NIMBP: Not in My Back Pond!
Neighborhood preservation can be worth $20 million.
Does Courtney Ross-Holst think Georgica Pond is her own private lagoon? When she heard that Marjorie Chester wanted $15 million for a vacant three-acre plot next to her East Hampton spread, Ross-Holst, the widow of Time Warner conglomerateur Steve Ross (she was one of several billionaire suspects in the great pond-draining mystery of 2003), apparently didn’t relish the prospect of some Wall Street whippersnapper’s McMansion marring the landscape. So, sources say, she decided to preemptively offer about $20 million for the lot. And her view was saved.
—Jacob Bernstein