee and ice cream shop next to the movie theatre, while Eli Tahari’s former space, a few storefronts away, was still for rent.

    According to Ms. Fertig, a gracious landlord has kept her business and several others from going under. “John Eastman has been fair to us,” she said of her landlord. “The few stores that are holding on are his stores,” she said, including Obligato and Khan Sports. Mr. Eastman is the brother of the late Linda McCartney and a manager for Sir Paul McCartney. “It’s not like he’s using it to pay the rent,” Ms. Fertig said, adding, “maybe it’s because of his love of East Hampton that he’s still trying to keep it.”