Dream Island

I will admit, I have fantasized about having my very own private island.

But who am I kidding?

I’m a city girl who tends to freak out if she’s away from sidewalks, out of sight of tall buildings, deprived of at least a bit of the madding crowd, for more than a few days. Isle of Manhattan? Yes! Isle of my own? Not so much.

So it’s just as well I can’t afford one.

But Dr. Albert Sutton can. And he owns two of them, which he paid $1.45 million for.

But Dr. Sutton’s islands are not in the Caribbean or the Pacific… His islands are a five-minute boat ride across Long Island Sound from New Rochelle, N.Y.less than an hour north of Manhattan. (Source: NY Times)

When Dr. Sutton bought Columbia, the first of his islands,14 years ago, his thought was:

“I would have great thoughts out here,” he said, standing on his doorstep on Columbia Island, the smaller of the two.

What he thinks about these days is the $8 million he’s forked over to make his islands habitable.

Last year, I took a tour of Boston Harbor.

One of the points of interest was a tiny little island that was home to a lighthouse.

Little more than a pile of rock on which the lighthouse sits, someone bought it and was trying to turn it into a vacay spot for his family.

To get to the lighthouse, you had to climb up a ladder, accessible from a swaying pier, so that would be a non-starter for me to begin with. Part of the set up was an even smaller pile of rocks about 10 yards away. To get to the shack (guest quarters?) on this island-een, you had to take a zipline from the lighthouse.

The entire thing was a hard pass on my part.

Dr. Sutton’s islands are a lot dreamier.

On his main event, Columbia Island, he’s invested big time, necessity being the mother of investment. And he’s built a lovely home for himself. But a costly one.

He said he put money into necessities, like a decommissioned Navy vessel to get to his island and a barge that can carry about one tractor-trailer load of material from the mainland.

There was a building on the island, but it wasn’t fit for habitation: it had been built in the 1940s as the base of a radio transmitter.

He had to rip out the ordinary wallboard he first installed, replacing it with concrete-backed board that is resistant to water seeping through walls. To keep the basement dry, his contractors installed a three-pump system that can handle a storm surge; it can drive out 60,000 gallons of water an hour.

…And while WCBS  [the radio station that had owned the retired transmitter] must have had an electric cable from the mainland, it was long gone when he arrived. He opted for solar panels on the roof, with a backup system for cloudy days — two 50-kilowatt generators.

And landscaping was a challenge. He first planted honey locusts and shrubs that would do well on the mainland. They died in the salty air. Now he has mulberry and kwanzan cherry trees.

Fortunately, Dr. Sutton had been a real-estate investor for decades, and a successful one, so he could afford those kwanzan cherry trees.  Not to mention buying the island next door to protect himself from having a lousy neighbor.

If the kitchen – the only room pictured in the article – is any indication, the place is drop-dead gorgeous. Although a tad bit sterile and unlived-in looking.

That’s because no one has actually ever lived there.

Dr. Sutton has spent one night in his dream island. And now he wants out. Columbia and Pea Islands are on sale for $13M.

Not that he had ever actually intended to live there.

“It never really occurred to me that, gee, I should spend more time there or get more pleasure out of it,’’ he said. “I was here to make it beautiful and let it realize itself.”

Now that is my idea of wealth: being able to afford to make something beautiful and letting “it realize itself.” But I guess what he means by realizing itself is realizing a return. Which is where the $13M comes in.

“You know, I started in my 70s. Now I’m 85. I’m less adventurous,” Dr. Sutton said. “It’s not about me or my wishes or dreams any more. I can dream in a chair.”

Well, that’s where I do my island dreaming. And my great thought thinking. It’s simple, it’s convenient, and the price is right. Still, much as I’m a city girl, I think if I’d done this reno, I’d have spent more than one night there.