STAMFORD -- Until the mid-20th century, the western coast of Stamford Harbor was a cluster of shipbuilding and other maritime businesses, but it gradually was remade into a swath of private waterfront condominiums and luxury homes.

Over the years, Southfield Avenue was home to Etchells Sailboats, a world-famous maker of racing craft; an oil tank farm; and other industrial businesses, said Henry Marx, owner of Landfall Navigation in Stamford.

The maritime industry is now mostly limited to marina slips and businesses that cater to recreational boaters.

"Right now, the recreational marine industry is really the only thing we have left in terms of a marine industry here," Marx said.

For nearly a decade, there have been

plans to complete a half-mile path for walking and biking along the coastline between Davenport Street and Southfield Park. Avalon on Stamford Harbor, a 327-unit apartment complex, agreed to provide part of the public walkway along the harbor.

At Southfield Avenue's southwestern end is the Dolphin Cove Association, a community of 103 waterfront homes established in 1972 on the former estate of industrialist C. Russell Feldmann.

Herb Meyer, a Dolphin Cove resident who sold the Feldmann land to developers Bradley and Giles Montgomery, said the private community with homes on quarter-acre plots is tightknit and unpretentious.

"It is a unique community for Stamford," Meyer said. "There is nothing like it in the city, but

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several similar communities like it in Greenwich."

Neighboring Soundview Farm, a commercial park on Gatehouse Road on the Greenwich border, also is carved out of the original Feldmann estate.

Along Shore Road, which runs along the western coastline of Old Greenwich, several private associations are tucked onto Binney Lane, Rocky Point Road and other streets. Some have only a dozen homes, said Colin Brooks, president of the Lucas Point Association, which represents a group of homeowners who live on or near Tod's Driftway, the narrow concrete strip that leads to Greenwich Point.

About a quarter of the homes in the Lucas Point area are more than 100 years old, and homeowners and their families enjoy a strip of private beach and marina slips outside their homes, Brooks said.

After the state Supreme Court in 2000 ordered Greenwich to open public beaches to out-of-towners, residents were worried about an onslaught of traffic at Greenwich Point, Brooks said.

After eight years, the concern mostly has subsided. But residents remain concerned about speeding on Shore Road and Tod's Driftway, mostly from June to September, Brooks said.

"I don't think anyone would say there has been any dramatic or significant increase in traffic," Brooks said. "This is not a beautiful, white-sand Caribbean beach, but it is a lovely spot."

-- Martin Cassidy