Oh, we all know what it’s like, right? You found an at-home fitness company, which does well, and then seriously takes off during a pandemic. Then things start to go a little south: the pandemic eases up and people go back to gyms, a whole bunch of competitors pop up out of nowhere, and you have to report disappointing first-quarter earnings. Your stock nosedives.
But, you figure, things will turn around. After all, your fitness brand is featured front and center in one of the most highly anticipated new television shows of the season. Ooops! Turns out the plot device revolves around a beloved character dying on your machine. The stock dives some more. Undaunted, you hire Chris Noth, the actor who played the dead character, to make ads for your device. Then the actor is accused of sexual assault, so you have to yank the ads. Your stock continues to slump.
Next, you plan a fun and fancy Christmas party for some of your employees at the Plaza Hotel. But people are still getting up in your grill about everything. They’re whining about their worthless stock options and not being invited to the party at the Plaza. What’s a CEO to do? Yep. We’ve all been there (wink wink).
Fortunately, you can retreat to the oceanfront house in the Hamptons you treated yourself to earlier in the autumn, the one you wanted so much you even paid over the asking price! The asking price had been $52.5 million, but John Foley, embattled CEO of Peloton, paid $55 million. First reported by the New York Post, the huge purchase includes a 5-bedroom, 7-bath mansion, and 400 feet of ocean frontage in East Hampton.
The house is on Further Lane, one of the best streets in the Hamptons, where boldfaced names like Jerry Seinfeld, Lorne Michaels, Larry Gagosian, Carl Icahn, Martha Firestone Ford, Mort Zuckerman, Howard Schultz, and Ron Baron, maintain homes. The road is now filled with gracious, manicured estates that slope down to the Atlantic Ocean, with some agricultural fields and vintage farm buildings still interspersed in between. It’s quiet, peaceful, and very, very wealthy.
The house Foley just purchased was owned by Alan Seligson, the recently deceased chairman of a company that made aerospace parts, and was listed with Hedgerow in September. Foley’s purchase includes four acres of land, the house, a detached two-car garage, gardens, and, of course, a swimming pool and spa. Sequestered at the end of a long, private lane shared with just a handful of other homes, the exterior seems pleasant enough, with a long swooping wood-clad roof, while the master suite occupies a separate wing on the first floor with dual bathrooms, a walk-in closet, and sundeck, along with an adjacent office. That all sounds pretty fab.
Unfortunately, though, the ocean view isn’t the best. This area of the coast is known for its high double dunes, which offer great protection from the elements and possible climate change but, depending on how the house is sited, not always much in the way of stunning vistas.
Still, it’s gotta be some nice consolation for a year that wasn’t the greatest for Foley. And if anyone is interested, his place in East Hampton is on the market, asking a comparatively puny $4.45 million.