Danelle DeBye has an unparalleled view from her home on Arnold’s Neck. She looks out at a flotilla of pleasure boats docked at Safe Harbor Cowesett to her south. Farther east she can see Goddard Park and Potowomut. From there it expands to all of Greenwich Bay with Prudence and Patience Islands in the distance. It doesn’t end there. To the northeast there’s Warwick Neck, and closer to home there’s Buttonwoods and still closer, Cedar Tree Point in Nausauket.

Yet for all that expansiveness, DeBye is squeezed. Her neighbor, Safe Harbor Apponaug, which bought the former Apponaug Marina, has boats stored close to her property line. They so restrict Midgley Avenue that Warwick EMTs had to park the rescue truck in the boatyard when responding to her emergency call in May. They arrived on foot to assist her 1-year old son.

Ever since Blackstone International Investment Corp. bought Safe Harbor this April, the once cooperative and friendly neighborhood relationship with residents evaporated.

“That’s when things changed,” said DeBye. Correspondence is by letter. DeBye even invited yard workers to help celebrate her son’s birthday. But nobody showed.

 No question, DeBye would like space for her and her tenants to pull into her driveway. That would be a plus. But given the way things are headed, she fears the neighborhood will lose what has been a public access to the waterfront for decades. That access is Midgley Avenue, a dirt street that was abandoned by the city in 1958.

Circulates petition

For support, DeBye turned to her neighbors, Ward 7 Councilman Jack Kirby and state Rep. David Bennett. With the help of friends she circulated a petition garnering 120 signatures calling on city support in preserving pedestrian access through the marina to the Arnold’s Neck Marina path along Apponaug Cove. In addition to the petition, DeBye urged neighbors to write letters. She received more than 100, many of them detailing how they had grown up on the neck and frequently accessed the shore from Midgley Avenue.

A 45-year resident of the point, Jeannine Sovet writes, “this has always been a close knit neighborhood where neighbors look out for each other. I have always enjoyed walking the shoreline from Ponaug Marina around the point to Safe Harbor (formerly Dickerson’s Marina ) through the pathway to the front beach and continuing to Mary’s Creek.”

Arnold’s Neck brings back memories for Rep. David Bennett. Bennett visited DeBye and recalled how his mother would bring him and his siblings there because it was less crowded than more popular beaches.

“It’s a shame,” he said of any effort to close public access. Bennett has contacted the Coastal Resources Management Council and the Department of Environmental Management to determine if there are any rights of way to the beach.

Ward 7 Councilman Jack Kirby, who accompanied DeBye when she met with the mayor on Monday, is troubled by the lack of access she has to her own property.

Cites history

DeBye, a registered nurse and now a stay-at-home mom, did her homework. In addition to the petition and letters, she presented Mayor Frank Picozzi with a three-ring binder of pictures showing Midgley Avenue being used by cars and a deed executed in 1911 by Herbert C. Calef conveying the Arnold Neck Plat and “shore walk” to the State of Rhode Island for a dollar.

The packet also contains a copy of an Aug. 23, 2002 letter from then-marina owner John Dickerson, president of Marina Realty & Dickerson’s Marina to the CRMC saying they would construct and maintain a footpath to the point from Shattock Avenue.

“Our parking lot has never been gated,” Dickerson writes. “People routinely eat their lunch in our parking lot by the water. Runners, walkers and dog walkers traverse our parking lot unimpeded every day.”

Neither the city on its website nor CRMC on its website list Midgley Avenue or the marina as shoreline access points. However, the city does list Arnold’s Neck Road in several locations as providing public access.

In her presentation, DeBye writes that Midgley Avenue once served as a primary route to several homes and that after its abandonment by the city in 1958 continued to provide vehicle and pedestrian access.

“Today, only one house remains on this historic road [the DeBye house] – a two family residence and the last surviving cottage, formerly the summer home of Olympic medalist John Herbert Higgins – yet Midgley Avenue is still the most advantageous emergency and utility access route to both that home and the adjacent beach,” she writes.

Mayor Picozzi visited the property and agreed the houses are cramped and streets are narrow, but he pointed out that is also the case in Pawtuxet and other neighborhoods.

Following her meeting Monday, DeBye found the mayor reserved. She said he suggested she meet with the City Planner Tom Kravitz, which she had already done, and to hire an attorney.

Despite community support to preserve public access, Picozzi views the matter as a civil complaint.

“Maybe she [DeBye] should have thought of an easement,” he said.

DeBye is hopeful that either the DEM or CRMC will recognize the long-term public access and for the City Council and or the General Assembly to lend its support with a resolution.

The local office of Safe Harbor was contacted for comment on this story. As of Wednesday they had not returned the call.