Even East Hampton’s most luxurious retailers are having a difficult time keeping up with their rents on the island’s posh shopping strip, and some are going so far as to give up their coveted spots. Gucci, Brooks Brothers, Cole Haan and Calypso Home are among the stores ditching their pricey digs in advance of the typically busy summer season. With rents as much as $200 per square foot, retailers have always struggled to turn a profit in East Hampton, but brokers say that in normal economic times, brands were willing to take the loss. “The chains want an East Hampton store just for advertising, to be able to put it on their letterhead,” said Lee Minetree, a senior vice president at Saunders & Associates. Now, priorities have shifted and there are close to 30 shuttered storefronts on East Hampton’s main shopping stretch. [Post]

The legendary Demel Bakery is planning to walk away from a 10-year lease at the Plaza hotel’s grand concourse and is suing developer Elad Properties for fraud, the Post reported. Demel is claiming that Elad lured the Viennese bakery to the below-ground mall under false pretenses in February 2008 — namely, that the location would put it in the midst of retailers like Harrods, Louis Vuitton and Gucci. Elad, which purchased the famed hotel for $675 million in 2004, has not followed through, according to the suit, filed last week in Manhattan Supreme Court. The basement’s Plaza Retail Collection, part of a $450 million hotel renovation, is now “populated with unknown… retailers or — worse — vacant, unleased space,” the suit claims. Demel, which stopped paying rent to the Plaza in February 2009, is the only restaurant in the 160,000-square foot mall and could leave within weeks, according to sources, and other retailers are threatening to follow. [Post]