A wealthy member of the Zaro’s Bakery dynasty won’t spend the dough to save a historic 18th-century home on his waterfront Hamptons property, residents charge.
Andrew Zaro, a debt-collection mogul, is poised to bulldoze the circa-1750 farmhouse in Water Mill to make way for a $20 million mansion. Zaro, the chairman of Cavalry Portfolio Services, is expected to receive a demolition permit for the house at 186 Crescent Ave. by the end of the month, despite objections from local historians and town officials.
The two-story Caleb Halsey House, built by one of the earliest settlers of the East End community, sits on 2.5 acres and boasts 180-degree water views across Mecox Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. Zaro plans to raze the 4,356-square-foot wooden structure and replace it with an 8,000-square-foot manse replete with pool and tennis court. He bought it for $13 million in 2012.
The farmhouse was originally erected on a plot of land on Halsey Lane near the Halsey family’s Green Thumb Farm but was moved to its current site around 1931. The Halseys, descendents of Thomas Halsey, an original settler of Southampton in 1644, were some of the first in Water Mill. According to Sally Spanburgh — a preservationist who chairs the Southampton Town Landmarks & Historic Districts Board — the house’s hewn-timber framing proves construction dates to between 1750 and 1800.
Locals want Zaro to donate the house and pay to move it a quarter-mile back to its original home on the Halsey farmstead.
“The last time I communicated with him, he was unreceptive to donating,” Spanburgh said. “It would be a true loss for the community.”
Locals also find galling the fact that Zaro might tear down the building and never live there. Even as he plans the demolition and a new house, he has the land on the market for $22.95 million.
Zaro made headlines in 2012 when his Guatemalan landscaper, driving Zaro’s SUV, struck and killed a Catholic nun down the road from Zaro’s other Water Mill home — and fled the scene. That 15,000-square-foot estate on Rose Hill Road is also on the market, for $32.95 million.
Zaro’s demolition-permit application will go before the preservation board on June 17. But because the house was never given landmark status, and because Zaro’s negotiations with the Halsey family went nowhere, the board has little recourse but to plead with Zaro.
“Somebody had wanted to move it, and we were negotiating, but it fell through — I don’t know what happened,” Zaro told The Post on Friday. He claims he is open to moving the property if someone pays for it. “What I don’t do is wake up in the morning saying I want to destroy an old house.”
But asked if he was open to restoring it, he replied, “That’s not me.”
Zaro claims the house was badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy and is so filled with dangerous black mold that his architect won’t even step inside. “I don’t know if anybody is going to want it,” he said.
Moving a historic house can cost as much as $100,000, Spanburgh said. Ideally, Zaro would do it for free, she added. In recent years, historic Hamptons houses have been moved to other locations to save them from the wrecking ball.
“It makes me upset,” said Jane Halsey, whose grandparents once lived in the house. “I would love to see somebody be able to take it.”