WELLFLEET — Large excavators positioned on either side of the mammoth house built on a narrow strip of coastal bank in the National Seashore between the town’s harbor and Cape Cod Bay tore into the house’s exterior walls starting early on Feb. 24, raking debris into dump trucks for removal.
The demolition — which is expected to take several weeks to complete, according to Cape Associates CEO Matthew Cole, whose company is leading the project — signaled the end of a drawn-out saga that has engaged two (or maybe three) different owners, townspeople, local officials, lawyers, and judges in debates about permitting, taste, viewsheds, and aeolian forces for years.
It appears that the owner of the house at 1440 Chequessett Neck Road is footing the bill for its emergency demolition, according to the attorney representing both John G. Bonomi Jr. and CQN Salvage. That news allayed fears expressed by officials, environmentalists, and the harbor’s shellfishermen that the structure would fall into the bay and by townspeople who worried they’d be left to pay for the cleanup.
In mid-January, New York attorney Thomas Moore told the conservation commission that neither of his clients — Bonomi, who purchased the 5,153-square-foot house in 2021 for $5.5 million, nor CQN Salvage, a New York limited liability company that Moore said now owned it — intended to do anything to preserve the house or the quickly eroding bluff under it.
At that time, attorney Moore said the cost of demolition would be $1 million and that his client needed to “walk away” from the house, leaving its fate in the town’s hands.
On Monday, Moore told the Independent by email that CQN Salvage had “engaged the demolition company, which came in at a price 75 percent lower than John Bonomi had been quoted.”
Moore added that “CQN is an independent corporation and not the same as John Bonomi.” The Barnstable County Registry of Deeds continues to list Bonomi as the owner.
A Demolition Blueprint
Although the road to the house had been blocked off by police on Monday, there was no shortage of spectators at the property, who, for the most part, said they were glad to see the sprawling house come down. Since last summer, there had been concern that the structure would fall into the bay, affecting marine life and habitat and potentially contaminating or destroying the oyster beds in the harbor.
Resident Collin Kolisko was there to witness the teardown. He described the moment the excavator’s arm made contact with a metal beam “like a big fist punching down.”
Andrew Gralla, who lives part-time in town, was there to watch the spectacle. The house “never should have been built,” he said, “but I’m glad they got it down before it fell down.”
As demolition proceeded Monday, resident David Aronow called it “a prehistoric kind of event,” comparing the excavators to dinosaurs tearing into their prey.
Cape Associates, the Eastham firm hired by Bonomi last summer to remove a turret that enclosed a bedroom and a large deck with a hot tub on the bay side of the house, produced a report on Sept. 9 that gave the conservation commission a detailed description of how the full demolition could be done if an emergency removal was required.
That’s the blueprint Cape Associates is following, said Cole in a phone interview on Feb. 24. He said that Cape Associates is “under contract” to demolish the house but would not say who hired his company other than to confirm it was not the town.
Cape Associates filed for a demolition permit for the full house on Feb. 12, listing CQN as the property owner on the application. The town issued the permit on Feb. 18.
Over the last few weeks, the interior furnishings were removed. An estate sale in November had reduced its contents. Windows and cabinetry were given to Habitat for Humanity, according to a worker on the scene, and on Feb. 25 Cole confirmed that a large volunteer crew from the nonprofit organization had been able to salvage materials and keep them from entering the waste stream.
In a written statement, Cole assessed the situation from a builder’s point of view: “What is unfolding on site is a sad outcome for a very special, well-built home. This house was clearly a labor of love for its original owner, the architects and engineers that designed it and the countless craftsmen that helped build it. When the house was initially built, I do not think anyone believed this day would come so soon. It is truly an unfortunate situation.”
Janet Rustow, a Wellfleet resident watching the demolition, was not the only one who wondered aloud how the house was allowed to be built in the first place. “How it got permitted is beyond me,” she said.
Winning in Court, Losing to the Wind
In 2008, the Cape Cod National Seashore took the town’s zoning board of appeals and the property owners, Mark and Barbara Blasch, to state Land Court over the issuance of the building permit to demolish the previous house, a modernist structure known as “the billboard house,” and construct a new one that would be twice as tall and three times as capacious.
The Blasches’ attorney at the time, Ben Zehnder, had a response to the outcry from townspeople: look at the zoning bylaws. “I don’t have a right to tell my neighbor what to build,” he told the Cape Cod Times. “I have a right to tell my neighbor to build within the existing zoning laws.”
The Blasches prevailed, with Land Court Judge Thomas Trombly Jr. approving a motion for summary judgment, ruling that the Seashore lacked standing and “failed to produce specific facts which tend to show the new house is a threat to the Cape Cod National Seashore property in the vicinity resulting from surface instability or disruption of eolian transport of sand.”
The house was built in 2010, but in the ensuing years, the rim of the bluff edged closer, with wind and water carving it away at a rate of six to seven feet per year and the Blasches adding so-called sacrificial sand annually. In 2018, the Blasches asked the town for permission to construct a 241-foot rock revetment to protect the bluff. The request was denied by the conservation commission based on wetlands protection laws in place since 1978 regulating such coastal erosion structures.
The Blasches’ attorney, James Hoeland, representing the Blasch Family Trust, appealed the denial, but the town’s decision was upheld in Barnstable Superior Court in 2023. By that time, Bonomi owned the property. Despite that, Hoeland took the case to state appeals court in November 2023, where it is still pending.
Watching large excavators from GFM Enterprises arriving and seeing staging work underway at the site last week, residents said they were alarmed by the idea that the cash-strapped town would be forced to pick up the cost for the work.
Following attorney Moore’s January statements to that effect, the select board had discussed possible legal measures against the property owner in an executive session but made no public statement about their options.
Town Administrator Thomas Guerino also did not respond to questions from a reporter. But two select board members, chair John Wolf and vice chair Michael DeVasto, confirmed over the weekend that the demolition was not being done on the town’s dime. Both said they did not know exactly who was picking up the tab.
DeVasto told the Independent on Feb. 23 that the town had not initiated the demolition nor was it paying for it. “The town would not be able to do anything to the property unless it was condemned,” DeVasto said. “At this point, to my knowledge, it’s not condemned.”
Conservation commission member John Cumbler was just happy the environmental threat was being addressed.
“It will be a great relief,” he said on Feb. 24. “Obviously this has been a sore point in town since 2008, so I think the general feeling is ‘We’re sorry it came to this and sorry they made the decision to build what they did,’ but this is the best outcome. We just hope they pay until it’s done.”
Bonomi or CQN Salvage, whoever the property owner is, will continue to own the land.
“They could build farther back if they wanted a smaller structure,” Cumbler said. “We’re going to keep a pretty close eye on it to make sure they don’t do the same thing again.”
Cole said the demolition will include removing the helical piles drilled several feet into the ground on the bay side of the house and the foundation on the street side, removal of the septic system and driveway, and final grading.
“We have been at this for multiple weeks already and have multiple weeks of work in front of us to get everything done in its entirety,” he said.
William von Herff contributed reporting on the scene.
