Community Corner
Town Offers Crest Avenue House for Sale
Council will consider new bids for two Cosey Beach building lots at its June 7 meeting.
As town officials move to sell one foreclosed property in the north end, they might accept sale bids for two others near the beach.
Paul Hongo, director of town affairs, said the Town Council would be asked to approve bid offers on two lots at Cosey Beach at its June 7 meeting.
Meanwhile, the town plans to put up for sale a house at 194 Crest Avenue seized through a tax foreclosure. However, town officials say the small Cape Cod with a detached garage at the end of Crest Avenue probably isn’t worth very much because the former occupants left it in poor condition.
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Hongo said the house fell into the town’s hands last summer when the bank holding the mortgage didn’t pursue a foreclosure on it after the former owner walked away.
But the house was occupied by rental tenants who refused to leave. Hongo said the town had to go to Housing Court to have them evicted.
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"There was resistance as I remember," he said.
He did not describe the damage the former tenants did before they left in December, but the house is now boarded up and the Department of Public Works made sure the heat was on and the pipes didn’t freeze over the winter.
The Cosey Beach properties are both buildable lots and measure about 100 feet by 75 feet. Hongo said although they are not on the beach-side of the street, they both could have water views of Long Island Sound from second floor windows.
The properties generated controversy in December when the town made a first attempt to sell them, but they received only one bid that Finance Director Thomas Thompson considered too low. Hongo said when Thompson told the Town Council he recommended they reject the bids and rebid the sales, the bidder grew irate and caused an angry scene.
But Hongo said the new bids, submitted by a different bidder, are substantially higher than the original ones.
Hongo said when he asked the Town Council on May 4 for authorization to sell the Crest Avenue house, the council told him to do it the same way as the Cosey Beach properties.
