Huge Hamptons House Riles Upscale Community

SAGAPONACK, N.Y. - On a patch of Long Island that was fertile soil for generations of potato farmers, one of America's wealthiest men is laying concrete for a home bigger than the White House and Bill Gates' mansion combined.

Bigness shouldn't necessarily trouble the year-rounders or the rich and famous who summer in this quintessential Hamptons hamlet. Sagaponack is already dotted with huge new houses.

But this is also a community that still sends its children to a little red schoolhouse, and Ira Rennert's plan for a 29-bedroom palace on the Atlantic Ocean has united Sagaponack against him.

Building a house that size is like "sticking a thumb in our eyes," says author Kurt Vonnegut, who has had a home in Sagaponack for nearly 25 years. "I want to live in a village that looks and feels like a village."

Vonnegut, who blames town leaders for approving the project, is talking about selling his home, roughly a mile from Rennert's 64-acre spread.

A secession move is afoot in the unincorporated hamlet within the town of Southampton, as is a court fight to block construction.

Some Sagaponack people suspect that Rennert, an Orthodox Jew and donor to various Jewish charities, may actually be building a religious conference center.

Many of Rennert's critics are also Jewish, among them real-estate developer Al Bialek, who is leading the opposition and rejects any suggestion that anti-Semitism is a factor. Rennert's house is just too big, he says.

`People find it disturbing'

"He's building a small city," says Steven Gaines, author of "Philistines at the Hedgerow: Passion and Property in the Hamptons," published just in time for the past summer season's reading. "And he's building it on a gorgeous chunk of land. I know he owns it and he can build one house or 30 houses . . . . But people find it disturbing."

It's not clear whether Rennert intends to make the Sagaponack spread his permanent residence.

Rennert sent a one-paragraph letter to The Southampton Press, a weekly newspaper: "I understand a number of people have inquired as to my intended use of my property in Sagaponack. I am writing this letter to confirm that I intend to use the property as a private residence for the use and enjoyment of my family."

Otherwise, the businessman who is ranked No. 396 on the Forbes 400 list, with an estimated $500 million fortune, has been silent.

Rennert runs the Renco Group, a holding company with estimated annual gross revenues of $2.5 billion. One of its holdings is the company that makes the Jeep-like Humvee used in the Gulf War.

Rennert's house is the largest, but not the first, to set off a dispute in the Hamptons, a string of seaside communities a few hours' drive east of New York City. The area's beauty and cachet have long led "the last person in to want to close the door behind them," says Barbara Kelly, curator at the Long Island Studies Collection at Hofstra University.

Rennert's permit to build such a huge house "is a wonderful example why you can never write the perfect law," she says. Bigger than the White House

Called "Fair Field," the limestone mansion will have 39 bathrooms, a 164-seat theater, two tennis courts, two bowling alleys, a basketball court, a maze of underground tunnels and a restaurant-size kitchen with five refrigerators.

Microsoft chairman Gates, by comparison, recently completed a 40,000-square-foot house in Medina. The White House is 55,000 square feet. Rennert's house covers 100,000 square feet.

Rennert's neighborhood is zoned for single-family homes only, and the size of his project has made some neighbors skeptical.

Southampton Town Supervisor Vincent Cannuscio concedes that "labeling it a single-family home seems anomalous." But he says Rennert "abided by all rules and regulations. Everything was done under the glare of the sun."

Bialek, who moved to Sagaponack in 1986, lives just up the road from the Rennert spread, which he says will affect everything from property taxes to well water and "totally destroys the historic character of Sagaponack."

The Sagaponack Homeowners Association is appealing to the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to rescind Rennert's building permits; a ruling is due this month. If the homeowners lose, they're poised for a court fight.

Bialek also started a petition drive in October to have Sagaponack secede from Southampton and create its own village government so it can apply stricter zoning laws.

"Southampton Town Hall is 10 miles away and doesn't know Sagaponack," he says.

Southampton, for its part, recently passed laws limiting future one-family homes to 20,000 square feet, Cannuscio said.