Nice Island floats off the coast of Darien, Conn. -- and now, the city itself is in contract to purchase it.
Douglas Elliman Realty
No man is an island — and maybe, as an alternative of a person purchaser, that’s why the prosperous suburb of Darien, Conn., is shopping for a grand non-public island positioned proper within the city itself.
The Wall Avenue Journal experiences that the city — some 50 miles from New York Metropolis — has entered contract to buy the roughly 60-acre Nice Island, owned by descendants of the baking powder entrepreneur William Ziegler, for greater than $100 million. It’s one of many largest remaining undeveloped parcels of land within the space.
Ziegler, who died in 1905, bought it round 1900 to make use of as a summer time residence.
“There'll by no means be one other alternative for the city to manage this property’s future, or so as to add an asset to profit all of us like this,” Darien First Selectman Monica McNally stated at an April assembly of the city’s Board of Selectmen. “I consider 200 years from now, when individuals take a look at this property, they may look favorably on this transaction.”
Different particulars, for now, are unavailable. McNally advised the Journal that inking the contract is simply the “first step” in a multi-layered course of that can want approval from different city officers — and she or he declined to remark additional on the deal.
The unfold listed on the market in February asking a cool $100 million. In 2016, it initially requested a a lot increased $175 million.
Nice Island, which is accessed by way of a causeway and owned by a belief managed by the Steinkraus household — who're descendants of Ziegler’s granddaughter Helen — comes with greater than a mile of shoreline alongside the Lengthy Island Sound.
However greater than an island, it’s additionally house to a centerpiece house — one which was impressed by an Italian villa, measures 13,000 sq. ft and dates to 1905. The island additionally has a guesthouse, a caretaker’s cottage and a deep-water dock.
There’s even an equestrian facility on the land — and its look could appear acquainted to commuters. The late architect Rafael Gustavino, recognized for his work on Grand Central Terminal, lent his contact to this amenity — and its arched ceiling resembles that present in elements of the midtown prepare station. It additionally has a granite secure, and indoor and outside driving rings.
Evidently, one in all Ziegler’s descendants, the late William Steinkraus, gained a gold medal on the 1968 Olympics in Mexico Metropolis in particular person leaping.
Jennifer Leahy, of Douglas Elliman, had the itemizing. Leahy advised the Journal the island had obtained bids from each end-users and builders.
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