pleasure beach

Cottage residents lose 11-year battle

By Richard Weitzel

May 31, 2007 - Connecticut Post

 

STRATFORD -- Liz Bolick thought she would never really have to leave.

But the 49-year-old Greenwich resident cried Wednesday as she and her family packed up boxes and prepared to move out of the two-bedroom cottage on Long Beach where they have spent every summer since 1990.

After an 11-year legal battle with the town, the Bolicks and a dozen other families have been ordered to vacate their cottages by this weekend as the town takes possession of the 35-acre Long Beach peninsula.

The families -- there were 60 at one time -- held out hope for a last-minute reprieve from the courts, but that reprieve never came. After numerous legal appeals, the state Supreme Court affirmed the town's right to evict the cottage owners.

"I think they should be happy the settlement agreement reached allows them not to pay back rent," Town Attorney Richard Buturla said. "All they have to do is leave with their possessions and a very long court fight is over."

A month ago, eviction orders were issued for the remaining families still using cottages. They are expected to leave Friday and Saturday as their furniture and other belongings are loaded onto moving trucks being brought to the island by a military-type landing craft.

Bolick said spending summers in the 50-year-old cottage bas been "like living in a dream.

"I cry and I pack, and visit with some of the other people still here on the island," Bolick said. "My 11-year-old son, Matthew, woke up this morning and cried, too. He knows we will never be able to find another place like this. It's just so sad."

Bolick said it isn't the cottage owners' fault that a 1996 Father's Day fire rendered impassable the Pleasure Beach Bridge in Bridgeport, which provided vehicular access to the Stratford cottages.

Since then, the beach has been accessible only by boat or walking over a narrow stretch of land from Stratford.

"It's absolutely devastating to leave a place where we spent every summer, and where 15 children of families here grew up together over the summers," Bolick said. "It's just not fair."

Bolick's husband, David Mezias, said cottage owners were willing to pay for the land, but the town refused.

"We made many offers over the years and just wanted the chance to stay," Mezias said. "I think it would have been in the town's best interests, too."

Town officials see it differently, however, saying the cottage owners have been squatters who stopped paying rent since the town decided not to renew their leases in 1996.

"We are very happy this long-standing litigation is finally over and now the town can decide what to do with the land," said Town Council Chairman James Feehan, R-9. "For more than a decade, the cottage owners sued the town and said we were wrong, but the courts agreed with us, and it's over after all these years," Feehan said.

Now that the last of the cottage owners will be gone, Feehan said, four options for the land are under consideration. It could either be developed; sold to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, which has expressed a serious interest in the past; exchanged with the city of Bridgeport for Sikorsky Memorial Airport; or left alone for passive recreation.

Long Beach and Bridgeport's contiguous Pleasure Beach represent about 25 percent of the undeveloped land along the state's shoreline, officials said.

Several years ago, the federal government offered $3.9 million for the land. The cottage owners offered $5.8 million for the property, plus an additional $500,000 for purchase of emergency vehicles to be located on the peninsula.

But the Town Council decided at the time to hold onto the land and keep fighting in court.

"We're going to have to take a good, long hard look at what direction to go in," Feehan said. "At least we finally have that control." Robert Sullivan, a Fairfield attorney who lived at a cottage on Long Beach for years but hasn't been there recently, said he's just glad the litigation has been resolved after a long fight.

"We had hoped to be able to stay here forever, but it just didn't work out that way," Sullivan said Wednesday. "Now, we just have to get our furniture and whatever else is left and get out."

Bolick said she will miss a place where there are no cars, televisions or the modern-day chaos that "has invaded our lives."

"The magic of this place can't be duplicated," she said. "This doesn't exist anywhere. We may have to leave, but at least we had the past 17 years. I'll always cherish that."

 

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