Murray and Fairway To Return to Poxabogue

After sitting vacant for a year, the clubhouse restaurant at Poxabogue Golf Center is slated to reopen this summer under once and future tenant Dan Murray.

In a resolution Tuesday sponsored by all five members, the Southampton Town Board accepted Murray’s bid to bring the Fairway Restaurant back to Poxabogue.

“We’re very, very happy,” he said Friday. “It’s a very good feeling to get back to where we were.”

Murray, a Bridgehampton resident, said that he plans to reopen by Memorial Day, May 30, or by June 1. Either way, he has just about two months to get everything in place, but he was confident it could be done. “Being there before, I kind of have an idea of how everything goes,” he said.

He said he intends to return with a lot of the same staff, but there will be some new faces. “Obviously, after a year your going to lose some and you have to pick up some others,” he said. The restaurant will once again be open seven days a week year round, with the exceptions of Christmas and Thanksgiving, he said. He also operates at

Southampton and East Hampton towns bought Poxabogue, a 9-hole golf course and clubhouse in Sagaponack Village, with Community Preservation Funds to save it from development, closing on the purchase in March 2004 for $6.5 million.

Murray’s Fairway Restaurant closed in March 2010 when he and the course operator the towns contract with could not come to an agreement on a new lease. The course management company ceded purview over the clubhouse restaurant to the towns and the owner of in Mattituck was to take over the space, but that plan faltered when mold and water problems were discovered at the clubhouse.

Once the necessary clean up and repairs were completed, the towns went out to bid for a new restaurant tenant once again. Southampton Town took charge of the bidding process, but received no responses to its first two requests for proposals.

Southampton Town Councilman Chris Nuzzi said Thursday that the town eliminated the monthly rent minimum from the bid requirements on the third try and received two responses, including one from Murray that proved to be the most suitable. “He’s certainly accustomed to what the expectations are,” Nuzzi said.

A committee of stakeholders in Poxabogue, including representatives from East Hampton, Southampton and the village of Sagaponack, chose Murray’s proposal because the scale and character of the operation is just what they were looking for, Nuzzi said. “It was a small-town little breakfast/lunch place,” he said. “It wasn’t a flashy establishment.”

The request for proposals forbid serving alcohol and dinner service, he noted.

Now that the towns have taken care of mold removal, repairs and upgrades dealing with the cesspool, basement, water infiltration and electrical wiring, Murray will be charged with finishing and furnishing the interior of the restaurant and kitchen, Nuzzi said.

Murray said that though he had disagreements with the golf course operator in the past — disagreements that led to the closure of his restaurant — he is not holding a grudge. “The bottom is that you don’t live in the past. You live in the future. Whatever happened, happened."