A Look That Says
‘North Fork’

A Look That Says ‘North Fork’

By Marcelle S. Fischler

MANY scenic areas have a signature style. There are, to name a few, the Cape Cod style, the Malibu Beach house, the Hamptons shingle cottage.

After building a few homes on the North Fork, the owners of Three Pillars Development — Edwin Cadamartori, Carlo Argila and Hugo Cano — noticed a gap in the market. Unlike the Hamptons, the North Fork, the 60-mile rod of land that runs from Riverhead to Orient Point, didn’t seem to have an indigenous style.

“In terms of the nostalgia and the history and authenticity of the North Fork and what it represents for Long Island,” Mr. Argila said, “this should be the place that has its own style.”

To provide this distinctive brand in a series of expensive homes geared toward second-home buyers, the developers, whose construction company is based in Southampton, chose a design to blend in with the agricultural surroundings. “What we really wanted to do was develop a home that was really in tune with the historic past and the agrarian landscape,” Mr. Cadamartori said.

For inspiration, they turned to the 734 barns that dot the countryside, particularly the rectangular two- or three-bay hay barns built through the 19th century in the style that English settlers had used.

Now, Three Pillars is building two $3 million 5,000-square-foot homes on one-acre lots carved out of a former potato farm in Peconic. The houses have vertical plank siding, metal “standing seam” roofs and cupolas.

To replicate the soft patina of age, one home has the weathered silver tones of reclaimed barn siding that is up to 100 years old. The other retains the rectangular shape and simple gables of a barn, though the white-painted siding and Malibu-style garage doors give it a more contemporary feel. Read more…

'North Fork' classic

By Aimee Fitzpatrick Martin

The once bright red paint on the 150-year-old barn siding is chipped and faded to silvery gray. A ghost of lettering from an old advertisement lingers. The initials, W.B., perhaps the mischievous handiwork of a 19th-century farmer's child, are embedded in a piece of the knotty wood. Now that the overgrown trees and brush on the surrounding former potato field have been cleared, passersby are wondering whether the weathered barnlike structure on Indian Neck Lane in Peconic is new or has stood there for centuries. "It's been interesting to watch people drive by and do a double take," says Hugo Cano, standing near the front entrance of the 5,000-square-foot building, which upon closer inspection is clearly a new house, despite its salvaged barn-wood exterior.  Cano is not a farmer or historian. He's a 30-year-old real estate developer from the Smithtown-based Three Pillars Group who, along with partners Carlo Argila, 33, and Edwin Cadamartori, 34, hopes to change the architectural landscape of the North Fork.

A signature style

Just as upscale locales like the Hamptons, Nantucket, Mass., and Malibu, Calif., have their signature architectures, the North Fork is deserving of its own style, say these three childhood friends from the Farmingville-Holtsville area. Their vision combines barnlike exteriors that honor the area's early agrarian traditions with the uber-modern interiors that they say their target market - urbanite second-home (and third- and fourth-) buyers - demand. The Three Pillars Group is so certain it is on to something that it has trademarked the name "The North Fork Home," given it a tag - "SoHo Meets NoFo" - and copyrighted designs for two houses it has just completed in Peconic.

"Rise" is the group's name for the house on Indian Neck Lane, with its reclaimed barn siding, aged-copper weather vane and two cupolas. Around the corner on Leslie Road is "Pure," a minimalist-looking 5,200-square-foot barn-style structure with whitewashed vertical cedar siding, oversized buff sandstone steps and sleek metal and glass garage doors. Each four-bedroom, six-bathroom house sits on about an acre of land and overlooks the merlot vineyards of Raphael Winery.

High-end prices

At an asking price of $3 million each, these are the most expensive inland custom houses on the North Fork, says Sheri Winter Clarry, a senior vice president at the Corcoran Group's Southold office and exclusive listing agent for the properties. "The exteriors are influenced by the hay barns that early English settlers built centuries ago, while the two-story interiors have an open, loftlike plan and contemporary details," Argila explains. "Our hope is that these homes will influence and challenge other builders, from the low end to the high-end luxury market, to think out of the box in designing new homes. We'd love to kick off a new architectural trend on the North Fork." Read more…

Sustainable Series: Becoming Efficient and Saving Money with National Energy Audits

Founded by Sachem grads, audit and solutions company is industry leader.

By Jason Karpf

Last week we looked at a few of the clean energy measures the Town of Brookhaven and the Town of Islip have taken in recent years. With the help of the Sustainable Institute at Molloy College we were able to track some of the renewable energy (RE) activities in the Sachem Area, but that is only one portion of the clean energy movement.

Another large portion of the movement is energy efficiency (EE). For many, EE is the first step residential homes should take in an effort to save money and become green, and it's National Energy Audits job to see that they do. 

National Energy Audits (NEA), with corporate headquarters at 601 Portion Road (a string of second-floor offices above the Wachovia Bank in the eastern corner of the Waldbaum's Shopping Center), boasts being the nation's largest home energy audit and solution company. Interestingly enough, the company is less than two years old and was founded by three Sachem graduates.

"We're not even in business two years and we've gone from three partners to over 200 employees in five states," said Carlo Argila, President of NEA and one of the three founding members. "The industry is one of those things – like the dotcoms before things blew up – there is a lot of excitement behind what we are doing."

That excitement spans investors and renewable energy companies, but the ones right now that benefit directly from NEA's services are homeowners. NEA services homeowners with a staff of trained and certified auditors that visit homes and identify where energy is being wasted, whether it be poorly sealed windows, leaky attic access, old insulation, or heating and cooling systems.

"Over two-thirds of the heated and [air-conditioned] cool air you pay to heat and cool your home is wasted," Mr. Argila said. "It's used on the backyard."

According to Argila, an average audit takes roughly three hours to complete. Several tests are administered, including a blown-door test where, in layman's terms, a huge fan acts as a vacuum and sucks in all the home's air to identify leaks. Right now, though, if you were looking to schedule an audit the quicker you act the better – NEA is booked for the next month.

Shedding light onto the company's success, and full calendar, is cost. For instance, a 30 percent Federal Tax Credit courtesy of the 2009 stimulus package is just one of a handful of incentives NEA customers can take advantage of. Coupled with that, an audit conducted by NEA's runs between $49 and $250, considerably lower than choice competitors.

"It's very inexpensive to audit," Mr. Argila said. "We are a volume-based business. We take a very different approach and really take that approach to make sure a mass number of people can get them done." Read more…