Trustees want to rent out Normandy Manor

Call it "Cribs" -- Suffolk style.

Trustees of the financially struggling Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium are seeking the Suffolk legislature's approval to rent out a $1.4 million county-owned house -- known as Normandy Manor -- for the next two years. The deal could bring the county $130,000 for the length of the lease.

The proposal calls for a license with Huntington businessman Z. Richard Mecik and his wife, Marina, to rent the house as their residence, for $5,500 a month starting March 1. The proposal will get its first airing in the legislature's parks committee Wednesday.

"I'm thrilled," said Lance Reinheimer, acting museum director, adding the proposed rental would help the museum generate a "new, steady and predictable private revenue stream" on a temporary basis while the planetarium is shut down until spring for major renovations.

The county acquired the manor in 2001 for $1.375 million. It is on 3.3 acres across the street from the former 43-acre estate of William K. Vanderbilt, the site of the museum and planetarium. In September, the pink granite house with its slate roof was the headline attraction for the 2011 Design Show House, which put $150,000 in renovations into the property.

Reinheimer said those renovations -- including a $58,000 upgrade to the kitchen -- made the house marketable and spurred museum officials to seek fair market appraisals to rent it out.

While museum officials have considered using Normandy Manor as a conference center, Reinheimer said the building does not meet the requirements to be a place of public assembly as it does not have a sprinkler system -- which would cost $100,000 to install.

Until the Design Show House competition, the manor was used as museum office space, but officials moved to the estate's powerhouse, which holds a generator.

Reinheimer said the manor could become the home for a new museum director. Museum officials are searching for a permanent director.

The two-story French Norman structure was built in 1917 for the superintendent of the Vanderbilt estate and was designed by the architects of Grand Central Terminal.