The yearlong effort to find a preferred developer for the city-owned, abandoned Lighthouse Inn in New London was a failure.

Honestly, who didn't see it coming?

The city has an abysmal track record with this kind of thing, developer beauty pageants in which city officials try to pick winners and losers in assessing bidders and their proposals.

Who can forget the city's selling the Capitol Theater to a convicted con man who then, well, conned the city?

Here's a suggestion, as the venerable old Lighthouse Inn slides further into disrepair, an eyesore: Sell it to the highest bidder and put it back on the tax rolls.

Playing God with prospective developers, vetting their plans and their backgrounds, isn't going to work any better in the future than it has in the past.

Even now the city is reviewing a new offer from one of the unsuccessful bidders in the just-concluded Lighthouse Inn sweepstakes.

The prospect of considering this new offer is troubling on lots of fronts, not the least of which is its bid for tax abatements.

Also worrisome is the criminal record of one of the principals making the bid: Anthony Morascini.

The first thing that comes up when you Google his name is a 2001 opinion denying his appeal of convictions on charges of public indecency and breach of peace.

There was a complaining victim in the unseemly indecency incident, best not described in a family newspaper.

Morascini, then in his mid-40s, was convicted in a trial that also brought forth his prior felony convictions on failure to appear charges.

Then in 2008 Morascini was sentenced to nine months in jail on charges of possession of narcotics and second-degree failure to appear in court.

When I asked Morascini about his criminal record, he said he is a more mature person now and that he hopes his experience will serve as a lesson for young people.

He also said he was convicted and lost his appeal because he had bad legal representation.

“It was many years ago. I am a responsible adult now,” he said. “It was a nightmare that ruined my life at that time.”

In his original bid for the Lighthouse Inn, Morascini said he would put his brother, a guy who lives on a boat in New London and claims to be running for president on a platform of legalizing drugs and prostitution, in charge of the inn's tavern and liquor service.

If Morascini's criminal history and strange, airy resume are not warning signs enough, I got even more spooked about this offer after chatting with Morascini's partner and co-bidder, Norman Nadeau.

Nadeau wanted me to know that, among his various lines of work, he is a bail enforcement agent, hunting down wayward criminals in the "inner cities where crime is bad," but he is going to retire from that if they get the Lighthouse Inn.

He tried to clear up some confusion created by his partner who said they wanted to make the Lighthouse Inn a museum.

"We are not opening up no museum," he assured me.

He complained that he and Morascini have been "jerked around" by the city in their attempts to buy the inn, and he said that's why they lowered an initial $1 million bid with contingencies to $250,000, with a demand for tax abatements.

"We are looking to get our foot in the door. ... We said we've been jerked around for nine months here, let's maybe give them a quarter million and a get couple of years of tax abatements."

"The town can get it off their shoulders."

Please, let some common sense prevail in reviewing this offer.

If Morascini and Nadeau want the Lighthouse Inn, let them compete with everyone else in a fair and open auction process.

The city should stop trying to pick winners and losers and reject offers that ask for special favors or consideration.

Put it up on the block. Sell it for the highest bid, whatever that may be.

This is America. Whoever buys it can do with it what they want, within the law and the constraints of planning and zoning.

And, like every other property owner in the city, they will have to pay their taxes.

Alas, after the years of dithering by the city, maybe it will be torn down, nostalgia be damned.

And maybe that's progress.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com