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Oheka Castle is famous enough to be recognized from a Taylor Swift video. The stranger part is what the October 27 auction actually includes.
Oheka Castle has excellent celebrity shorthand.
Taylor Swift filmed part of the “Blank Space” video there. The Long Island estate has also appeared in productions including Succession and Royal Pains, and its Jazz Age architecture makes the Gatsby comparisons almost unavoidable.
But the October 27 auction is more interesting once you stop treating Oheka as a very large piece of pop-culture scenery.
Concierge Auctions’ live listing describes a property of roughly 112,895 square feet with 127 rooms, 34 guest suites and about 23 acres. There is an on-site restaurant and bar, wedding and event infrastructure, formal gardens, and a ballroom with a 24-foot ceiling.
In other words, this is not simply a mansion waiting for someone to decide where the sofa goes.
It is already an operating hospitality and events property.
The listing says Oheka will sell to the highest bidder on October 27. Registration requires a $750,000 bidder deposit, and the successful buyer owes a 6% buyer’s premium on top of the purchase price.
Then there is the part that makes the sale considerably more complicated than “famous castle changes hands.”
Concierge says a Town of Huntington-approved development project on 5.13 acres of the estate is designed for 95 luxury condominium residences.
That does not mean 95 finished apartments are waiting behind the ballroom.
Local reporting notes that additional Planning Board site-plan review is still required. The useful distinction is that the auction includes a real development component, but the future buyer is not purchasing a completely finished condo project.
Oheka’s scale has always been slightly absurd. Built for financier and arts patron Otto Kahn and completed in 1919, the French Renaissance-style estate is described by the auctioneer as the second-largest private residence ever built in the United States. Its more recent life has included weddings, hotel guests, dining and film shoots, following a restoration that Concierge values at $40 million.
That history is part of the appeal. It is not a substitute for the economics.
The buyer is getting a National Register landmark, a functioning event-and-hospitality operation, an enormous physical property and a development plan with its own approvals and remaining process.
Taylor Swift is the clickable part.
The 95 condos are the part that makes you realize this auction is about much more than owning the place where “Blank Space” happened.
Hero image: Phillip Ennis Photography / OhekaCastleNY