BUSINESS · BABYLON VILLAGE

Hampton Watercraft and Marine has bought five properties along the Babylon Village waterfront, on Post Place and Fire Island Avenue, and plans to run a full-service marine operation there. It is the company’s fourth location on Long Island and its first in western Suffolk.

Owner Tony Villareale, a lifelong Hampton Bays resident, said the plan is everything: selling, servicing, docking, storing, repairing. Services open gradually, starting with winter storage next month.

He bought it, he said, for the location — a village with a real connection to boating, with access to the Great South Bay and Fire Island and a Shell fuel dock on site.

The parcels run to nearly 1.6 acres with about 1,400 feet of dock space: room for roughly 46 boat slips, 10 Jet Ski slips, and winter storage for about 35 boats. Six buildings totaling around 11,000 square feet sit on it, including a sales office, a marine repair building, and a three-story office and apartment building.

How it nearly didn’t happen

Its previous owner, Rory Hogan of Riteway Marine Solutions, pleaded guilty in November to grand larceny and a scheme to defraud. Suffolk prosecutors said he took possession of clients’ boats to sell and then failed to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds. In June he was sentenced to five years’ probation and paid a combined $477,000 in restitution to six victims.

Hogan told Newsday that personal troubles ran the business into the ground. “It snowballed into a mess,” he said. He says he has now paid more than $1 million in restitution, and he is back selling and repairing boats as Riteway Marine Solutions in Babylon, near his former properties. He would like to build it back up.

Clearing the sale meant resolving a foreclosure and a bankruptcy. Investment firm Bridgehampton Equities bought the five parcels for $4 million in June — closing days before a foreclosure auction was set to happen — and sold them to Hampton Watercraft in July. The price Villareale paid has not been disclosed and is not yet in property records.

Bridgehampton’s chief executive, Jason Zimmerman, said he had looked at combining neighboring parcels for condos, but the extra acquisitions and the zoning change would have made it long and expensive. He kept it a marina instead.

“Waterfront properties — they’re not making more of them,” Zimmerman said.

Why it matters past the sale

Marina land is exactly what tends to become condos. Suffolk County started a waterfront protection program last year, $9.5 million over three years, that pays commercial owners who agree not to develop their land beyond its current use.

Meanwhile the business itself is under pressure. Boat registrations on Long Island fell 7% last year, to 84,704. New York spending on new powerboats, engines, trailers and accessories dropped about 5%, to roughly $1.1 billion.

Villareale, who carries Boston Whaler and Tiara Yachts at his other locations, was blunt about the conditions. “Consumer confidence can swing so quickly either way,” he said. “Mentally, people need to feel good about the world to buy a boat.”

Richard Buono, the Island Associates broker who put the deal together, said marinas rarely come up, and when they do they sell fast — unless something is wrong. “This one not having any business for over a year made it very difficult to sell,” he said.

Villareale said he wants to join local organizations and bring the Babylon marina into his company’s annual Take a Vet fishing event, set for September 20.

“We’re the new guys,” he said. “We know that we need to earn our stripes there, and I just ask for a little bit of time.”

Sources: Newsday · Hampton Watercraft and Marine