On September 22, 2025, the Southampton Village Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation voted 4-1 to approve a plan that will change the physical shape of Jobs Lane for the first time in decades. The lone dissent came from the board's own chairman, Mark McIntire. Susan Madonia, who owns the neighboring Ann Madonia Antiques, argued the design didn't fit the block's historic character. Resident Sarah Latham put it more bluntly, telling the board "I think that Jobs Lane deserves better." The board approved it anyway.
Nearly a year later, that vote hasn't produced a single new brick. The project has conditional site plan approval as of this summer, with no confirmed groundbreaking date, which means the fenced-off lot at 38-42 Jobs Lane will likely still be a construction zone heading into next year. But the vote set a pattern worth noticing, because everything else changing on this street right now follows the same shape: nothing arriving on Jobs Lane this year is actually new. Every name filling a storefront has already had a first act somewhere else.
What the Vote Actually Changes
The site in question, known to most residents as Jobs Lane Court, is a 1970s-era courtyard with a fountain that had sat overgrown and mostly vacant for years. The plan from owner East End Holdings LLC, designed by architect Siamak Samii, replaces it with three adjoining two-story buildings built to read as one structure, creating three new storefronts fronting the sidewalk with office space above. The existing courtyard doesn't disappear. It moves to the rear of the property and becomes restricted to building tenants, with a five-foot walkway connecting Jobs Lane to a new plaza, six additional parking spots, and access to the public lot behind it.
That last detail is the one residents pushed back on hardest. A courtyard that used to be open to anyone walking by becomes private space, while the public-facing side of the block gets denser and more retail-forward. Madonia argued the scale doesn't match the village's comprehensive master plan. The board's majority decided otherwise. Whatever gets built here in the next year or two won't be a blank-slate addition to Jobs Lane. It's a rebuild of something that was already there, just newer and more commercial.
The Names That Look New Aren't
Walk two doors down and you'll find FENIKS at 75 Jobs Lane, which reads on the surface like a brand-new restaurant. It opened in 2025. But the chef behind it, Douglas Gulija, spent 28 years as the chef and owner of The Plaza Cafe before starting over under a name that means phoenix in Croatian, a nod to his own heritage and to the idea of rebuilding rather than debuting cold. The restaurant spans two floors, with a dining room, a six-seat chef's tasting counter set in front of the open kitchen, and an upstairs cocktail lounge. It's a second chapter dressed up as a first one.
Leallo, the sustainable clothing retailer known for pre-shrunk cotton and cashmere, added a Jobs Lane storefront this year, but the brand itself was already established as an East End favorite elsewhere before expanding here. Even Southampton Playhouse, on Hill Street in the heart of the village rather than Jobs Lane itself, follows the same arc. It reopened in February 2025 as a nonprofit after an extensive renovation, but the building first opened as a movie house in 1932. What's new is the IMAX screen and three Dolby Atmos theaters, plus programming like its Playhouse Parlor talks and a Road Warriors film series that recently screened Taxi Driver. What's not new is the fact that this has been a gathering place on this stretch of the village for close to a century.
Line them up and the pattern holds for the redevelopment project too. Jobs Lane Court isn't new construction on raw land. It's a rebuild of a courtyard that's been there since the 1970s. On this street, "new" almost never means new. It means somebody, or something, getting a second try at the same address.
What's Actually Held the Street Together
The businesses that haven't changed are the ones giving the new arrivals something to measure themselves against. Topiaire Flower Shop & Candy Shop at 51 Jobs Lane has been run by owner Erin Hatrick for more than 30 years. Dazzelle, the women's dress shop at 47 Jobs Lane, has been owned by Ellen Irving for more than 20. Herbert & Rist Wines and Liquors at 63 Jobs Lane has served Southampton since 1933. Stevenson's Toys & Games at 69 Jobs Lane and Aloof Icon at 87 Jobs Lane round out a stretch where multi-decade tenure is closer to the rule than the exception.
Hatrick herself has noticed the shift around her. Describing the current retail mix on the block, she said "We've never seen more stores. There are a lot more open full time, year-round." That's the real story of Jobs Lane right now. It's not a street being hollowed out and refilled with strangers. It's a street where the constants, the shops that have been there since your parents were shopping there, are staying put while the spaces around them keep turning over to people already known in some other version of this business.
The Southampton Arts Center at 25 Jobs Lane fits the same mold. It occupies a 127-year-old building designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury, mounts four major exhibits a year, and received a $3.4 million gift in 2025 that will keep its programming running well past this season. It's the anchor institution on a street that keeps proving it doesn't need brand-new names to feel current.
Even the street's own name plays into this. The small sign at the corner of Jobs and Main reads "Jobs Lane, Opened 1664," a reference to Job Sayre, the farmer who walked his cattle down this path toward pastureland by Agawam Pond centuries before any of these storefronts existed. A street that's been reinventing the same half-mile since the 1600s isn't going to start producing genuinely new stories now. It produces new chapters of old ones.
Walking the Block This Fall
If you're heading down Jobs Lane this season, expect the 38-42 stretch to stay fenced and mid-construction rather than finished. Conditional approval isn't a start date, and nothing in the current filings points to a groundbreaking before next year. On either side of it, Ann Madonia Antiques, Topiaire, and the rest of the block's longtime tenants will be exactly where they've always been. Southampton Playhouse's fall lineup gives another reason to end an evening a block off Jobs Lane, and the Southampton Arts Center's current exhibit season continues uninterrupted at number 25.
None of this is really about newness. It's about a street that keeps proving its character comes from repetition, not reinvention from scratch. That's a harder thing to see from a drive-by than from actually living here, which is part of why it's easy to miss unless you're paying attention year over year.
I've watched this particular half-mile change and not change for most of my life, and it's one of the reasons I trust my own read on where a village is heading before the rest of the market catches up. If you're curious what any of this means for property on or near Jobs Lane, or anywhere else in Southampton, James Giugliano would be glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
