The Most Important Threatened Historic Places – Updates: The Seaside, Waterford

The Seaside, Waterford (1994).  The Day of New London reported that a fire extensively damaged a maintenance building at the Seaside on April 8. According to Stephen Percy of Waterford, it is possible that the structure still contained file cabinets holding original architectural drawings for buildings on the property designed by the renowned architect Cass Gilbert. Percy is a commercial real estate agent and a friend of Mark Steiner, the preferred developer for the property until Governor Rell decided not to sell it (see CPN, March/April 2008).

            “How much better it would be—given the straitened financial circumstances of the state of Connecticut—if our governor had let the process…go forward to the final disposition of the property to the selected developer,” Percy wrote in a letter to The Day’s editor. “Under those circumstances, perhaps the fire would not have occurred because there would have been proper security on the property, those valuable documents would not have been lost, the waterfront would have been turned over to the Department of Environmental Protection and Seaside would be in the process of being turned into a tax-paying property for the town of Waterford.”