Trucks And Heavy Equipment Descend, And Within Hours, An End To Bay Avenue Blight

Five giant trucks rolled onto Bay Avenue in East Quogue on February 7, to help rid the neighborhood of what has been one giant headache: the town-owned blighted house at the end of the block.

“It looks like they’re going to be finished in the next four hours,” neighbor Frank Lenihan said Monday morning. Lenihan had led the charge to urge the town to fulfill its promise and remove the crumbling, graffiti-covered structure.

Purchased in 2006 as part of an overall park acquisition, the house was described as having potential by town officials. It could serve as a community center, a home base for the East Quogue Historical Society on the first floor, with two affordable apartments upstairs.

But time passed and there was no home base. No affordable apartments. Nothing happened.

Well, not nothing: The building fell into disrepair, deteriorating more and more as years of neglect wore on. It became an attractive nuisance, a spot for kids to gather and act out at night. Most of its glass was shattered, and boards tacked over doors and broken windows served as more invitation that deterrent.

Last summer, a dozen neighbors met with The Press at the site in an informal, spontaneous rally urging the town to act.

Among those present that day, picking their way through grass and glass for a group photo, was local historian Carol Combes. She articulated some of the history related to the edifice.

Its second story was once a separate bath house that was hoisted onto the original structure during the late 1930s.

A woman know to the historian only as “Mrs. Hamm” owned the house from 1949 until her death in 1992. There were four cottages on the property, and she rented rooms in the big house, eventually adding on to the front of the first floor for space where she did hair. “Everybody in town had their hair done in that beauty parlor,” Combes recalled. She remembered, as a child, “We played canasta on that side porch day in, day out.”

Marilyn Aldrich, the next door neighbor since 1968, also spoke with The Press that day, expressing the periodic fear nighttime noise from the abandoned building incited. This week, she said she was so pleased that the demolition was accomplished in just a matter of hours. “It’s been a long time coming — about 15, 16 years,” she said.

“I loved the house as long as there were people in it, but, vacant like that, I was really afraid,” she clarified. Now, she said, she’s looking forward to seeing how the full park is landscaped.

The entire tract of Bay Avenue Marine Park runs to the water, where Weesuck Creek flows into western Shinnecock Bay. A portion of it was purchased with Community Preservation Fund monies, with the house carved out and bought with general funds in 2006. The CPF is a dedicated fund that garners revenue from a 2 percent tax on most real estate transfers in town. At the time of the purchase, money from the CPF was only available for the acquisition of open space, farmland and historic properties. If CPF had been used back then, its original rules would have required the structure’s removal.

Ironically, CPF would cover the cost of demolition, so last year the house was transferred to the town’s CPF holdings.

The bulk of the 1.6-acre property cost $2.2 million; the town paid $189,000 for the house.