Fourteen Foot Bank To Be Summer Getaway
By Sue Clark on Sep 8, 2007 in Lighthouses For Sale 
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“Latea,” whose winning bid of $200,000 for the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse was accepted Friday by the General Services Administration (GSA) has been revealed as a 53 year old Redwood City, California attorney with an apparent penchant for collecting lighthouses. Michael L. Gabriel already had bought the Bloody Point Lighthouse (pictured at left) in the Chesapeake Bay, south of Kent Island, MD, on Dec. 7, 2006. He paid $100,000 for that structure that had exploded and was gutted by fire in 1960. That lighthouse is already being restored as a summer residence for Gabriel, as will Fourteen Foot Bank.
He plans to start work on his new lighthouse next summer. Gabriel stated he’d like to restore electricity to the lighthouse, feeling the generator presents a fire hazard. The lighthouse previously had a power line running out to it. In regards to the lack of sewer facilities and running water, no problem either. He said desalinization systems that provide 100 gallons of water a day are readily available, as are marine sanitation devices to treat waste.
“In some ways, Fourteen Foot will be faster because it’s much less work than Bloody Point,” Gabriel said, adding that he hopes to begin work around next summer. Robin Bodo, a historian with the state Department of Historical and Cultural Affairs, said Gabriel’s plans “sound great.” Public agencies just don’t have the money to preserve structures such as the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse, she said. “It sounds like it’s got a perfectly adequate new owner.”
Perhaps the biggest hurdle, Gabriel said, will be bringing his Delaware getaway into compliance with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. Visitors to the 1887 lighthouse now must clamber up an exterior ladder and raise a metal hatch that leads to the deck. Gabriel mentioned he envisions a boatlift that will haul visitors up to the deck, one that won’t run afoul of government requirements that the lighthouse’s original appearance be preserved.
Although he’s never seen the lighthouse, and the location was inadvertantly advertised as being three miles offshore (it’s actually eleven miles offshore), the photos and description on the auction site were enough. “I figure I’ll have to get a high-speed boat regardless,” he said. About owning two lighthouses: They’re so close to land that it’s kind of nice: It’s like a little castle”
Gabriel is president of Nevada-based Attorney Et Al, one of the country’s largest continuing legal education firms and is the author of twenty law textbooks. The information in the story is from The News Journal, Wilmington, DE.
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