Only in New York

Diane Cardwell has an article in The New York Times about a very exclusive address, at least for half the day:

It has no electricity or sewer lines. Much of it is under water at high tide. It has neither shelter nor a ready spot to build one. It does not even come with a dock. Rat Island lacks electricity and sewer lines, but it offers non-city living in New York. The city has valued the land at $426,000.
And yet, for that customer seeking non-city living in New York— with no neighbors, no traffic, and no noise save the squawking of the birds that nest there— Rat Island, a tiny parcel of vacant, mussel-littered land in Long Island Sound off City Island, might just fit the bill.
“This is the most unique property we’ve ever been associated with,” said Ozzie Crisalli, the owner of Syracuse Realty Group, who is representing the property and said he had received several calls about it. “It’s a two-and-a-half-acre rock that’s sticking out of the water.”
It is not every day that a property like Rat Island comes on the market. Islands in New York State tend to be already expensively outfitted for rarefied weekend living, like those in the Thousand Island archipelago, dotted by castles on the St. Lawrence River, or owned by government and put to some restrictive use, like the study of animal pathogens on Plum Island or housing prisoners and burying the poor on Hart Island, just east of Rat.
But the owner, Red Brennen, a retired marine contractor, has had just about enough of paying taxes for a place he can no longer use now that he is out of the barge salvaging business and lives in Florida. He put his land up for sale in 2009 for $300,000; he had some nibbles, but no real bites. Now he is putting the property up for auction through Alex Lyon & Son. The land— most recently valued by the city at $426,000, according to a spokesman for the Finance Department— could go to the highest bidder, unless Brennen rejects the offer.
“The only thing I’m going to own after I sell Rat Island and my real estate is my E-ZPass,” said Brennen, who pays nearly $1,500 a year on the island, and is also auctioning off property on City Island. “New York City and New York State won’t be able to hurt me anymore.”
Originally part of Thomas Pell’s land purchase from the Siwanoy Indians in 1654, the island did not become part of the city until the 1880s, when it began acquiring land for Pelham Bay Park, said Barbara Dolensek, vice president of the City Island Historical Society.
Much of its history is lost and shrouded in folklore; the name is said to relate to prisoners, called rats, escaping from Hart Island, swimming with cardboard boxes over their heads to look like bobbing trash, but it is not clear if that is true. Legend also holds that the island was used as a so-called pest house in the nineteenth century to quarantine people infected with yellow fever, but Bronx and City Island historians have said that was unlikely because the city already had a quarantine hospital on Hart Island, now known as the site of the city’s potters field.
Rat Island, said to have served as an artists and writers colony, has supported at least one cottage; the remnants of a stone foundation still sit on a peak. Brennen bought a tax lien for about $5,000 in the 1970s, and then spent much more to foreclose on the property. Through the years, he used it to store equipment and to salvage barges carrying tanks of powdered cement that had taken on water. The water would mix with the cement, forming a thick liquid that would tip the barge. Brennen would tow them, upside down, to the island and cut the tanks off the barges; high tide would then carry the barges back out, leaving the tanks on the land.
But they posed a navigational hazard to passing boats, and so the Corps of Engineers got after him, he said, and allowed him to bury the tanks at an artificial reef in Smithtown Bay. Since Brennen moved to Florida, the island has become an impromptu fisherman’s landing, campground, kayak launching site, and spot to view fireworks. He has no trouble with that, he said, but a future owner might. Just to build a house would be daunting: the island sits so low that only a small portion of it is dry at high tide, and the entire mass can end up under water during storms.
Chris Krolow, the chief executive of Private Islands Inc., which publishes a magazine devoted to the subject and operates a listings website, Private Islands Online, said that a buyer could build up a foundation to raise a house high enough, but that such a move might not be worth it. “Prices have really come down everywhere, and so islands like this usually aren’t really a consideration just because there are so many other possibilities out there,” he said. “All the islands we have for sale in New York already have homes on them.”
To live on Rat Island, an owner would have to contend with bringing in systems for power, water, and waste. Brennen said that someone who designed and built green houses had been interested in putting a sustainable showcase house on the land, but that the idea had not come to fruition.
Still, the island has many things going for it: it is within swimming distance of City Island— a boat ride with John Barron of Barron’s Marine Services took all of five minutes— and it has views of Orchard Beach, New Rochelle, Long Island, and Execution Rocks Lighthouse (with its own grisly lore) off in the distance. Lynn Sinclair, who was out on the boat, even sees the possibility of nearby development in an old building on High Island, just north of Rat, which is owned by Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, according to property records, and is home to a large radio tower. “It would be great if they’d turn that building into a little restaurant for the boats that come through,” Sinclair said. As for Rat Island, both Krolow and Brennen said the right buyer might be enticed for the bragging rights alone. “There’s a certain amount of people that like to sit bragging at cocktail parties that they own an island, though it never did anything for me,” Brennen said, describing the auction as being “like Russian roulette; it’ll be over quick. I know there’s somebody out there who has more money than they know what to do with and would like to have a good conversation piece,” he added. “If you’ve got some money and imagination, there’s no telling what you could do.”

Rico says the first thing the new owner needs to do is change the name; in honor of the original Dutch settlers of New York, how about Eiland van Ratten?