Zooming in on battle of one-percenters
11 Barnacles Way zoning kerfuffle heads to appeals board Tuesday
NORTHEAST HARBOR, April 5, 2021 - The legal notice has been posted.
The abutters have been notified.
The lawyers have primed their billing machines.
IT’S TIME TO RUMBLE!
The final town adjudication of the Graces vs. Evans (Otium LLC) imbroglio will be decided by the Zoning Board of Appeals April 6 (Tuesday) at 5 p.m. assuming enough members show up for a quorum. Then we will await whether one of the parties takes the matter to court.
Evans is the owner of 9 Barnacles Way who acquired the lot and then proceeded to have architect Matt Baird design two edifices which would be envy of a small college. They purchased an abutting property – 11 Barnacles Way – to complete a campus consisting of three stand-alone houses.
Only no one told the Graces, who own the house at 10 Barnacles Way. Last June they appeared at the planning board to say legal notices of such application for construction did not reach them and that it was their opinion the proposed house next to theirs is out of scope for a “non-conforming” use.
For a recap of the battle of the One Percenters, here is my previous post: https://theqsjournal.com/2021/01/09/nonconforming-is-not-a-dirty-word-the-graces-of-neh-think-otherwise/
Here is the town notice: “The Town of Mount Desert is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. You can call in through any of the listed phone numbers or connect with a computer via the web link.”
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88975016470?pwd=UlBhbFlTTDJFeGlWWUwvRjU2OWhGQT09
Unfriendly neighbors rooted in NEH history
NORTHEAST HARBOR - One problem for enormously rich people is that they tend to summer in places crawling with journalists, like Elisabeth Bumiller whose 1996 article, "It's a Summer Thing … a Season of Separation" was a delicious send-up of the wealthy in their seasonal hide-aways. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/26/nyregion/it-s-a-summer-thing-for-like-minded-new-yorkers-a-season-of-separation.html
If it were just a social comment, that would be easy. Northeast Harbor is redolent with examples of disharmony, shameful destruction of historic homes and outright scandal.
“The 1990's have brought horrifying change. A handful of enormous cottages, all built by newcomers, have sprouted up from the bracken ferns of the "Gold Coast" along Somes Sound,” wrote Bumiller. “ ‘I think you call them billionaires,’ said one Northeast Harborite, whose family has summered at the resort since the 1890's.
“… the focus of most of the old-money ire is one William P. Stewart, an elusive New York investor who recently bought one of the original homes on Somes Sound, tore it down and put up a new one. He then bought and renovated the house next door, Lilac Hill.
“Worse, Mr. Stewart has shown no interest, at least in the view of the old line, in the community's clubs and cocktail parties.
“A tough crowd, this: One old-monied Philadelphian said that Mrs. Astor, who has been coming to Northeast Harbor since the early 1950's, is considered "very new," although "a wonderful woman."
Brooke Astor was certainly not a fan of William P. Stewart Jr.'s Lilac Hill. She and others were not fans of his showy July 4 fireworks display over Somes Sound either.
Turned out William P. Stewart Jr. was the son of the founder of Metlife William P. Stewart who actually built the fortune. The ultimate tribune of taudry, the venerated New York Post, reported that William P. Stewart III sued his father, claiming he had squandered more than half his $100 million inheritance. Skipping a generation was a favorite estate tax strategy. The Post went on to report that "William Jr. Stewart III claimed his allegedly finagling father used looted money to finance extravagances including a 154-foot yacht and sprawling pads in Sutton Place, Maine and Bermuda, according to court documents."
Of course, Brooke Astor, who died at 105, posthumously became the source of one of the most celebrated celebrity scandals when her only son was convicted of looting her estate.
The criminal case came about after one of her twin grandsons, Marshall’s son Philip, a college professor, filed a lawsuit in 2006 to remove Marshall as her guardian. He had turned “a blind eye” to his mother, Philip Marshall alleged, “intentionally and repeatedly ignoring her health, safety, personal and household needs, while enriching himself with millions of dollars.”
Among other accusations, the lawsuit charged that Mr. Marshall had neglected to fill medical prescriptions, limited his mother’s caregivers and allowed her to sleep on a couch stained with urine.
Tony Marshall was found guilty of 14 counts of grand larceny in 2009, on the prosecution's claim that he was trying to increase his wealth to meet wife's demand for more money.
“In a six-month trial that captivated New York with clashing accounts of tawdry greed and filial devotion, a parade of witnesses that included boldface names from the worlds of society, politics and finance as well as maids and nurses, took turns castigating and defending Mr. Marshall and the lawyer, Francis X. Morrissey Jr., who did estate planning for Mrs. Astor.
“Concluding 12 days of deliberations on Oct. 8, 2009, a jury in State Supreme Court in Manhattan convicted Mr. Marshall, including first-degree grand larceny for giving himself a $1 million retroactive raise for managing his mother’s finances. Mr. Morrissey was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy and of forging Mrs. Astor’s signature on an amendment to her will.”
Charlene Marshall, whom Brooke Astor called “Miss Piggy,” took ownership of Brooke Astor’s house in Northeast Harbor in 2003. It is now listed under the Anthony Dryden Marshall QTIP trust as 46 percent owner. The public records do not reveal who owners the other 54 percent. https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/03/astor-settlement-anthony-marshall-reaction-brooke-charlene
It's not above the QSJ to grovel for gossip, but I’m a piker compared to the bevy of writers at the New York Post and Vanity Fair. For a deeper understanding of the Brooke Astor legacy, I recommend Meryl Gordon’s Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach.
A more recent spat involved the billionaire Mitchell Rales who sued his neighbor in 2015 to block access to a pier and beach on the Rales property in Seal Harbor (MDIslander photo above). That suit was settled in April 2016. The stories ran only in the Maine newspapers and the Boston Globe, and did not reach the New York Post, the ultimate authority for such matters.