The billionaire is Apollo Global Management Chief Marc Rowan and the seafood shack is Duryea’s Lobster Deck in Montauk.
According to the article, Rowan was trying to pull a fast one. He’d bought this rustic waterfront bait shop in 2014 and, in spite of the law and the howls from the neighbors, had made it into a 90-seat restaurant for celebrities and influencers that serves a lobster roll for $97. And he’s done it with 10 years worth of lawsuits. They keep the town at bay.
“Money and power should not exempt you from the same laws that we have to follow,” the article says, quoting a neighbor reportedly living there since 1994.
It makes quite a story. But it’s not the story I know. Having been here a very long time, and for most of it involved in local affairs after founding Dan’s Papers in 1960, I know what I know.
Let’s start with what the article calls a“rustic bait shop.”
This “rustic bait shop” is as long as a football field. It runs along the beach of Fort Pond Bay on the western side. A dock sticks out into the bay there. On the other side, for its full length, is Tuthill Road, which was originally Duryea’s driveway and which is part of the property. There are no homes on this part of Tuthill Road. And none until you get over a little hill further up. So much for neighbors.
There may have been a bait shop in one part of this huge building at some point. But it was originally built, back in 1888, as a giant ice house to keep fish and shellfish cold and fresh. Local fishermen whose 50 or so boats were tied up nearby would bring the catch here. Boxed in ice, the fish were sent off to New York City every day.
I learned all this when my dad moved our family to Montauk in 1955. By the way, there were no zoning laws here then.
The owner of this place was Perry Duryea Sr. He’d bought it in 1930 from a Capt. Edwin Baker. Tuthill and by 1955, was operating it not only as an ice house but as a very large and prosperous lobster business. The lobsters, alive, were kept in cold seawater tanks. They’d be trucked out to supermarkets and restaurants around the Northeast. In addition, locals could buy lobsters or other cooked food to eat at home.
Perry Duryea Jr. was one of the richest men in town. I’d personally visit him at his office in this big building to sell him advertising in Dan’s Papers back then. In 1962, he, with partners, started the WLNG radio station in Sag Harbor. He offered, as a new newspaper publisher in town, to let me buy in. But I declined. I was only 22 then.
In 1957, zoning came to Montauk. Duryea’s was zoned “Commercial Business.” All previously built buildings were grandfathered in. Allowed to continue. Duryea became a state assemblyman and subsequently Speaker of the Assembly up in Albany beginning in 1969. He ran for governor in 1978 but lost.
In 1979, I was married at my parents’ home in Montauk. After the ceremony, my bride and I were driven down to Duryea’s and, after buying some lobster rolls, taken aboard a big sailboat that took us on a private cruise to Long Wharf in Sag Harbor as a going-away present. Ted Conklin, who owned The American Hotel, met us at Long Wharf and in his old Bentley drove us home.
In 1997, new laws in the town were passed that said merchants in pre-zoning establishments couldn’t engage in any new business without approval from the town. A few years earlier, there was talk that Duryea might go into the car ferry business at his dock. This couldn’t be allowed to happen. So they passed this new law.
Today, I wonder why the town is giving Duryea’s Lobster Deck such a hard time. Is it because Rowan’s a billionaire? I don’t get it. It’s true that by 2016, the lobster wholesale business had been reduced to a trickle and Duryea’s was operating almost entirely as a take-out business. You could either eat on the deck or take it home. Rowan, when he bought it, didn’t think it wise to call it a restaurant. To this day, he calls it the Duryea Lobster Deck. You go in, get a clipboard with a menu on it, check off what you want to eat and hand it in at a window. Then it’s brought out and you eat it on the deck. As for the $95 lobster roll, it’s $35 a lobster roll, same as most everywhere else. $16 will get you a hamburger. A coke is $6. The $95 one is called a lobster salad and serves an entire table.
Perhaps the hard time being given to Duryea’s is because of what happened in 1994. Driving up Tuthill Road had always been the shortest way to get to a cluster of homes further up the hill called Old Town. But that year, the descendants of Perry Duryea Jr. believed that Tuthill Road would cease to be their property if they didn’t shut it down for at least 24 hours a year. They did that in 1994. Old Town residents therefore had to take a 3-mile detour to get to their homes. Vandals cut away the blocked area. But the Duryeas put it back, then left it up for a month. A court ruled that the Duryeas did own it, but the residents had a right of way too. Sort of a draw. Legally nothing changed, but bad feelings had resulted.
Duryea’s is a wonderful place to eat in Montauk. It’s not some drunken late-night spot. Let it go forward.
What is astonishing is that meanwhile, the town approved a new three-story, 7,500 square-foot building downtown that by any reasonable look is not just the small 35-seat restaurant proposed but also a new late-night spot for 400 stand-alone partygoers. That’s the capacity, says the fire department.
How could this happen? What the hell.
Cartoon by Dan Rattiner
