The owner of the now demolished Full Sail bar on White Horse Beach this week sued the town, alleging the price Plymouth paid to take the property by eminent domain was “grossly inadequate.”
The town offered the owner Theodore “Skip” Fucillo $269,000, even though Town Meeting had followed the recommendation of the Community Preservation Committee and authorized payment of up to $875,000 to buy and demolish the property.
“The amount offered by the government for the properties is grossly inadequate, unfair, and far less than the properties could have been sold for in the fair market, based on the highest and best use of the property, measured on the day of the taking,” alleged the suit, filed by attorney Tyler Sheets of the firm Finneran & Nicholson.
The property, taken by the town in February 2025, is in an iconic location “along a central access point to the sprawling white sands of White Horse Beach. along Taylor Avenue and St. Charles Street in Plymouth,” says the suit filed Tuesday in Plymouth Superior Court.
Fucillo is seeking unspecified “just compensation” for the taking of its property, interest and lawyers’ fees.
The fair price will be determined in the litigation, Sheets wrote in an email, “if the town doesn’t step up and make an acceptable offer.”
But Plymouth officials, responding to the suit, said the town paid a fair price for the property.
The $875,000 authorized by the CPC assumed Fucillo owned six properties along the beach.
But the town discovered Fucillo owned only five of the properties, and the largest parcel belonged to someone else, according to Town Manager Derek Brindisi.
The town worked with the second owner and negotiated a purchase price and bought that parcel for around $250,000, Brindisi said.
The town also had a signed purchase and sale agreement with Fucillo, Brindisi said, but he backed out.
So 18 months ago, town officials took his five properties by eminent domain and sent Fucillo a check for what they say was their appraised value — $269,000.
The dilapidated shack was demolished in June 2025. In its place will be a parking lot with gravel and landscaping, a pathway to the beach, and shade sails, Brindisi said.
“This property was a blight in the neighborhood for many decades,” he said. “The town had an agreement in place, but the owner no longer wanted to cooperate so unfortunately the town had to take the property by eminent domain.”
The tiny bar was a popular spot for beachgoers in the 1970s and 1980s but had been closed for many years when a fire heavily damaged the building in 2016.
“It had been a dilapidated, boarded-up old bar for a long time before the fire years ago,” said select board member Kevin Canty.
“It was what we would refer to as an attractive nuisance. After negotiations devolved, we took it by eminent domain,” Canty said of the Fucillo properties. “We believed and still believe we paid fair market value of the parcels he did own.”
The Independent was there when the building came down in front of about a dozen spectators.
During the demolition, one of the workers discovered beer glasses and a cocktail shaker inside and handed them to Roberta Capella, great-granddaughter of the bar’s original owner.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.