It’s been a rocky road for the club Zero Bond recently, and it looks like it’s only going to keep getting rockier. The high-profile club, which has courted visits from high-profile clientele such as Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, and Tom Brady, continues to clash with Hampton residents over the amount of attention it is bringing to the community and the legality of its nighttime partying.
The village of East Hampton passed a new law that critics say is designed to keep the club Zero Bond—a star-studded favorite of Mayor Eric Adams—from opening in the sleepy upscale community. The legislation forces all “eating and drinking establishments” to close at 11 p.m. in the village’s historic district, where the Manhattan-based members-only social club had been planning to open another hotspot.
The nightclub had been in talks about opening an East Hampton location. “Let’s face it, Zero Bond is really a nightclub,” village administrator Marcos Baladron said at a meeting where the law passed on May 17. “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck, and there’s no ducks allowed here,” he said, according to the East Hampton Star.
The hip Noho club—which has hosted the likes of Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian—had been in talks for months over opening in the village’s centuries-old Hedges Inn. But when neighbors who caught wind of the potential deal in April became infuriated, it made things all the more complicated. Residents said that the quaint bed and breakfast is no place for bottle-popping A-listers, paparazzi, and idling cars.
At the hearing, they lined up to describe why they wanted to shout “last call” at the exclusive social club. “They would not be open to the public; they’d be open to celebrities and everything that brings; their entourages, the hangers-on, fleets of black Suburbans and Escalades, and crowds of paparazzi,” neighbor Robert Burch said.
“We’ll have a series of private members-clubs-slash-nightclubs in a historic district within a residential district, which would be a disaster.”
The new legislation makes the venue less attractive to nightlife operators like Zero Bond. A lawyer for the inn, Chris Kelly, told The Post last month it was likely specifically drafted to keep out the club, a venue that Mayor Adams is ironically and contradictingly known for munching a veggie burger while rubbing elbows with the city’s rich, powerful and stylish.
Since news of the possible deal broke in mid-April, the village board received at least 30 letters supporting a law that limits nightlife hours. “We are big fans of quiet, dark nights in our residential neighborhood in the historic heart of East Hampton Village,” Cynthia Gowen Crawford wrote in a letter to the board. “It’s disturbing when a self-interested, aggressive group comes to town with an agenda and doesn’t care about neighbors or community or local regulations or restrictions.”
“Eleven o’clock, doors closed,” Mayor Jerry Larsen declared.
Larsen said he had heard rumors that Zero Bond might try to open an Italian restaurant in the inn.“They’re making a big mistake by leasing it to Zero Bond,” he said. “Neighbors are going to see right through that.”
Joan McGivern, a lawyer representing the inn, argued at the hearing that businesses that sell alcohol are beholden to New York State Liquor Authority laws, not ones set by local municipalities, according to the East Hampton Star. “The future of the Hedges Inn is an important and sensitive topic to everyone involved—including Mayor Larsen, my family, and all of the Village’s residents,” the owner of the inn, John Cumming, told the paper after the legislation passed.
“I am confident that the next 40-plus years of this iconic inn will be as bright as its past.”
