On a muggy July afternoon in Cutchogue, Thomas Juul-Hansen is deep in discussion with his team about a rogue beam.
The Danish-born architect is considering flattening the angled ceiling in the second-story hallway that leads to the primary bedroom of the home he’s building, hiding a wooden beam that drops just below the rafters, which he calls a “bit of a car crash.”
His business partner, Johnny Donadic, and long-time friend and advisor Louis Buckworth, are proponents of maintaining the “vernacular of the barn,” as Donadic calls it.
“You just witnessed genius,” Buckworth says of the beam-related brainstorm. Juul-Hansen is walking the four of us through the property, where the building’s wooden frame cuts a stark figure against the surrounding farmland and tangled web of trees and undergrowth.
Their hope is that each decision made since acquiring three adjacent plots of land facing the Long Island Sound in 2022 will justify a sale of what will be the most expensive spec home ever listed on the North Fork.
Juul-Hansen, whose glasses tend to fall from his forehead to the bridge of his nose as he talks animatedly about one design aspect or another, is the face of the project. He made a name for himself with designs that shaped some of Manhattan’s trophy condo buildings, including Gary Barnett’s One57 tower on Billionaires’ Row.
The group rejects the term “spec home,” though most spec developers do. Much of the belief in what they’re doing hinges on Juul-Hansen’s ability to deliver a home that an end-user would have already spent millions on in renovations. Donadic, whose day job is as a high-end general contractor, grew up in the area and has quietly amassed his own impressive real estate portfolio on the North Fork.
“I know there is not a human being on the planet who could re-create this for the same price that we’re going to sell it for,” he said. (What that price will be is up for debate — the last estimate the developers offered to The Real Deal was $10 million.)
Juul-Hansen, who is wiry with intense blue eyes, vacillates from self-deprecation to, in his own words, arrogance. “I’m a very hard critic of myself,” he says. “If I think we’re making something spectacular, it’s because it’s fucking spectacular.”
It is the pair’s first foray into residential development. After years of charging developers for their services, they are now on the other side of the ledger as 50-50 equity partners, with a single construction loan for financing.
But aside from themselves, Juul-Hansen and Donadic are also betting on the area as a whole, and that what they’re building will look like a steal come five years from now.
“There’s always a first,” Juul-Hansen said. “There’s always something that hasn’t been done before, but it should be done.”
A tight squeeze
If there is one thing backing up the developers’ bet, it’s the rapidly appreciating value of the land on the North Fork. And how little of it there is to go around.
The area, which starts 75 miles east of Manhattan and stretches 30 miles farther in that direction toward Orient Point, has long been known more for its charming cottages and vast acres of farmland than the grand compounds and crowded nightlife of its Southern neighbor, the Hamptons.
For a long time, the North Fork’s more chilled reputation extended to its home values, which remained stable as developers rushed to buy up every buildable parcel of land on the South Fork.
But as city dwellers fled for greener pastures in the wake of the pandemic the North Fork became a destination in its own right and home values skyrocketed from 2020 onward. Juul-Hansen and Donadic seized on the wave of interest, scooping up over 11 acres across three plots for $4 million in 2022, which already looks to be a deal as median home prices have jumped another 22 percent to $1.1 million this year.
“The timing was great,” said Juul-Hansen.
“Twenty-foot ceiling heights does not say humble to me.”
Two of the plots are waterfront, while the third, where construction on the first home is underway, abuts their southern borders and faces over 32 acres of preserved farmland. (The 7,000-square-foot home will be on the non-waterfront plot, and the group has been cagey about the other two plots — at the moment, the plan is for Juul-Hansen and Donadic to each take one for personal use.)
A narrow strip of gravel driveway runs three-quarters of a mile from Oregon Road down to the plots, which Buckworth says “would be the most immaculate drive” once it’s lined with trees, adding the outside entry to the group’s tendency to talk in superlatives when referring to the home.
Land like this, zoned residentially, is not easy to come by in the Town of Southold, which has already preserved over 10,000 acres according to the town’s website. Only two residential parcels are currently listed for sale, one of which is less than an acre and neither of which is on the water, according to data provided by Douglas Elliman’s Melissa Principi.
