Seaside on Gov. Rell's seesaw

For an administration not known for its decisiveness, the flip-flopping by Gov. Rell on the decision over what to do with the Seaside Regional Center property in Waterford stands out as especially capricious.

First there was the flip, the state's long negotiations to sell to a developer who agreed to preserve the historic buildings and provide public access to the spectacular 34 acres on Long Island Sound.

Then there was the flop, the governor's announcement that the state would retain Seaside. Aides told her it could be her legacy, and apparently she swooned.

Then came the next flip, a crushing budget crisis that made the governor decide maybe the state better sell Seaside after all.

Surely there's enough time left on the governor's clock even for another big flop.

I paid a visit this week to Seaside, thinking I might catch a whiff of what it was that inspired the governor's dreams of a legacy. The decision to hold on to Seaside was reportedly made - dare I say on a whim - after Rell made a private visit to the property, her first, back in 2007.

Certainly, the site itself is legacy-inspiring, with a quarter of a mile of shoreline and remarkable views up and down Long Island Sound.

It is not unlike the setting of nearby Harkness Memorial State Park, although not nearly as extraordinary.

The scale at Seaside is much smaller, and the property has been surrounded over the years by residential development.

While Harkness commands a vast swath of shoreline, hills and lawns surrounded by marsh and wetlands and woodlands, Seaside is crowded in by a dense neighborhood on three sides, an unlikely park.

As for the architecture, it is indeed interesting. Preserving the work of the original architect, the distinguished Cass Gilbert, is laudable, but I don't see why anyone would want to build a legacy around what remains of his gothic-inspired tuberculosis sanitarium.

It's not like you would be preserving, for instance, the Harkness mansion.

Was the governor thinking of a tuberculosis museum maybe?

In fact, I couldn't help but think that an excellent use for these buildings, and a means of permanently preserving them, would be the condominiums that were part of the proposed sale that the legacy-minded governor vetoed.

Not only would the proposal have preserved the buildings but it would have created permanent public access to the Seaside shoreline, even a visitors' parking lot.

The buildings would be preserved. The public would have access. The property would be a substantial increase to the town's tax rolls.

No wonder so many state lawmakers and town officials and even the governor's own commissioners got behind the proposed sale, a deal that was 10 years in the making.

Now that the governor has flipped back to the idea of selling Seaside, she has inexplicably rebuffed the developer, who, remarkably, given the sour real estate economy, is still willing to make good on his end of the deal.

He has even indicated he would be willing to sweeten the $7.1 million sales price, if appraisals warranted.

Not selling to him could certainly lead to a protected lawsuit, in which the state wouldn't realize any gains from the sale of the property for a long time.

But even if he doesn't sue, what's to say the highest and best price the governor might solicit from some new buyer, assuming there might be one out there, would include the kind of safeguards, preservation and public access that are part of the deal the governor is rejecting.

It could be that the Seaside property will remain in limbo for many years longer, as much an albatross around the state's neck as the Norwich Hospital property was, before the governor managed to pawn that problem off on the town of Preston.

Come to think of it, a neglected and deteriorating Seaside may indeed become a perfect symbol of the Rell legacy, and not a pretty one at that.

This is the opinion of David Collins.