For years, North Fork residents have speculated about what billionaire landowner Stefan Soloviev ultimately intends to do with the more than 1,000 acres he has quietly amassed across the peninsula and Shelter Island.

In a lengthy and unusually candid interview with New York Magazine published this week, Soloviev appears to provide some answers — and many of them are likely to infuriate those concerned about the future of the North Fork’s farmland, open space and small-town character.

Earlier this year, the Soloviev Group, through a spokesperson, told the North Fork Sun that “We remain committed to long-term land stewardship and the area’s agricultural heritage.”

This week, the billionaire scion of a New York City real estate empire seemed to take a different tack, telling the magazine, “I’m a land trader. Maybe it’s not what people want to hear, but that’s the truth.”

At one point in the interview, he compares his land acquisition strategy to that of Daniel Day-Lewis’ ruthless landman in There Will Be Blood.

The profile offers perhaps the clearest public window yet into how the real estate heir currently views the region he has spent years buying into.

Rather than portraying himself as a steward of the North Fork’s agricultural landscape — as he has in the past and did again in a statement to the North Fork Sun earlier this year — Soloviev repeatedly describes himself as a businessman pursuing opportunity wherever he finds it, expressing little concern about local criticism and making clear that preservation is not what motivates his investments.

He also mocks Shelter Island residents who criticized him for buying and later closing the only pharmacy on the island, saying island residents “have themselves to blame.”

North Fork residents have watched for years as the Soloviev Group acquired vineyards, farmland and development rights, all the while wondering what larger strategy might be taking shape. Gone are many of the familiar themes that have accompanied previous public discussions of the family’s East End holdings — pledges of community partnership, preservation and respect for local character.

Instead, Soloviev speaks bluntly about opportunity, value and long-term investment.

Asked why he continues buying property on the North Fork despite describing it as a relatively small piece of his far-flung business empire, Soloviev had a straightforward answer.

“How pathetic would it be if in my backyard there’s an opportunity and I don’t take advantage of it?” he said.

The interview also sheds light on some of the strategies that helped him amass vast acreage.

During his early years buying farmland in the West, Soloviev sometimes brought along his young son, Quintin, when meeting with farmers he hoped to persuade to sell. The child, he said, helped make landowners feel more comfortable.

Years later, Soloviev recognized the similarity in a tactic used by the Daniel Plainview character in There Will Be Blood, who took his adopted son to negotiate land deals.

“It wasn’t evil like that,” Soloviev told the magazine. “I look a little different than people out there. He put people at ease,” he said of his son.

In a North Fork Sun investigation published in February, the Sun used tax bills, GIS maps and GPS location data to identify 49 parcels of land across more than 1,000 acres owned by Soloviev on the North Fork and Shelter Island.

At the time, a spokesperson for the Soloviev Group told the Sun in a statement that, with his new proposed conservation subdivision in Cutchogue, “more land will be preserved … than in any other comparable effort on the North Fork. We remain committed to long-term land stewardship and the area’s agricultural heritage.”

Related: A closer look at Stefan Soloviev’s North Fork land portfolio

Soloviev continues to pursue plans that could eventually bring dozens of luxury homes to portions of his North Fork holdings. A 372-acre conservation subdivision in Cutchogue would preserve 267 acres of farmland and include 47 new houses, 18 of them luxury waterfront lots on Long Island Sound.

In an application filed earlier this year for a second project, the Cole Harbor Conservation Subdivision, Soloviev’s representatives asked the Southold Town Planning Board to begin sketch-plat review of a 147.7-acre project in Cutchogue that would create 13 residential lots, along with one conservation lot and one beach access lot.

While the two proposed conservation subdivision projects remain years from realization, Soloviev showed little interest in engaging broader questions about what such a development might mean for the character of the region.

Asked about concerns over the scale of the 372-acre proposed subdivision, he suggested the issue was not something that occupied much of his attention.

“It’s not really a thought every night before I go to bed, that’s for sure,” he said.

The profile also suggests a diminishment in the role played by Soloviev’s former wife, Stacey Soloviev, who for years served as the public face of many of the family’s East End ventures.

On Shelter Island, where the family acquired the Chequit, Jack’s Marine and the Shelter Island Heights Pharmacy, Stacey Soloviev often acted as a bridge between skeptical residents and a billionaire ownership group viewed warily by some locals. At one public event, she acknowledged that her former husband had “his own visions” for the area but said she had been able to “tone that down.”

The magazine profile suggests that whatever moderating influence she may once have exercised has vanished. As the New York writer put it, “the mood has soured.”

Stacey Soloviev could not be immediately reached for comment.

Over the past year, several decisions involving the family’s Shelter Island properties have sparked outrage on Shelter Island, most notably the closure of prescription services at the island’s longtime pharmacy.

Soloviev “looked off in the distance” when the topic of Shelter Island came up, according to the profile.

“Yeah, there’s just a couple of things there,” he said (“with a chuckle,” according to the magazine.) “Minor.”

When the reporter asked why he was laughing, Soloviev replied that “it’s just, like — it’s a big company, and there’s stuff that’s a lot more exciting than others to me. Maybe a New Yorker who’s in that crowd wants to say, ‘Hey, come to my hotel and drink my wine.’ That’s not me.”

Asked about the backlash over the pharmacy closing, Soloviev said that “it is what it is. And I’m not apologetic about that at all.”

He said he was not willing to subsidize the pharmacy to build goodwill in the community.

“That’s not me. I have a charity. I have a foundation,” he said. “That’s a business.”

Soloviev said that his ex-wife and his son Hayden should not be blamed for the closure of the pharmacy.

“Stacey gave it a shot for two years, and it didn’t work,” he said. “I mean, come on, it would’ve closed in two years. I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, shit, the people were getting their prescriptions online anyway at that point. So they have themselves to blame.”

He said the decision to close the pharmacy was his alone.

“People got that wrong. ‘The billionaire’s son shuts the pharmacy down.’ That’s a f—ing idiot thing to say. Are you kidding me? I shut it down. That’s me. That’s my decision.”

The overall portrait that emerges from the interview is not of a developer seeking local approval, but of a businessman largely indifferent to whether he receives it.

“I have a goal. I’m going to go to that goal,” Soloviev told the magazine. “And if I show up in a town and people don’t like me, I don’t get my feelings hurt by that.”