“If you can find a new build ground-up, it’s rare,” Principi said. “Buyers are willing to pay a premium for brand-new, and I’ve been seeing, for the most part, that it’s working.”
The Town of Southold, which spans from Laurel to the tip of the island, has also cracked down on development opportunities as builders have eyed the area’s untouched farmland. In 2022, the town passed a series of zoning reforms limiting the gross floor area by lot size, hamstringing developers looking to go big or fill a plot with multiple homes.
“Even if you had six acres, most of the time, it would have to stay 70 percent open space,” Principi said. “You’re really, maybe only going to get two homes if you’re a spec builder on those six acres.”
A “humble” home
For Juul-Hansen, there’s no reason to cram the lot that makes up 6023 Oregon Road with as much square footage as possible — that’s for the Hamptons.
“We’re always trying to find a way to fit in by trying to make our work vernacular without making it look like it’s something that was built 200 years ago,” he said. “I could have built a 25,000-square-foot house on this lot if we wanted, but we don’t think that’s what the North Fork is about.” (He later clarified this was hyperbole, but that he did not come close to maxing out the allowable floor area).
That means balancing out a desire to match the understated nature of the North Fork with building something that is also unrivaled for the area.
Juul-Hansen in an interview called the project a “humble house,” at which point Buckworth jumped in to clarify the remark.
“Twenty-foot ceiling heights does not say humble to me,” said Buckworth, a seasoned luxury broker who has led high-end projects like Zeckendorf Development’s 520 Park Avenue. (The ceilings are in fact 22 feet high in the living room.)
“Even though the dollar amount might be super high because they’re a piece of art, they will fit with the landscape so beautifully and seamlessly,” said Corcoran’s Sheri Winter Parker, who sold the land to the team. “It’s what a high-end North Fork buyer is looking for.”
At the property, which the team hopes to complete by spring 2026, Juul-Hansen walks through his vision: the glass-doored four-car garage for car aficionados squeezed for space in the city, the double-height living room separated from the kitchen by a two-sided fireplace and the windows by German specialty manufacturer Schüco that have just been installed.
The property has many similarities to Juul-Hansen’s own home just five minutes away, which he built and moved into in 2022, from the travertine finishes in the bathrooms and pool deck siding to the bleached oak flooring. He is banking on a buyer that doesn’t want “the show and the scene” of the Hamptons, but “who may be very, very wealthy.”
“They want what I want,” he said of his ideal buyer. “There are a lot of people in the creative world, like myself, who appreciate that sort of humble setup, even if it is possibly extraordinarily expensive.”
A new North Fork
It’s no coincidence that Juul-Hansen’s partner on the project is Donadic, who also has a house in the area and in recent years has laid the groundwork for making the area more palatable to a new class of buyer.
Donadic, along with a group of local investors, has bought up and revitalized North Fork Table, a farm-to-table restaurant in Southold, and The Shoals, a bayfront 20-room hotel. Juul-Hansen worked on both projects, which have reopened in the past few years.
“You guys are just showing off,” Buckworth says as the group of us cruises from the restaurant to the hotel in his Range Rover.
But at The Shoals, sitting at a picnic table overlooking the Shelter Island Sound, Donadic points out that while their Oregon Road project is “uncharted territory,” so was the hotel and North Fork Table. “There’s a need for it,” he says.
Recent sales and listings bode well for their goals. A spec home on Shelter Island asking $15 million went into contract in the middle of July, which would be a record sale on the patch of land less than a mile from where we’re sitting (“Our house is a steal,” Juul-Hansen texted later when I sent him the listing).
Two other bayside waterfront properties recently hit the market asking $12 and $23 million, respectively, although it remains to be seen what they actually trade. Off the water, Winter Parker is trying to sell a 148-acre estate for $36 million, nearly double what it went for in 2008.
None of those are being shopped as spec homes, though, leaving Juul-Hansen and Donadic in uncharted waters.
“People are extraordinarily fearful of doing what we’re doing, and correctly so, because it hasn’t been done,” he says.
But minutes later when he assesses what he and Donadic are creating, he wonders: “How can we fucking lose?”
