Luxury houses will replace Albin

[jcollins]

By Jill Rodrigues Article


PORTSMOUTH — Woodmeister Master Builders’ plan for the former Albin Marine is so new that the planning board has yet to receive the latest version.

On Monday, Woodmeister Marketing Director Chris Komenda said that what was given to the planning board a few weeks ago has since changed. She said the planning board will get the updated proposal before it is presented at the board’s meeting on Aug. 20 at 7 p.m. at town hall.

The land, which includes 36 acres, the Albin yacht-manufacturing plant on West Shore Road and another five acres on nearby Baker Road, is owned by Gerald Conlan whose house on Carnegie Heights Drive overlooks the back of the Albin facility. Ms. Komenda has said that Woodmeister is a client of Mr. Conlan’s and is working with him on plans for the land.

Woodmeister proposes to divide the land into 18 lots and build high-end, custom houses, which is the company’s trademark. The houses will be similar to the Carnegie Abbey houses the firm has constructed, although Ms. Komenda said the houses on the Albin property will probably be smaller.

“Our goal is to keep it a low-density and eco-minded site,” Ms. Komenda said. The company plans to use sustainable-building technologies, she said, and give the lots a “country-like” look with hedgerows and stone walls.

After decades of boat-building on the land — before Albin, it was Pearson Yachts — it will have to be evaluated for contaminants before houses can go up. Ms. Komenda said that environmental testing has been ongoing these past few months and there has been some clean-up of the site, which was littered with fiberglass-boat molds and metal debris.

Since the land is zoned as heavy industry, each lot must be 40,000 square feet with 200 feet of road frontage. Planning Board Administrative Officer Glenn Russell said Woodmeister is seeking a variance on the road frontage. Mr. Russell also said that in preliminary discussions, Woodmeister has said that it wants to make the interior roads private and covered with clamshells.

Beach rights

When Mr. Conlan bought the Baker Road properties which abut the Albin land, he acquired access rights to a path to a beach on Narragansett Bay at Arnold’s Point. He shares access with a few other Baker Road residents.

The Coastal Resources Management Council sent a cease-and-desist order on July 18 to Mr. Conlan, saying that he has illegally widened a path to the beach from his Carnegie Heights house, which borders the beach access for Baker Road. “Substantial earthwork has taken place that has disturbed the buffer zone at your property,” wrote Brian Harrington, of CRMC.

A neighbor reported that “No Trespassing” signs have gone up at the Albin property and along the waterfront of Mr. Conlan’s residence. The neighbor also said that Mr. Conlan has had vegetation cleared near the water and has had a deck built on the sand.

Albin’s fate

Ms. Komenda said it is too early to know what will become of the 146,000 square-foot Albin plant.

There are several tenants operating in the facility (but not Albin Marine) who have leases on the space until July 2009.

When interviews Monday, Ms. Komenda said she did not have the plan in front of her and could not say whether the Albin plant is shown in the proposal.
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