After reading the article in the Chronicle Herald (Subscription only - Halifax, N.S.) about a US fella purchasing Lot 25 on Oak Island from David Tobias, I decided to do a bit of poking around myself.


After reading the article in the Chronicle Herald (Subscription only - Halifax, N.S.) about a US fella purchasing Lot 25 on Oak Island from David Tobias, I decided to do a bit of poking around myself. The article says that the purchaser is from the states and the lot is registered to a Nova Scotia company by the name of Centre Road Ventures that is owned by one Alan Kostrzewa.
A quick Google of “Alan Kostrzewa” netted only 32 hits. Almost all of them 5 or 10K running times or ski racing in his home city of Traverse City Mi. So, this much we know, he is between 45 and 49 years of age and he is in good shape as he won the Bronze medal in his division for a ski racing. And another posting in a local Traverse newspaper has Alan quoted as a baseball coach for kids 5-8. From the article the seems to be a pretty great guy. WHat is he doing buying a piece of a rather controversial island?

A google of his company, “Centre Road Ventures” almost got me a googelwack! Just 4 hits. 2 seemed to be ill-relevant and the other 2 were hits on one web site oakislandtreasure.co.uk. A site dedicated to Oak Island with several interesting chat forum threads. Quite a good read. One rather long thread is on the sale of Lot 25 from David Tobias to Alan Kostrzewa, very serious stuff, wild speculations, until some of the forum members digress into petty topics. But a fun read all the same. These guys are infatuated with Oak Island and its mystery.

I poked around the Oak Island Treasure site a bit, but didn’t find what I was looking for. And that was a breakdown of who or how many own Oak Island. So, I made my own map. A quick visit to property on-line and I searched out the owners of the island. See the legend below.

BLACK - Nova Scotia Natural Resources (The causeway)*

RED - Oak Island Tours - Dan Blankenship (22 lots)

LIGHT YELLOW - Centre Road Ventures - Alan Kostrzewa (1 lot)

GREEN - Jane & Dan Blankenship (1 lot)

GRAY - David & Garnette(sp) Blankenship (1 lot)

LIGHT BLUE - Robert Young

PINK - Fred Noland (6 lots)

DARK BLUE - John & Christine Johston (1 lot

*I suspect the causeway is public, but the catch is, as soon as you leave the causeway on the island side, you would have to have permission from Dan Blankenship to cross his land. Therein is the catch. Obviously, David Tobias had a right-or-way across Blankenship’s land and that is what he sold, not a r-o-w across the causeway. Assuming it is public property.

So, it would seem that 24 lots are controlled by the Blankenship’s and other than Alan Kostrzewa, there are 3 other owners, with Fred Noland having the most lots after Blankenship at 6 lots.

I believe Fred might be the one for the Oak Island Society to go after. Fred was a fairly old man when I met him over 15 years ago, so I suspect he may getting well on in years by now. There is no telling what he plans to do with his lots.

Other than speaking with Fred Noland, as I said over 15 years ago, I met Dan Blankenship well over 5 years ago and in both cases they were talking about selling. This seems to be a reoccurring theme. The only change is the number of zero’s they put on the price each year. My only other contact with Oak Island was through my father. I remember being on the island, in the 60’s and looking at the coffer dams that Bob Restal had put on the beaches. My next memory is being in my fathers car in Western Shore a few months later, when they brought the bodies Bob Restal and his son ashore after being asphyxiated in a pit from exhaust fumes.

Oak Island Thread About New Buyer
http://forum.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=789&postdays=0&postorder=desc&start=0

Everything you wanted to know about Oak Island and were afraid to ask!
http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/

Oak Island Tourism Society
http://www.oakislandsociety.ca/

Google 263,000 hits for “Oak Island”

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