City Orders Waterfront Access Restored

City Building Official Jim Turcio has given a City Point condo association until next week to repair and reopen a boardwalk so neighbors can walk along the harbor — as the condo association was legally required to do more than two decades ago.

Turcio’s order is the latest chapter in an ongoing battle between neighbors and the Harbour Landing gated community. The battle has pitted condo owners’ desire for privacy against the public’s right to the waterfront.

Turcio noted in a certified letter to Harbour Landing Condominiums President Vincent DiLauro that the original zoning permission to build the complex back in 1980, in the form of a planned development district, required the association to maintain the walkway along the property’s waterfront so the public could use it.

Since then, the association has at times blocked part of the walkway with a locked gate. (It still does today.) In 2011 Hurricane Irene shattered many of the boardwalk’s planks, making much of it unwalkable. The association has failed to repair the boardwalk, and has thwarted one neighbor’s efforts to replace planks.

City Point neighbors — especially dog-walkers who like to stroll along the water — turned to city officials for help this year after failing to obtain a response from the condo association. City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg turned the matter over to Turcio for enforcement after DiLauro told her by email that the association ​“could not find anything at all about the walkway” in its documents, then failed to respond to her follow-up email providing the documentation.

Gilvarg said this week that the federal, state and local versions of the Coastal Management Act all required the city to insist on public access when a developer builds housing on public land.

“I’ve run out of patience,” Gilvarg said this week. ​“What good are the laws if nobody listens to them? The coast waters are a public trust resource. They belong to everybody.”

In an interview at the third-generation (soon to be fourth-generation) shop he runs in the Hill, Columbus Auto Body Works, DiLauro said he and fellow condo owners fear for their safety if the boardwalk is open to the public at all hours. He called it an after-hours magnet for crime. ​“Years ago you had drug problems. You had prostitution going on,” he said.

He said he’s open to a compromise with having gates that would open from sunrise to sunset then stay locked overnight. (Gilvarg said the city has already granted that permission, and that state law limits the association’s liability there.) But DiLauro also said the association has many other overdue repairs to attend to, so it would still take at least 18 months to get to the boardwalk.

“I’m not going to promise you [exactly] when,” he said. ​“But it will get done.”

If as promised the city enforces the new order, the association may not have the luxury of waiting.

The repairs are long overdue, in the view of Karen Nakamura, one of the neighbors leading the quest for waterfront access.

Nakamura, an associate professor of anthropology at Yale, lives around the corner from the condos on Howard Avenue. She loves historic City Point. She can walk her beagle Momo (the name is Japanese for ​“Peaches”) at 2 in the morning and feel safe, she said. The neighborhood is filled with dog walkers.

Nakamura and Momo set off from for their home Tuesday afternoon for one of their regular strolls. The stroll demonstrated why Nakamura loves the neighborhood — and how the standoff with Harbour Landing thwarts what could be a scenic-loop route.

They ascended the steps to the ​“public access pathway” that begins at the Pequonnock Yacht Club (pictured at the top of this story) in the parking lot of Shell & Bones (former Chart House) restaurant. They walked a few yards along the water …

… until they came to a metal gate. ​“There was a time when the neighbors would walk another 150 yards” past this gate (which neighbors had to agitate to have opened), recalled Nakamura, who has lived in the neighborhood for 11 years.

“This is [Hurricane] Irene,” she said, pointing to gaps caused by missing planks. Even if they were repaired, walking would be difficult because of the overgrowth …

… as well dead branches and leaves dumped from the association’s property onto the path. In any case, a second gate past the debris remains locked, and was locked before Irene.

At this point, Nakamura and Momo usually retrace their steps back to South Water Street and walk the long way around to the other side of the complex, where the association of the newer Breakwater Bay Condominiums next door to Harbour Landing has indeed built a boardwalk. The 32-unit Breakwater complex, first opened in 2010, shares the gated-community land with Harbour Landing. But Tuesday Nakamaura didn’t need to walk the long way around because a Harbour Landing condo owner has offered access for Nakamura to pass through. So she and Momo entered a gate onto the property, heading toward the privatized waterfront. (Around that time one of the owners emailed DeLauro to report that ​“that Asian woman with the beagle just got in” by allegedly ​“climbing” in.)

Nakamura and Momo passed Harbour Landing’s covered swimming pool. She said neighbors heard from the association that owners didn’t want the public walking by the pool while people are sunbathing. Hence the second locked gate.

The boardwalk passes close by the pool, although at a drop of a foot or two. Vin DiLauro confirmed the privacy concern: ​“How would you feel if you were sitting at a pool and you had people walking by? Come on,” he said. But he also said the association would still agree eventually to open access as long as it could lock the gate at night to keep out crooks — and if Breakwater Bay erects a gate on its end of the boardwalk, too. Nakamura said she understands but doesn’t accept the pool-privacy concern: She couldn’t — and wouldn’t want to — prevent Harbour Landing residents from walking by her front yard. That’s not what community is about, she argued.

Nakamura pointed to the mix of planks and gaps in the blocked-off boardwalk. ​“You see the planks with nails upside down?” she said. She had tried to fix the boardwalk herself there. Arriving at the boardwalk from the southeast (through the Breakwater Bay path), she would come and ​“put some boards in before dawn” on her own initiative to replace planks damaged in Hurricane Irene. By night those planks would be pulled up, so she couldn’t complete the job, she said. She tried gluing some planks; then the association nailed three wooden boards above the boardwalk to block off the entrance from the Breakwater Bay path. ​“It was a big battle. I decided I had better things to do; my blood pressure was getting high.” So she and fellow organizers began contacting public officials to take action.

Back outside the gated community, Nakamura ran into neighbor Gina Gambardella, who was walking her Pekingese Marilyn and a friend’s boxer, Mia. Gambardella called Marilyn, Mia and Momo, each of whom is 8 years old, the ​“Three Musketeers. They grew up together.”

The two women and three dogs proceeded back toward the water from the boardwalk built by Breakwater Bay …

… until arriving at the barrier and broken path at the Harbour Landing border. ​“Danger — Construction Site,” a sign read. ​“No Trespassing.” Nakamura, who was thwarted in trying to make it a construction site, noted the irony.

Her desire for a more open, connected neighborhood is shared by the president of Breakwater Bay, Stephane Girard. In an email message sent to the Independent, Girard (pictured) wrote that he’d like to see City Point ​“move beyond this us-versus-them dynamic.”

“Rather than living in a bubble, we feel that it is in the long-term interest to have open dialog and engagement,” he stated.

He said he’d like to see the boardwalk reopened: ​“I’m a runner and I love the tranquility of an early morning’s run or stroll through our seaside neighborhood. The sea-walk would be a great extension for that experience. Restoring the sea-walk to permit uninterrupted access for the enjoyment of all responsible, law-abiding members of the greater City Point neighborhood or general public for that matter is in all our interest.”

“That said, he added, ​“genuine concerns over basic respect for others’ property, security, trash/litter and let’s face it, costs to maintain it forward have to be borne equitably by the entire neighborhood.”