Old Lyme ― A Miami Beach fence that divided beach-goers and homeowners, both literally and figuratively, came down Thursday morning, a week after the state Supreme Court refused to review a lower court decision ordering a private beach association to stop impeding access to public property.

“Break out the champagne, baby,” said Kathleen Tracy, lead plaintiff in the case against the Miami Beach Association and a summer resident of nearby Sound View Beach. “It’s been six years of a battle that from the very beginning I knew I had to win. ... It’s my Berlin Wall.”

Tracy was one of a half dozen people from the area to make it down to the beach as the fence came down in about two hours. Workers from the Old Lyme-based H.S. Plaut Environmental Co. used a backhoe and some hand tools to dismantle what had become a symbol for some of a private-beach land grab of property that belonged to the public.

The Miami Beach Association was denied the right to appeal to the state Supreme Court a decision that its fence is interfering with the public's right to use the beach
For @thedayct pic.twitter.com/8BFVikLWrM

— Sarah Gordon (@thesarahgordon) April 13, 2023

“Everyone wants to say Miami Beach is the bad guy,” said Mark Mongillo, president of the Miami Beach Association, who watched the fence come down and, like others, gave a television interview. “It just irks me that we’re not allowed to control property we own.”

But Lenny Corto, who once owned Lenny’s on the Beach bar where Kokomo’s restaurant now stands at Sound View Beach, had several animated conversations Thursday with Mongillo disputing his claims that Miami Beach owned the property.

“It’s deeded public property,” Corto said. “It shows the attitude they have.”

The private Miami Beach Association paid to erect the fence next to Sound View Beach six years ago in an effort to manage what it said was rowdy behavior and to keep the area clean of trash. It also initiated a “clean beach fee” for those who used the fenced-off area.

Tracy, along with co-plaintiffs Robert Breen and Dee and Jerry Vowles of Sound View Beach, sued in 2018 and won the case in state Appellate Court two years ago, but had to wait to see if the state’s highest court would take the case before finally seeing the fence come down. They were represented by a Waterford resident, attorney Bill McCoy of Heller, Heller & McCoy.

“I understand from a private landowner point of view they want more privacy, but their property is on a public beach,” McCoy said in a phone interview after the Supreme Court’s decision April 4 not to hear the case.

Mongillo, the Miami Beach Association president, called the appellate court decision by Judge Kimberly A. Knox disappointing.

“We feel the judgment was totally unfair,” he said in a phone interview. “All they did was take the easy way out.”

Residents watching as the fence is being taken down at Miami Beach tell us they are unhappy and worried about what the beach will look like this summer
More coming in @thedayct pic.twitter.com/nAvvgYrNmf

— Sarah Gordon (@thesarahgordon) April 13, 2023

He added that the town now will have to spend more money on safety and security near Sound View Beach and its two beach bars. He said the court referred back to a 1953 decision that the property had been deeded to the general public, but added that times have changed.

“Today is a very dangerous environment in regards to the public,” he said. “Now it’s going to be open season. When you have two bars on the beach (Kokomo’s and The Pavilion), what do you think’s going to happen?”

Tracy said this was the fourth time that a group has tried to erect a fence in the area to restrict beach rights. Each time, the right of the public to use the beach without restrictions has been upheld, she said.

“People have a right to be on the beach,” Tracy said. “You can’t create happiness while causing unhappiness for others. ... The law is the law.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” added co-plaintiff Breen, referencing bad behavior on the beach as well as the illegal fence put up to deal with it. “We’re back to square one.”

He said some people are going to be happy with the decision, while others will decry it.

“Most people are going to misunderstand it,” he added. “It’s not like it was when we were kids. It’s a different vibe down there.”

Mangillo painted a dark picture of what Miami Beach had become before the fence was erected, saying “it was a landfill,” with pizza boxes, diapers, hypodermic needles and other trash being left behind by beach-goers. Perhaps most distressing, he said, one homeowner reported a group using his porch illegally to shield a couple having sex.

“This was never about the fence,” he said. “The fence was our property line ... so we could institute our clean beach fee.”

But to Tracy and other plaintiffs the fence was a symbol of the wealthy and privileged keeping the beach for themselves.

“Beaches are not meant for fences,” she said. “It seems like every generation needs to learn a lesson.

“To me, it’s the people’s victory. It’s like democracy rules. ... If we want to have a democracy we have to be united and watch what the powerful and proud are doing to the rights of common people.”

But the animosity lingers on.

“Let’s just move on; can we do that?” Tracy said to Mongillo at one point, reaching out her hand.

He ignored the gesture.

l.howard@theday.com