Issues ironed out, West Cornwall house for sale

WEST CORNWALL — A historic building in the center of Main Street in West Cornwall has finally broken free of the figurative bonds that have kept it in a dilapidated condition for a decade. 

Following years of legal disputes that stymied efforts to repair the ailing structure, it is now free and clear — and is for sale, on www.zillow.com, for $299,000.

At the time of a fire that ripped through one side of the house in 2008, the market value of the property was estimated to be $765,000. The property value has decreased as the building has deteriorated. The town currently is appraising its value at $161,000.

Dreams of an arts center

Formerly known as the Pink House, for the pastel paint job it was given by a former owner, it is now owned by Libby Mitchell and Jim Herity, who bought it in 2013. They had hoped to, first of all, stop the deterioration of the building, which had become a blight in the center of the village; and second of all to renovate and repair the 1860s Italianate building and turn it into a community arts center. 

“We had no idea it would be so contentious,” Mitchell sighed, sitting on the porch that she and her husband restored, on the front of the building, in 2014.

“We renovated the porch because it was collapsing, the pillars couldn’t support the weight of the snow on the porch roof,” she said.  

She and Herity (who is both a builder and an author) also cleared the vine-and-weed choked front yard, and laid a red brick walkway to the porch and its two front entrances. They repainted the front of the house, getting rid of the peeling pink paint. 

The old pastel color, Mitchell said, was “not the first choice of some of the building’s neighbors.” 

They chose instead a more historically appropriate honey yellow, with white paint on the ornate trim around the windows and porch pillars. 

Taxes, insurance not paid

When they bought it, town officials had been troubled for years not only by the poor condition of the property in the center of Cornwall’s most-visited village, but also by the growing burden of back taxes on the property that hadn’t been paid by owner Maura Cavanagh Smithies since 2007, according to a 2014 article in The Lakeville Journal. 

Smithies said in later years, after she split up with her husband, Richard Smithies, that she preferred to be known by her maiden name, Cavanagh. 

Mitchell said she believes that Cavanagh was a descendant of the family that owned the famous Cavanagh Hat company. 

Mitchell said that she and Herity bought the property in 2013 to try and save it from falling apart. 

“We bought it for $63,000, which paid the back taxes and a lien from a lawyer in Lakeville whom she hadn’t paid,” Mitchell said.

Technically, Cavanagh no longer owned the property when Mitchell and Herity decided to take it on; she was a life tenant. Mitchell and Herity purchased the property from the American branch of the Landmark Trust, a British organization that purchases notable historic properties, renovates them and rents them out. The money raised from the rentals is used to help pay for new renovation projects.

Cavanagh had made a deal with the trust that they could have the property as long as she was allowed a life tenancy. The trust was to take possession after she and her husband died (Cavanagh is now over 80 years old).

According to articles published over the years in The Lakeville Journal, as part of the deal Cavanagh was expected to maintain the building and to keep the property insurance up to date. 

She was also required by the agreement and by state law to pay property taxes. She stopped paying for insurance in 2005 and stopped paying her taxes in 2007, according to a 2010 article in The Lakeville Journal.

Because of that, at the time of the fire in 2008, the building was not insured.

Cavanagh had owned the rambling house (which has also at times been an inn and an art gallery) since 1971, when she and Smithies purchased it, according to records in the town’s assessor’s office. The records do not indicate who owned it before them.

The Smithies lived in it together. At some point either the couple or just Cavanagh divided the building in half and lived in the west side but rented out the east side. 

Smithies eventually moved out of the house and gave up his rights to the property. Cavanagh continued to live in the house, with a man named Phillip Wolfe.

Chimney fire in 2008

In January 2008, a chimney fire started in the house and spread to the roof. It destroyed about a third of the roof on the west side of the house, Mitchell said. 

Cavanagh and Wolfe moved out of the house and into the two-bedroom apartment in the barn and didn’t make any repairs to the fire-damaged main building. 

It continued to deteriorate. The taxes continued to accumulate, and to grow (18 percent interest was added annually). 

When Mitchell and Herity bought the property from Landmark Trust, their intention was to get to work on stabilizing the house. Cavanagh continually interfered with those efforts, however, and called the state police every time Mitchell and Herity tried to access the property. The town’s building inspector (who had declared the building uninhabitable) had given Mitchell permission to enter the property with contractors.  

But legally, Mitchell said, no work could be done without Cavanagh’s approval; her life tenancy had transferred over with the sale of the house. 

At some point in the past few years, Cavanagh had a significant health issue, Mitchell said. She was taken to the hospital and at that point someone saw the barn where she and Wolfe had been living and they said she could not legally return there and live there because it was unsafe. She is now living at Sharon Health Care Center. 

Wolfe has continued to live in the barn. 

Legal solution worked

Mitchell loves to unknot tricky problems and although she’s a mellow, gentle kind of a person, she’s also energetic and wily. After consulting with many lawyers, she eventually found one who could see a path forward.

In a nutshell, she said that other lawyers had tried and failed to break Cavanagh’s hold on the property by showing that she had failed in her responsibility to maintain the barn and main house. 

Mitchell hired attorney Andrew Barsom of Seiger Gfeller Laurie in Hartford, Conn. He realized that maintenance and property insurance are not required by state law; but payment of property taxes is. 

Finally, just this month, their lawsuit was successful. Cavanagh is no longer the life tenant of the property and Wolfe must move out by Nov. 25. 

After all these years and all the lawsuits and all the twists and turns, something good could still happen. Mitchell and Herity are moving ahead with trying to find a new owner for the property — one who has the money to tackle a difficult project but who can see the property’s potential.

A dream house …

“This is not a budget DIY job,” she warned. 

The house is dilapidated. The roof is leaking significantly in the west side of the house, where the fire occurred. The floors are wet and feel as though they might buckle in places.

The east side of the house remains intact even though the walls are peeling. 

On the plus side, the house is beautiful. Mitchell and Herity have registered it on both the state and national registers of historic places — which means that there are funds available from the government to help with the renovation.

The bones of the building are solid and beautiful. There are marble fireplace surrounds and ornate plaster details that are still intact.

The house is in a mixed use zone so it could be used for both commercial and residential purposes. There could be an affordable apartment in the house or barn and there could be a restaurant or a brew pub in the main building. 

There is a septic system for the barn already; approvals and drawings have been made for a septic for the main house. This is not a small feat for a house in an area of town that is right on the river and where the septic has been enough of an issue that a septic committee has been trying to untangle it for years so that there can be some economic development in West Cornwall. 

The iconic and historic Covered Bridge is steps away. There is, at present, only one other restaurant in the village, the petite and refined RSVP. 

Mitchell said that she listed the property on Zillow at the beginning of last week and it immediately attracted more than 200 hits a day. 

To find it, search on Zillow for 417 Sharon Goshen Turnpike, West Cornwall CT.