Dan's Papers - October 6, 2006 - Sagg Store Reopens, Sagaponackers Cheer

Truman Capote once called Sagaponack "Kansas with a sea breeze." That's because the little village has been able to avoid the onslaught of high-end retail stores and restaurants that is the Hamptons today. Sagaponack is the "un-Hampton" and is much like it was a hundred years ago, only now modern cars and telephone poles occupy the streets instead of horses and buggies. The vast potato fields, farmhouses, simply gorgeous modern houses and the plethora of summer families that visit Sagaponack each summer to enjoy its American feel and its vast ocean beaches make calling Sagaponack special a very deep understatement.

There is only one business in all of Sagaponack and it has truly been able to withstand the test of time. It is today what it was 120 years ago, a post office and a general store, only now, horsewhips and pitchforks are not sold there.

For more than two decades, the store has been rented to operators who were outside the original family that owned the store, the Hildreths of Sagaponack. However, the store is now back in the family and is open for business because of the astonishing hard work by Richard and Karen Thayer, who have been renovating the store themselves since the winter of last year. Richard's mother is a Hildreth, and the store officially opened for business this past Wednesday. I stopped in to talk with the couple the day before they opened. I found Richard doing inventory in a notebook in the back of the store. Up front, Karen gave me a big smile. The pride they have in their store gleams in their eyes as they stand next to the new, handmade cabinets and tables built by their neighbor in Sagaponack, and the paint on the walls, which Karen applied herself. They spread photographs from the 1800s on the wooden table where the coffee was, along with an original date book for the store from May of 1895. One of the log entries in the book was 14 oz of cheese for 14 cents. For that month, total revenues for the store was $120. "I wonder if that was good month," Karen jokes.

The history of the Sagg General Store is remarkable. Built more than a century ago in 1878, the store was owned and operated by Thaddeus S. Edwards. In 1898 it became the Hildreth and Co. General Store and was owned by Thomas Hildreth. Somewhere in there, the entire building was picked up and turned around. Now the back faced the front. And now the Post Office service was separated from the store. Store on one side. Post Office on the other. In 1900, Thomas enlarged the building and it was then handed over to W. Leland Hildreth in 1922. "He was my Grandfather," Richard Thayer tells me at the store over a cup of Kobricks Coffee, the brand that the store now sells. The coffee is a fourth generation coffee company out of the city just like the Thayers are.

In 1948, the store experienced a fire and the roof burned. Karen noticed pieces of the roof upstairs when they were renovating the building and she couldn't throw them away. "I decided to paint the word Sagaponack on the old wood and sell them for $20. People think I'm crazy for selling them so cheap. I may rethink that."

After WWII, W. Leland Hildreth's son came back from Europe and took over the store. Back then molasses and cheddar cheese wheels along with pitchforks and horse equipment was where the real revenue for the store came from. The store then stayed in the family until the early 80s, where it was rented to Jen Hildreth, who ran it for five years. Then the store went outside the family and was rented to Don and Mary Spellman and then to Bob and Barbara Baugh, who swapped places with the Post Office on the other side, and kept it running until last year. Now, the Thayers have it back after the lease ended last year, and the couple has spent nearly every day since then renovating the place. Richard, who has been in construction a good part of his life and who also went to architectural design school in college, redesigned the store and aggressively renovated it, making everything perfect.

Originally they thought to just paint the store and redo the floors, but along the way, they kept finding bits of history here and there and simply had to put in the effort to return it to the store. One such piece of history, other than the original boards of the building that are hand painted with the word Sagaponack on them, is a mail sorter, also known as a kiln, that stands at the entrance. "That was the original kiln from the Post Office," says Karen with excitement.

And it is the little details like that which make the Sagg General store such a special place to be. Other renovations to the store are new, slab heated floors, a new roof, extensive basement repair, new equipment for cooking all picked by the Thayers, and a completely new design. The chef is Lori Hurley of East Hampton and, of course, the food and baked good are all fabulous, all made in the kitchen with the freshest ingredients.

The next generation for the store is already in place as well. The Thayers have three daughters, Mimi, Lindsey and Kasey. Lindsey is a teacher while Mimi is still in school, studying Studio Art and History at Coastal Carolina University, and has an interest in working at the store. Kasey, who is currently a bookkeeper at the 1770s House, is also planning on working at the store.

Even during the short time that I was speaking with the Thayers, customer after customer would walk up to the store to see if it was open, to which Karen would smile and let them know that it would be open the next day. "I really want this the store to be a place where people can come in even just to say hello and catch up. I saw two people run into each other here that live in the same building in New York City and never once actually met one another. It's that kind of thing that I really hope will happen at the store," Karen says.

All of the pieces are now in place. All of the coffee is stocked, the kitchen is ready, the employees are bustling and hustling and the shelves are filled with homemade cookies and baked goods. And now, after much anticipation and even sadness from their loyal customers who have been going through Sagg General Store withdrawal during the renovation (this writer has experienced such a withdrawal) the Sagg General Store is back and all of us are very happy that it is.