PROVINCETOWN — Last week the board of health ordered the property managers of “Napiville,” a 14-unit residential complex at 25-27 Bradford St., to fix multiple health-code violations within a month or risk “all units being condemned, and all occupants being ordered to vacate.”
The order, issued on March 21, came after a years-long battle to bring the rental units that had been owned by restaurateur Anton “Napi” Van Dereck up to standards for human habitation — and two months after managers Bernard McEneaney and Lisa Meads told all the property’s tenants they had to move out by April 1 so the property can be sold.
In identical letters delivered to tenants in January, McEneaney cited pressure from the town as his reason for selling the property. “The many upgrades that are required by the town licensing departments to continue operations … is what has us where we are now,” the letter said.
Health dept. records show that McEneaney and Meads have ignored numerous orders to correct violations dating back to 2020, including an administrative consent order to connect to the town sewer after an October 2020 inspection revealed two failed cesspools. Later inspections found hazardous electrical work, structurally unsound decking, and excess moisture from leaking pipes.
After failing to comply with a July 13 order, McEneaney and Meads racked up $19,200 in fines before submitting an engineering report in November that outlined repairs to the property. But no permits for that work were ever pulled, said Health Agent Lezli Rowell, which precipitated the hearing on March 21.
The board of health order requires McEneaney and Meads to hire an engineer to assess the safety of the property’s retaining wall, complete fire suppression design plans, and pull building permits for the previously ordered improvements. The order also requires that the property be connected to the sewer system within 30 days.
Five tenants attended the meeting, two of whom spoke about living conditions under McEneaney and Meads’s management.
Christopher Passaretti said he lived without heat and running water for three weeks last February after a pipe in his apartment broke. James McCue said that Meads moved some of McCue’s belongings from his apartment into an offsite storage unit after telling him he had to be out by Feb. 2, two months before the April 1 deadline given to other tenants.
The other three tenants spoke with the Independent after the meeting. One described living with a leaking roof for nine months. Another said his bathtub would fill with six inches of backed-up sewage. The third said she had lived without a refrigerator for several months and stored her food outside in the winter before before being offered a mini-fridge by the managers.
Meads logged into the March 21 meeting remotely, as did the managers’ attorney, Anthony Alva of Barnstable. McEneaney did not attend.
The board of health ordered that four units that Meads listed as vacant remain vacant. One of those units, however, is not vacant, the Independent learned, and is occupied by Marcia “Mello” Kostick, who is currently in London.
Kostick did not know Meads had told the town her unit was empty, she told the Independent.
The board of health granted temporary rental certificates to McEneaney and Meads for the other units on the property, adding that Rowell may revoke the certificates “if there is evidence of an imminent threat to the health, safety, and well-being of the occupants.” The town had previously allowed the property to operate under a camps, cabins, and motel license from 2021 to 2023, to give Meads and McEneaney time to bring it up to the state’s minimum standards.
The property has been operating without any kind of license since last July because it had “degraded such that interim lodging could not be issued,” Rowell told the board. “All reasonable efforts have been extended by the town to support the transition of this property following the demise of Napi Van Dereck.”
McEneaney and Meads have been operating the property since Van Dereck died in December 2019. The property is owned by Van Dereck’s wife, Helen Haunstrup, under a realty trust, but she has dementia and was declared unfit to manage her husband’s estate, including his eponymous restaurant.
McEneaney, who was Van Dereck’s financial adviser, won conservatorship over Haunstrup in October 2021 and has been managing her assets ever since.
Board of health chair Susan Troyan said the board will hold another hearing on April 18 to determine whether McEneaney and Meads have complied with the terms of the newest order. If they do not, the board will decide whether to condemn part or all of the property.
“Condemning is the last thing we want to do,” Troyan told the Independent, but “a lot will depend on whether or not they are showing that they really will do something.” Troyan said she could not comment on how the condemnation would affect the property’s tenants until she had spoken to town counsel.
Alva told the board of health that Meads and McEneaney “are doing everything they can to try to make these units livable” and have “established a record of significant expense trying to respond in a timely manner to the town’s concerns.”
Alva said that his clients have spent over $100,000 maintaining the property. He said that no building permits were pulled following the November engineering report because “there is a shortage of people to do the work.”
“From day one I have worked with the town,” Meads told the board. “We do not want to put people out on the street.”
Passaretti said that, at 7 Standish St., also part of Napi’s estate managed by McEneaney and Meads, he had lived for a month without heat and water after a freeze in February 2023. He relied on the bathrooms at CVS Pharmacy, he told the board.
Passaretti was moved to a unit in Napiville, but soon after he relocated, the roof caved in during a rainstorm. “I have tarps lined up in my attic to funnel out the rainwater,” Passaretti said.
Fernando Sosa, who lives in Napiville with his wife and mother-in-law, told the Independent it took nine months for the property managers to fix his leaking roof. Sosa had worked at Napi’s Restaurant for 20 years and was a close friend of the owners. He was fired after Van Dareck died.
“I gave my whole life to that restaurant, and now I am in this situation,” Sosa said.
According to the five tenants who spoke to the Independent, only one family that lives at Napiville has found housing ahead of the April 1 deadline to move out.
Future Visions
Ali Maloney of AMG Realty told the Independent that Napiville is now on the market and that there are “multiple interested parties” but declined to comment further.
McEneaney’s letter to tenants instructing them to move out had said that interested buyers “have a different vision for the property’s future” and that the property will be a “major construction site for some time in order to rebuild.”
In a text message that tenants provided to the Independent, Meads wrote that McEneaney had offered “to give [the property] to the town for housing and they refused.”
Assistant Town Manager Dan Riviello said that McEneaney did not “offer” the property but that his representative did ask in January if the town wanted to purchase it. Riviello said the property managers did not name a price but did say the town would need to “immediately begin paying rent, all expenses, and managing the properties.”
“It seemed like their approach was to try to have the town buy it as an easier way out than having to bring their properties up to proper conditions,” Riviello said. “As such, we did not pursue the purchase any further and instead have been focused on ensuring repairs are made.”
Town Manager Alex Morse said the town “is not able to rescue every property that isn’t capable of maintaining safe and sanitary conditions for their tenants.”
Demolition
Any new construction at Napiville will be constrained because it is in the town’s historic district. Applications for demolition go before the historic district commission, and it is “quite rare” that demolitions are approved, said commission vice chair Michela Murphy.
In addition to being in the district, Napiville has a history of its own. Josephine Del Deo entered each building into the Mass. Historical Commission database in 1977, according to the MACRIS website. She wrote that one building, which housed the Barnstormers Theatre in the 1920s, “was one of the three theaters in Provincetown that were an outgrowth of the theater movement that centered around George Cram Cook, Susan Glaspell, Mary Heaton Vorse, Eugene O’Neill, and many others.”
Another cottage, Del Deo wrote, “is said to have been one in which Eugene O’Neill stayed.”
Murphy told the Independent that Napiville “is a cultural icon in its own right because of how important Napi was to the community. That is an important thing to protect. There is no point in having a historic district if you don’t have people living in it. Then it’s just a museum.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on March 28, inaccurately reported that a tenant at Napiville had to buy a refrigerator after living without one for months; she was provided with a mini-fridge by the property managers.
