Tepper's Replacement Mansion Moving Slowly

Billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper reportedly spent $43.5 million to buy a 6.45-acre estate last year from Joanne Corzine, the ex-wife of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

By June, his Gibson Lane mansion, which was just about 20 years old, was replaced by excavation equipment — Tepper opted to to make way for .

Tepper's architect told the Sagaponack Architectural and Historic Review Board that his client complained that while he could see the ocean over the dune from the second floor of the existing mansion, the same could not be said about the first floor. But this week the estate was nothing more than an expensive hole in the ground, still lacking a foundation.

Aerial photos taken Tuesday reveal little progress on Tepper's planned 11,000-square-foot-plus main house, nearly twice as big as the mansion that once stood there, according to Sagaponack Village Building Department records. Add in the finished basement, and the new house will really be 15,000 square feet. Plans also include a 1,000-square-foot-plus three-car garage with a basement, a 550-square-foot pool house and a 270-square foot tennis pavilion.

Present at the site now is a construction trailer, a port-a-john lying on its side, a mound of excavated sand and dry wells. Tepper is apparently far from his move-in date.

The estate is right across the street from a parcel Billy Joel reportedly bought from the late actor Roy Scheider in 2007, then . Joel also owned the parcel to the west but sold it in 2010. It too was razed and is an empty plot at the moment.