Veteran retail tycoon Mickey Drexler seems to have made a hobby, or maybe it’s a habit, of buying and selling high-end real estate. Having put his über-glam Tribeca townhouse on the market in November, he’s set his real estate sites on the Hamptons where he’s acquired an oceanfront home in sleepy hamlet of Amagansett in an off-market, though not-so-secret, transaction valued at a cool $9.5 million. Martha Gundersen and Paul Brennan of Douglas Elliman represented both sides in the transaction.
That may not seem like so much for the Hamptons, you may be thinking, but in Amagansett, where the new Chez Drexler is located, many of the plots are on the petite side; this one is just 0.67 of an acre. But unlike many other homes on the ocean in the nabe, this property has a pool set in a fenced part of the front yard.
Because the deal went down off market, not many details of the home’s current condition and configuration are available. Even tax records are frustratingly vague. However, with a high-ceilinged central living space flanked by a pair of bedroom wings, the wood-clad and partially vine-encrusted contemporary home is pre-existing, non-conforming and set closer to the ocean than current zoning would allow, making it irreplaceable and unique. The property presides over 110 feet of ocean frontage overlooked by a broad deck and a huge semicircular terrace.
This area of Amagansett is known for it’s low-key beachy charm, which is probably why it’s also known a celebrity haunt, attracting the likes of reality TV mogul Andy Cohen, Goop founding actress Gwyneth Paltrow, and veteran actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.
As for Drexler, the former Gap Inc. and J.Crew Group CEO — he’s also the founder of Old Navy and Madewell, he can’t seem to shake his townhouse in Tribeca, which he first put on the market in 2016 for just under $30 million; the price was cut to $27.5 million before it was yanked off the market a year later. Last year, the deluxe house popped back up for sale again, with Deborah Grubman at Corcoran, with an asking price holding steady at just shy of $30 million. Perhaps it’s time for another price cut?
Last summer, the property-mad retail tycoon paid $16.5 million for a home on Miami Beach’s tony North Bay Road. The property is adjacent to two other parcels he purchased in 2017 for $26 million, so now he owns about 1.3 acres on Biscayne Bay. As he’s beefed up his Miami portfolio he’s shed property across the country. About a year ago he sold his mountain getaway in Ketchum, Idaho, for $11 million; in 2018 he took in $19 million on the sale of a vibrantly colorful apartment in Tribeca. And, famously, back in 2015, Drexler sold the former Andy Warhol compound, Eothen, in Montauk, N.Y., for $50 million to art collector Adam Lindemann.