CRMC: Barrington couple must allow public access to their seawall

Holly Sheffield and her husband, Lance, were “very discerning” when they decided to leave Houston and find a peaceful waterfront retreat in the Northeast, she told the Coastal Resources Management Council on Tuesday night.

And they never would have purchased the $4.5 million Barrington home of golfer Brad Faxon if they knew that a permit from the 1980s guaranteed public access along the seawall, she indicated.

Unfortunately for the Sheffields, CRMC board members only had limited sympathy for their plight.

The appointed council voted 5-2 to dismiss cease-and-desist orders that were issued after the CRMC received complaints stating that the couple had put up a fence and "No Trespassing" signs, hired a security guard, and installed an alarm with a siren that blared when anyone set foot on the seawall. But, as part of the same motion, they made it clear that the Sheffields will be required to allow public access in the future.

At issue was whether the Sheffields should have to comply with a condition that the CRMC imposed nearly three decades before they bought the property — which was never officially entered into land evidence records. The couple say they did a title search and hired a surveyor before the sale went through but never found any indication that the public could use the seawall.

"The Sheffields did anything a reasonable purchaser of this property would do," said their lawyer, Daniel J. Procaccini of Adler, Pollock & Sheehan.

Why the public has a right to use the seawall — and the owners didn't know about it

Under Rhode Island's new shoreline access law, seawalls are typically considered private property. But the seawall below the Sheffields' home at 85 Nayatt Road, which sits next to the Elm Lane public access point, is an exception.

It also has an "unusual" history, Procaccini observed at Tuesday's CRMC meeting.

In a nutshell: Previous owners of a neighboring property, 56 Elm Lane, received permission from the CRMC to repair their seawall back in 1982. As a condition of granting that assent, the CRMC required them to provide a passable, 2-foot-wide walkway for the public.

In 2017, the Elm Lane property was subdivided, and the eastern portion became part of 85 Nayatt Road — meaning that the seawall came with the property that the Sheffields purchased in 2021.

As Procaccini pointed out, the seawall didn't have any placards or signs indicating that public access was allowed. Additionally, no one ever placed a copy of the 1982 CRMC assent in Barrington's land evidence records: Prior to 1988, there was no legal requirement for the CRMC or the property owner to do so.

The property has changed hands multiple times since the assent was granted, and it's unclear if subsequent owners were aware of the public-access requirement.

"No one, including the seller and his attorney, told us about the CRMC assent," Holly Sheffield said on Tuesday.

It was only after she and her husband purchased the property, she said, that they noticed that people "regularly traversed the seawall at all hours," sometimes leaving behind trash or even the remnants of a campfire.

"We would not have purchased the property if we knew it was allegedly accessible to the public in this way," she said.

Homeowners point to safety concerns, vandalism and half-naked interlopers

Speaking before the CRMC on Tuesday, Sheffield explained that she and her husband were seeking "a sense of calm and peace" in a home "large enough to accommodate our family" when they purchased the seven-bedroom, chateau-style estate in May 2021.

Both are business owners who grew up in the Northeast and moved to Houston many years ago, she said, but decided to return to the region once they became "empty-nesters."

When they discovered that people were walking and fishing on their narrow seawall, she said, their initial concern was safety: The "sharp and dangerous" rocks below tend to be obscured at high tide. (Rhode Island's recreational use statute protects landowners from legal liability in such instances, but many property owners are unaware that it exists.)

Sheffield said that her husband, Lance, contacted the CRMC to ask if the seawall was their private property. A staffer stated "with conviction" that it was, and said that another staff member in the enforcement division would call them back to corroborate that, she said. But they never got a call.

The couple went ahead and put up a chicken wire fence to keep people off the seawall, Sheffield said. It was only in September 2021, when they received a cease-and-desist notice from the CRMC, that they learned about the public access requirement.

The Sheffields took the fence down, but the CRMC issued a second cease-and-desist notice in May 2022, after the couple installed the alarm system and hired a security guard. Lance Sheffield said on Tuesday that they'd taken those steps because "an almost half-naked woman" climbed onto the seawall and took pictures of herself with their house in the background, which was "kind of a big red flag."

Later that summer, an article about the seawall appeared in the Barrington Times. That resulted in "people spewing hate speech on [social media site] Nextdoor, [and] vandalizing our property," Holly Sheffield claimed.

Procaccini, the Sheffields' attorney, previously represented a group called Shoreline Taxpayers Association for Respectful Traverse, Environmental Responsibility and Safety (STARTERS) that opposed Rhode Island's new shoreline access law.

His name may also sound familiar because his father, Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Procaccini, recently tangled with Attorney General Peter Neronha over a matter connected to a different Barrington dispute.

Lawyer argues assent allowing public access is 'unenforceable'

Speaking before the CRMC on Tuesday, Procaccini said that the "No Trespassing" signs and fencing had been removed from the seawall, but there was still a dispute "about whether public is allowed to be there at all."

He argued that the 1982 assent was unenforceable because it was never recorded in Barrington's land evidence records, and that the Sheffields had not received "fair notice" about the encumbrance on their property.

CRMC member Catherine Robinson Hall took issue with that claim, saying that it's up to buyers to do their due diligence and find out whether a piece of property is subject to any restrictions that may apply to "highly regulated natural resources" like wetlands, or, in this case, the coastline.

Other members of the council were sympathetic to the fact that the Sheffields didn't know about the stipulation when they purchased the property, but unwilling to let them off the hook in the future.

Stephen Izzi said that he didn’t think that voiding the public access requirement was within the council’s purview. He successfully made a motion to dismiss the cease-and-desist notices out of fairness, but also "ratify and confirm that 1982 assent remains in full force from this time forward."

Hall and one other CRMC member, Patricia Reynolds, voted against the measure.

The CRMC had to take action on the Sheffields' appeal on Tuesday in order to comply with a November ruling from Rhode Island Superior Court Associate Justice Jeffrey A. Lanphear, who ordered the council to respond to the petition within 20 days. The Sheffields previously filed a complaint in state court because the CRMC was taking too long to respond.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Barrington couple must allow public on their seawall, state says