It's the New Year's party you're not likely to be invited to. Unless, that is, your name is Moby, Mariska Hargitay, or you were college roommates with Boykin Curry, the financier-playboy who's building an elite private community in the Dominican Republic, called Playa Grande.

Curry & Co. are throwing a major New Year's bash in the DR to celebrate their demolition of a recently acquired hotel—the Occidental—set to be torn down come January. The lavish 10 day affair is being planned by event impresario Bronson Van Wyck, who's stretching his party acumen to contend with the challenges of the raw parcel of land. Not content to rough it, the co-owners of the retreat and guests are being catered for in the Manhattan-style to which they are accustomed, flying in chef Gabrielle Hamilton of downtown restaurant Prune for the occasion. Crates of champagne are being specially imported, and guests can expect an extravagant fireworks show set on dramatic cliffs over the ocean as the clock strikes midnight. And as the socialites ring in the new year, their wrecking ball will pave the way for tropical domination.

Playa Grande, a $50 million Mosquito Coast fantasy, was conceived by Curry as an elite experiment. In March, the New Yorker's Ben McGrath wrote a piece on the Caribbean paradise and the artistic, utopian ambitions of the property's creators. Curry, along with 20-odd investors, purchased the 2,200-acre tract of land on the wild north shore of the DR and is hell-bent on making it into a bacchanalian Bohemian Grove for entitled 30-something Manhattanites. He also cites the Hamptons in the '70s as a major source of inspiration. A tipster tells Radar that Curry & Co.'s plans for a colonial-style takeover are proceeding apace. In August, the cadre of Park Avenue darlings added a fading hotel to their lair, with plans to knock it down to make way for development come January.

Co-owners of the raw land read like a roll call at Michael's, with machers like Charlie Rose and Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. And then there's playboy Alex von Furstenberg, designer to the Bush gals Lela Rose, Bronson van Wyck, Curry's wife Celerie Kemble, Moby, and architect Richard Meier, who signed on to transform parts of the land into a soothingly luxe Perry Street-in-the-jungle. As McGrath noted in the New Yorker, Curry envisions the retreat as a "creative person's utopia," vowing, "we are going to keep it bohemian, and not filled with dentists who got lucky in the stock market."

Those lucky dentists and the rest of the un-anointed can sob quietly into their flat champagne this weekend as Curry and his friends enjoy their 10 sun-drenched days of hedonism in their own VIP commune.

Photo: Patrick McMullan