Dan's Papers - January 11, 2008

A house party on New Year's Eve is always fun. It's especially fun when it takes place at a mansion on Deerfield Road in Water Mill called the "HYT ME Estate." It is even more fun when there are endless drinks, Manhattan socialites, buses to bring you anywhere you want to go and gourmet food buffet.

However, the Southampton Town Board stopped this New Year's Eve party from happening. Talk about party poopers. The HYT ME Estate, after months of preparation for a New Year's party, was given notice that they could not have more then ten people in the five-bedroom house on New Year's Eve.

Was there justice in this decision? How could the Town of Southampton do such a thing to a New Year's Eve celebration? What right do they have? Could they have stopped your party or mine? Just what is going on here?

Well don't go jumping to conclusions so quickly. The Town of Southampton is not a bunch of party poopers who never got invited to the "cool" New Year's Eve party while growing up and now want payback. What actually happened is that the Town of Southampton is not allowing a nightclub business to operate in a residential neighborhood.

Last summer, over Memorial Day weekend, the HYT ME Estate threw a party where hundreds of people showed up, and among those people was actress Heather Graham. For about $200 you too could go to one of the many parties they threw and live the high life at a Hamptons mansion for a night. It wasn't for charity, it wasn't a one time special event, it was just one party after another. All of the applications would be mailed in to confuse the town and at first the Town would approve almost everything. But as the parties became more and more frequent, the Town started to take notice and the violations started to be issued.

A man known as Birdie Williams founded the company that owns the HYT ME Estate. HYT ME stands for Hungry Young Talent Management and Entertainment and has very little to do with the Britney Spears song "Hit Me Baby One More Time." According to their website, they are a "media and entertainment movement led by industry leaders who come together to collectively lead the entertainment and digital revolution."

You can debate all you want on who those industry leaders are and how they are going about leading the digital revolution, but what is really more important here is that HYT ME knows how to throw one hell of a party. The gossip magazines would report on how glamorous the parties were and who the celebrities were, such as Ja Rule and Mims, they attracted.

The house itself has over four acres of landscaped property, three full bars, two professional kitchens, a 3,000 square foot media room, a cabana, a roof deck, a gunite pool, spa, sand volleyball court, state-of-the-art sound system and elegant fountains. The entire house is designed with a good party in mind and the reason is because the house was never intended to be a living space, but a party place.

This raises the question of the legality of such a house, because in reality the HYT ME Estate is essentially a private home that has been transformed into an exclusive nightclub, complete with bouncers, coat check and a very high cover charge. In other words, it's a business, a very cool business, but a business nonetheless, and the Town Board has an obligation to prevent this kind of thing from getting out of hand.

The rallying cry of the HYT ME Estate and its supporters has mostly been about every American's right to throw a sweet party, but the violations have been piling up for the owners with four outstanding on the property to date. The cancellation of their New Year's party just days before New Year's Eve could be argued as a message that the town means business about keepings its mansions as mansions and not nightclubs.

On January 16, the lawyers will do battle with both sides showing up in court to discuss the placement of a temporary injunction on the house, which would prevent the owners from throwing large parties. In the meantime, the party hats will remain on the tables and the booze will remain in the bottles as the HYT ME Estate tries to figure out where it is headed in 2008.