Bank delays auction of nursery property

An auction of the former Shelter Island Gardens Nursery on St. Mary’s Road that had been scheduled for last Friday has been postponed until May 4. But Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty has said he’s doubtful it will occur then.

Suffolk County National Bank has foreclosed on owner Sean McLean, indicating through a legal notice that it had a $1.06 million lien on the property.

St. Mary’s Road neighbors have been vocal about what they call an eyesore in their area, hoping that a new owner would step in and clean up the property. It’s overgrown and there’s graffiti on several buildings.

A spokeswoman at Balfe & Holland, the Melville law firm representing Mr. McLean, declined to give any reason for the postponement. Mr. McLean could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Dougherty defended the lack of action on the town’s part in getting the property cleaned up, saying that the property owners were “disputing the facts” about whether the property had been abandoned, making it difficult to identify an appropriate time at which the town can take action.

Mr. McLean listed the property for sale in 2008. In May 2010, he said the nursery wouldn’t be reopening its retail business but that his Aberdeen Design Group would continue to provide landscape design services.

Then in August 2011, neighbors asked building inspector Bill Banks to inspect the property and submitted pictures of what they considered derelict and unsafe conditions. Mr. Banks said he found no reason to take any action against Mr. McLean, only suggesting that the grass could be cut and minor repairs could be made to buildings. But there was no mandated action.

The issue was an administrative matter for the Building Department, Mr. Dougherty told the Reporter at the time.

“It’s in their hands and I’ll keep my eye on it,” he said.

“We have that power” to require that properties on Shelter Island be adequately maintained, the supervisor commented in an interview last week, pointing to the abandoned Boylan house on Manhanset Road that was demolished early last summer under town orders.

But in the case of the nursery, although there hadn’t been walk-in business for several years, Mr. McLean said last summer his wife Erin still was selling nursery stock from the property through her landscaping business. And former Town Supervisor Al Kilb Jr. declared at a Town Board work session that he had seen landscape workers convening at the nursery to begin their work days.

The topic of the nursery’s legal status was on some minds this winter as the Town Board continued to work on a zoning amendment to clarify the rules for regulating nonconforming business uses in residential areas. St. Mary’s Road neighbors seized on the opportunity at a public hearing to voice their ongoing concerns about the nursery property.

One of the leaders of the opposition, Dee Clark Moorhead, said she hoped a new owner wouldn’t operate a nursery at the site. It’s the existing code that would apply to the site, commented Mr. Dougherty. While the amendment, as drafted in a recent version, would give nonconforming businesses more than a decade of non-use before it lost its legal protection, the current code provides that a property loses its status if it is abandoned for a year.