A representative for a company that is seeking to purchase the St. Ignatius Retreat House said the organization plans to appear in court Thursday to file a restraining order against the sale and further deconstruction of the property and seek to gain ownership through eminent domain
Dr. Eli Weinstein, a spokesman for the Brooklyn-based health care organization SynergyFirst International, said his attorneys were going to file a restraining order last Thursday, but reconsidered when the idea of trying to gain ownership by eminent domain was proposed.
Weinstein has said his organization made a $36 million offer to purchase the 33-acre Searingtown Road property from the Jesuit order, which sold the property to the Manhasset Bay Group Inc. July 31 for $36.5 million. Jesuit officials have declined to comment on whether they have received an offer from SynergyFirst.
“The reason we slowed this down is we wanted to make this announcement in court, but it needs to be reviewed by the Attorney General,” Weinstein said. “This could sit in court for a very long time. My lawyers didn’t think it was crazy. Crazier things have happened.”
SynergyFirst attorney Alexander Levkovich declined to comment, saying he still needed to speak with Weinstein about other legal matters regarding St. Ignatius.
Levkovich withdrew a motion for a temporary restraining order earlier this month after it was announced in court that the Jesuit order had completed the sale of the property.
Levkovich has said the company believed Judge Randy Sue Marber was unlikely to grant the motion because it had been filed against “John Doe” and not a specific organization.
Weinstein has demanded the Jesuit order reconstruct the retreat house’s Genevieve Chapel, which was removed in June and donated to Fordham University, in addition to other furnishings that have been taken apart.
The Genevieve Chapel holds religious significance locally because Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who would go on to become Pope Pius XII, celebrated mass there and stayed at the retreat house while on tour in the United States in 1936.
“We don’t just want to buy it, we want to keep it exactly how it was,” Weinstein said. I want this thing restored and I want it restored for the Christmas miracle. I’m a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, so I mean this. I want to feel that a miracle has been accomplished.”
The 87-room retreat house, named “Inisfada” after the Gaelic word for “Long Island,” was built for $2.3 million between 1916-1920 for industrialist Nicholas Brady and his wife Genevieve, who also had residences in Manhattan and Rome.
Following her death in 1938, Genevieve Brady left Inisfada to the Jesuit order, which used the Searingtown Road property as a seminary and retreat house for regional parishes and faith-based addiction help support groups for more than 50 years before putting the property on the housing market last year.
It is unclear whether the buyer plans to maintain the mansion and build around it or demolish it outright.
Village of North Hills mayor Marvin Natiss has said the buyer has expressed interest in building condominiums on the property and turn it into “the jewel of North Hills.” The property has zoning for two houses per acre.
In the last few months, local civic groups have tried to find an alternative buyer for the house, but officials have said the Jesuit order ignored calls seeking to join the negotiations.
