In Montauk, Big Money Moves In on a Surfers’ Paradise

Alden operates some 200 newspapers across the country, including The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News and The Denver Post, through MediaNews Group, a company in which it has a controlling stake. Journalists have decried Alden’s strategy of slashing costs at daily and weekly publications, referring to the company’s leaders “vulture capitalists.” The publicity-averse Mr. Freeman, who declined to comment for this article, said in a rare interview with The Washington Post in 2020 that Alden rescues local papers that would otherwise go out of business.

Since the start of the pandemic, when not busy overseeing Alden’s $630 million purchase of the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain, Mr. Freeman, who is in his 40s, has gone on another kind of spree centered on Hamptons hospitality businesses.

The East Hampton Star, the paper of record on the East End, has chronicled the activities of Mr. Freeman and a group of investors in taking over the leases of or buying venues including EHP Resort and Marina in East Hampton, the Harbor Bistro in East Hampton, the Inn Spot in Hampton Bays and the former Red Bar Brasserie in Southampton.

Mr. Freeman has also enlarged his footprint in Montauk, which is technically a hamlet in the town of East Hampton. He and his partners operate Buongiorno, an Italian-style bakery and espresso bar on Montauk’s South Embassy Street. In 2019, according to public records, Mr. Freeman bought a wood-shingled cottage along Ditch Plains Beach for $2.4 million. It lies a Frisbee throw from the house now under construction.

In addition, limited liability corporations that share a New Jersey address with Smith Management, the investment firm run by Mr. Freeman’s fellow Alden executive, bought two neighboring lots in the Montauk Colony subdivision, paying more than $12 million for them in 2021, according to public records. All told, Mr. Freeman and L.L.C.s affiliated with Alden and Smith Management have spent close to $20 million for a few acres of beachfront.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/style/in-montauk-big-money-moves-in-on-a-surfers-paradise.html