Make New York Post a Preferred Source Long Island’s famed Oheka Castle will sell to the highest bidder next month — finishing its transition from grand Gilded Age manor to a gavel-ending auction.
The Concierge Auctions sale, where prospective buyers must pony up $750,000 to even have a chance at the 113,000-square-foot mansion, will take the estate out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy — and give the buyer not only bragging rights as new lord of the manor, but also open doors to lucrative building opportunities.
Curbed first reported news of the sale, which will conclude on Oct. 27.
Located in Huntington, the town has approved 95 luxury condos for the easternmost 5 acres of the 23-acre property. At an expected $1.8 million and much more a pop, the residential addition could pull in millions annually and spur more condo development on a site adjacent to the Oheka property.
The auction will leave by the wayside former owner Gary Melius, a local developer and political heavyweight who filed for bankruptcy last summer to try and keep his creditors at bay.
The filing showed just how dire Oheka’s financial picture was — with the hotel, restaurant and event space having less than $60 in its bank account, no cash on hand and carrying more than $63.5 million in debt.
Because Melius couldn’t pay off the massive balances under the Chapter 11 filing, the federal bankruptcy court signed off on a public auction. Leading up to this outcome, Melius spend decades as Oheka’s owner, pouring millions into its restoration, even dodging a mid-day assassination attempt there in 2014.
“Forty years here, $50 million in, and now nothing,” the 81-year-old Melius told The Post.
Melius said he is still living at the 127-room estate and did not indicate what his future plans are.
Hedge fund Taconic Capital is considered the frontrunner for the property since it holds the mansion’s $60 million defaulted mortgage. It can also use the amount as bidding currency while others will have to start from scratch, according to US bankruptcy code.
Taconic Capital, started by former Goldman Sachs partners Frank Brosens and Ken Brody, has even more skin in the game as owner of an adjacent 13.3-acre development site purchased in December from the country club next door, property records show.
With Taconic owning the Oheka Castle land and the adjacent property, it isn’t a stretch for the parcels to be put together and revive a proposal that Melius and golf legend Jack Nicklaus tried to float years back, for 100 units to be built on the parcel next door.
Whoever wins the property will apply their $750,000 deposit to their purchase price, while other bidders will get their outlays back.
Banker Otto Kahn, a billionaire in today’s dollars, built the massive estate for himself and his family just before the Roaring Twenties kicked in and Oheka Castle helped set the decade’s chaotic pace. Kahn’s dinners, often for 50 or more guests — each assigned their own personal valet — turned into parties that could last for days, featuring a high-society mix of Hollywood stars, opera singers, European aristocracy and an abundance of flappers.
Oheka Castle started the, “Can you top this?” craze in megamansion building over 100 years ago, as bankers and robber barons couldn’t import French limestone and Italian marble fast enough trying to outdo each other in opulence along Long Island’s North Shore.
Oheka topped them all as the biggest estate along the Gold Coast, beating neighbors including the Vanderbilts and the Morgans by tens of thousands of square feet.
The castle maintains its status as the largest residence ever built on Long Island, even withstanding billionaire Ira Rennert’s 110,000-square-foot Sagaponack spread, completed in 2003.
Oheka Castle is extraordinary, from its French-style exterior to its 34 guest suites featuring period-style furniture and high-backed beds under crystal chandeliers. Its 2,300-square-foot ballroom overlooks grounds that include reflecting pools and fountains set amid formal French gardens.
After being a party palace in the 1920s, Oheka engaged in more serious pursuits, as a school for radio operators during WWII and a vacation retreat for low-paid NYC sanitation workers before the war.
Orson Welles used the mansion and grounds for Xanadu in “Citizen Kane,” where thinly veiled newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst hosted Hollywood’s elite in the 1930s.
NYC society and old-money families have long held their weddings at Oheka Castle and its grounds. Celebrities who also held their nuptials there include Kevin Jonas, who married his sweetheart Danielle, with his brothers Nick and Joe serving as his best men.
Former politician Anthony Weiner married Huma Abedin there in a service officiated by former President Bill Clinton, although that one didn’t work out so well. In April, New York Giants wide receiver Darius Slayton wed Olympic track-and-field star Anna Hall wed there in April in a “fairytale-style” ceremony.
