You can own a private island just outside NYC for $13 million

A private island just 30 minutes from Manhattan has hit the market for $13 million.

Columbia Island is located just off of New Rochelle in Westchester, surrounded by the waters of the Long Island Sound. It’s just a short boat ride from The Bronx’s City Island and 30 minutes from Midtown by car.

The island’s 5,600-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bathroom home sounds like a city dweller’s dream retreat — but its owner says creating the haven was a nightmare.

“I was sort of cocky,” Al Sutton, the island’s current owner, told Bloomberg. “You get on the island, even if it’s a wreck, and it’s just gorgeous — the sky, the tide, the birds, everything. And that sort of blinded me and my thoughts. I just went: ‘Wow, what a Zen experience this could be.’ ”

Sutton — a doctor, actor, author and producer — bought the island for $1 million in 2007 and then invested $8 million over the next 11 years developing it.

But instead, Sutton said, he could have gotten the same experience renting “a rowboat from City Island for $10” without the headache of managing complicated construction on the salt- and wind-beaten site.

The end result: On the speck of land, Sutton oversaw the completion of a hurricane-proof luxury residence that is also self-sustaining via a desalination machine, solar panels and other necessities. Naturally, there is also a dock, because the only way to get there is by boat.

But even after construction was finally finished, he never moved in.

“I’m 85 now,” Sutton said, “and I guess when I bought it, I was in my 70s and I was more ambitious.”

Over the last 11 years, owner Al Sutton built a 5,600-square-foot home on Columbia Island.

Vizzi Media Solutions

It is self-sustaining, with solar panels and a desalination machine.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Inside, there are four bedrooms. (This is a rendering.)

Vizzi Media Solutions

The space has an industrial vibe and is unfurnished for now. (This is a rendering.)

Vizzi Media Solutions

This is what the raw space looks like.

Vizzi Media Solutions

There are also two bathrooms.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Windows look out to the Long Island Sound.

Vizzi Media Solutions

The island is a speck off of New Rochelle in Westchester.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Sutton paid $1 million for the island in 2007.

Vizzi Media Solutions

He planned to live there himself, but he is now in his 80s after more than a decade of construction.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Among the features Sutton installed is a high-end kitchen.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Click Here: Pandora Jewelry

Even though Sutton never lived on the island, he considers it an idyllic retreat.

Vizzi Media Solutions

The waters of Long Island Sound are clear on the private beach.

Vizzi Media Solutions

The lucky buyer will have to shell out $13 million for the privilege, though.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Uninhabited Davids Island in the background of this aerial shot, between Columbia Island and the mainland.

Vizzi Media Solutions

Ad

Up Next
Close

Maxim names Olivia Culpo the hottest woman in the world

Meet the planet’s sexiest woman — at least for this…

15

View Slideshow

Back
Continue

Sutton wasn’t the first victim of Columbia Island’s siren song.

In the 1940s, New Rochelle’s Huguenot Yacht Club sold the outpost to CBS, which promptly put up a 400-foot-tall broadcast tower.

But after a plane crashed into the tower in the 1960s, the island was again sold to vaudeville entertainer and film actor Peter Lind Hayes.

see also

NYC’s latest real estate boom? Private islands

No man is an island. But if he can cough…

Hayes couldn’t afford the tax bill and passed the island onto the College of New Rochelle, who also couldn’t afford to maintain it. They eventually the island away to a school superintendent, who sold it to Sutton.

Now Sutton’s pain is some lucky buyer’s gain. Not only is Sutton selling his own rare retreat, but the sale price includes the neighboring and mostly undeveloped Pea Island.

“I’m not a big spender, or at least I wasn’t until now,” Sutton lamented. “But here was something that, to be realized, had to be done right.”

Patti Anderson at Julia B. Fee Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.