Tales from the crypt
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28 Meeting House Road
In a New York Times real estate listing from last fall, 8 Alpine Road in Greenwich is touted as a "gorgeous Nantucket Colonial" with such luxurious amenities as a home theater, gym and wine cellar, as well as a rotunda staircase with a domed stained-glass ceiling. Its asking price is $11 million.
To the surrounding residents, the house is an eyesore, abandoned about two years ago in the midst of construction. The would-be mansion sits, barely protected from the elements, and Dumpsters on the property overflow with debris.
Alpine Road resident Lucy Gelb said people come by and dump even more trash in the bins, and raccoons roam the property. She has made calls to Town Hall, hoping town officials will at least put up a barrier.
In a town like Greenwich, known for its many trophy properties, abandoned homes stick out. There are at least two dozen such properties scattered around town, from small structures in central Greenwich to half-finished spec houses in the backcountry.
The story of 8 Alpine Road, and two other uncompleted building projects, stems from a bank that went bust in the years after the real estate boom.
James Scheckter, a former Greenwich resident whose family has constructed homes in town since the 1970s, is the general contractor for 8 Alpine Road, which is owned by his father, Ronald Scheckter.
James Scheckter and his wife, Susan, also own 12 Byfield Lane, which, while closer to being finished than the Alpine Road structure, also sits empty. Scheckter, who lives in Redding, was also contracted to build 9 Ridgeview Ave., another sore spot for neighbors.
Aside from Scheckter's involvement, the three properties have something else in common -- they were all covered by loans from USA Bank in Port Chester, N.Y., which was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in July of last year. FDIC officials told Hearst Connecticut Newspapers last year that it was necessary to close the bank because its officials acted recklessly in granting loans, principally for home construction.
For 12 Byfield Lane, Scheckter and his wife took out a $4.8 million construction loan from the bank in 2007, with the expectation that more money would be provided when the house was near completion, according to court documents.
That money never came. By August 2009, when the nearly 16,000-square-foot house was 90 percent finished, the bank refused to loan the additional funds.
"We never got to finish them because, in fact, they never finished funding them," Scheckter said.
Scheckter filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy project in New York for the 12 Byfield Lane project in April 2010, just a few months before the FDIC seized USA Bank. He is scheduled to testify later this month in the FDIC's case against former USA Bank Chairman Fred DeCaro III, a Greenwich resident and founder of the bank.
(Yes, that would be the same Freddie DeCaro who is now going to carefully manage the $500,000 of left-wing fundation money that’s flowing into the Greenwich Registrar of Voters’ office. Good to know — I’ll sleep peacefully tonight.)
Continuing ……
Jonathan Wilcox, a real estate broker with Wilcox & Company, was the listing broker for 1 Northridge Road, a property on the Greenwich/Stamford border that the developer abandoned in 2009. The bank-owned property is now overgrown, and sits opposite a new condominium development on Havemeyer Lane.
There's a lot of bureaucracy involved with a property in foreclosure, said Wilcox, who represented an abandoned house on Maher Avenue, near Brunswick School, two years ago.
"I can't tell you how many neighbors were coming over and just imploring us to get it sold," Wilcox said.
TV host Regis Philbin has been trying since 2008 to sell one of two houses he owns on Meeting House Road. While the real estate market had ground to a halt three years ago, it likely doesn't help that two houses on the street, a Colonial at 23 Meeting House Road and a Mediterranean-style home across the street [28 Meeting House Road, begun by local “builder” Jimmy Licata in 2000, finally sold as land in 2016 for $2.050 — ED], have been sitting, neglected, for several years.
All these years later, there have been some happy developments for some of these houses, all of which were foreclosed on. 8 Alpine was eventually finished and is now appraised by the town at $5,675,900; 12 Byfield, which had once asked $11.999 sold for $4.475 million in 2009 and was completed by the new owner. Wilcox’s troubled child at 1 Northridge was also bought out of foreclosure and finally built, selling for $1.631 million in 2018. I’m not sure what happened to 327 Riversville after the bank took it — next time you’re up there, take a look at the lot on the east just south of the Merritt and see if it’s still there.
I’m just guessing, but I wouldn’t be shocked if we see a story similar to this one in a couple of years, because builders are getting frisky again.
(you can’t gain a full appreciation of jimmy licata’s meeting house road folly until you see the rear)
