Point Judith home can’t stay or go

MOVING DAY: Robert Lamoureux plans to spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to move the house at 1444 Ocean Road, his lawyer said. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
MOVING DAY: Robert Lamoureux plans to spend “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to move the house at 1444 Ocean Road, his lawyer said. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

For sale: three-bedroom contemporary, like new, with ocean views and a fascinating legal history. Now in its second location.
That could soon be the proposition in Narragansett as the $1.8 million house notoriously built on popular Point Judith parkland, then ordered removed, could be back on the market early next year.
The home’s owner, Warwick developer Robert Lamoureux, intends to move the structure roughly 25 feet to the north to get it off Rose Nulman Park, after failing to convince park trustees to let him buy the land it sits on or accept an exchange.
Moving the house at 1444 Ocean Road will be delicate. It involves not only lifting up the structure and negotiating it around coastal wetlands, but digging up and moving its septic system and building a bridge over some of those wetlands for a driveway.
Attorney John C. Revens Jr., partner with Revens, Revens & St. Pierre, the Warwick firm that represented Lamoureux, described the cost of the project only as “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Lamoureux had contemplated moving the house since the Rose Nulman Park Foundation received a court order to have it removed. He received approval from Narragansett officials for the move in June 2013 and then from the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council in February.
But now that he’s committed to going ahead with the move, he finds himself back in court.
Environmental group Save The Bay has appealed in Superior Court the state’s approval of variances to wetlands protection laws needed for the move.
Save The Bay argues that regulators should never have approved the building’s initial construction in 2007 and allowing it to be moved even closer to wetlands now would only exacerbate the problem.
As the house does currently, its new location would violate a coastal buffer zone, as would the new septic system location and the driveway. Save The Bay argues the house should be moved to an entirely different property, or razed, as it detracts from the area’s popular scenery and will contribute to nutrient pollution in Money Pond through its septic system.
“I would have objected to the original location,” said Kendra Beaver, staff attorney for Save The Bay. “But the original location was somewhat better than the new [proposed] one. At least you didn’t have to cross the wetland.”
Tom Kutcher, Narragansett baykeeper at Save The Bay, said the original state approval for the house had slipped underneath the organization’s radar back in 2007.
Perhaps even more than the house’s direct impact, Kutcher said he was concerned that moving it would set a precedent for variances being awarded for almost any coastal development, eroding wetland protections.
“The precedent of this particular case is so egregious,” Kutcher said. “You could not give a variance for something further in the buffer zone without putting it in the wetland itself. The CRMC has to uphold its regulations.”
Since disagreement over 1444 Ocean Road first entered the courts in March 2011, it has become a cautionary tale of coastal development gone awry.
Lamoureux purchased the property in 1984 and held it until the housing bubble years, when he sought the lengthy approvals needed to begin speculative construction in 2010 on the 2,400-square-foot house there now.
The next year, he reached an agreement to sell the property to an out-of-state buyer who conducted their own survey and found that, due to an error by Lamoureux’s engineers, the house had been built on Rose Nulman Park.
After refusing to sell or swap the land the house was on, park trustees sought and received a court order for it to be removed.
Lamoureux appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, which in June upheld the ruling, affirming the judgment that the park could not be compelled to give up its property because of someone else’s mistake. In its decision, the Supreme Court did not set a firm timetable for the home’s removal, providing flexibility for Lamoureux to find a solution.
While the case was still on appeal, the state Coastal Resources Management Council approved the new variances in February on a 6-2 vote that in large part hinged on finding Lamoureux blameless in the mistake.
Council staff declined to make a recommendation on the variance, though in their report said it was “highly variant and inconsistent with the goals and policies” of the state’s wetlands law.
Because of the amount of wetlands on the property and its proximity to the ocean, Lamoureux’s representatives have said there are no alternative locations that don’t encroach on the buffer zone.
In voting against the new location, the two dissenting CRMC members said approval would be essentially doubling down on a bad decision in 2007.
Chairwoman Anne Maxwell Livingston pointed out that rising sea levels would likely put the house in jeopardy soon anyway, according to a transcript of the hearing.
A decision on the appeal, which has been challenged by the developer, is expected next month.
Revens said as soon as the legal issues are settled, the project of moving the house, septic system and driveway would take roughly 90 days.
In explaining why local authorities approved similar variances from municipal wetlands rules, Narragansett Community Development Director Michael DeLuca said there were positives in the new location, as well as negatives, from an environmental perspective.
“It’s not every day that something like this happens,” DeLuca said. “The more you hear, the more it becomes less black and white and more a gray area.” •

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