Norwich — The president of Connecticut Scrap, a scrapyard company with six facilities in Connecticut and Rhode Island, posted the winning bid of $260,000 in the noon auction on Saturday to purchase the former Shetucket Iron & Metal scrapyard at Norwich Harbor and said he plans to keep the existing scrap license there alive.

David Waddington outbid the only other bidder, Gino Vona of Nick & Gino Vona Mason Contractors of Fairfield, after a brief exchange of offers. Vona started the bidding at $100,000 for the 3.68-acre property at 7 New Wharf Road.

The auction sale is the final act in the dissolution of the former Shetucket Iron & Metal company owned by members of the Seder family. The sale must be approved by a New London Superior Court judge, and members of the family have reserved the right to object to the sale price, auction attorney Mark Block said prior to the start of bidding. The city is owed $69,807 in back taxes that would be paid out of the purchase price, Block said.

“We collect scrapyards,” Waddington said minutes after posting the winning bid. “I have to keep the license alive. It’s a pre-existing use. We run clean operations, and that’s what we’re going to do. Very low key.”

Connecticut Scrap has facilities in Uncasville, North Stonington and Exeter, R.I.

Norwich Alderman H. Tucker Braddock led an effort in recent weeks to try to get the city to purchase the waterfront property to prevent it from continuing to be a scrapyard and to create a future park. Braddock said he was very disappointed city leaders rejected the idea, balking at the purchase and cleanup costs.

“I cannot believe our city is so backward and cannot see this opportunity in front of them,” Braddock said. “If we cannot invest in ourselves, how are we going to see ourselves grow? ... $260,000. Pitiful.”

Braddock, who lost the Democratic Town Committee nomination to run for mayor last Monday to political newcomer Derell Wilson, was the only current member of the City Council to attend Saturday’s auction. Braddock criticized current elected officials and candidates for the fall election alike for what he called a “failure to see the vision of the inner harbor.”

Democratic council candidate Samuel Browning, the only council candidate in attendance Saturday, offered a contrasting opinion. Browning said the city doesn’t have the money to convert the property into a waterfront park.

“It will still remain a taxpaying entity,” Browning said. “It’s not going to look pretty, but at least it will pay taxes.”

Although the property is located in a Waterfront Development zoning district, a new scrapyard could operate there as a “pre-existing nonconforming use,” City Planner Deanna Rhodes said. The entire property is located in a high-hazard floodway on Federal Emergency Management Agency maps, severely limiting future development and prohibiting new building construction.

Several buildings on the property are in varying levels of condition, including one that was partially collapsed and off limits to those inspecting the property prior to the auction. Several piles of unprocessed scrap — including old propane grill tanks, tires, plastic debris and abandoned motor vehicles — remain on the property.

Dennis Schain, spokesman for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said a new scrapyard could reopen there as a scrapyard “right away,” but if there are environmental contamination issues, a responsible party would have to be determined and that party would be responsible for addressing cleanup issues in the future.

The auction came one year after the Seder family owners closed the facility amid a bitter family dispute over operations and finances. Equipment was sold at a previous auction in January, leaving only the property dissolution sale.

Several members of the family were among the nearly 30 people who attended Saturday’s auction to observe the sale.

Stephen Seder, a company director along with his estranged uncle Walter Seder, said he was “ambivalent” about the sale. He said he is retired from the business, and now runs a small farm raising Highland cattle in Bozrah. “I do a lot of skiing,” Stephen Seder said.

Michael Seder, Stephen’s brother, said he worked at the scrapyard for 30 years before the family dispute forced the company to close.

“It’s kind of sad, because it didn’t have to be,” Michael Seder said.

For Kristine Haight, Saturday’s auction was a homecoming of sorts. Haight ran the oil and paper division of Shetucket Iron & Metal from 1992 to 2002 and now works for Connecticut Scrap. On Saturday, she visited her old office, still crammed with filing cabinets, loose paper files, office equipment and desk supplies. She found the poster board she had used for years to track business.

“I always said ‘I have the best view of the marina,’” she said looking out that same office window at the Marina at American Wharf across Norwich Harbor.

c.bessette@theday.com