SynergyFirst International officials said Tuesday they plan to file for a temporary restraining order in Nassau County Supreme Court on Wednesday to prevent further deconstruction and possible demolition of the St. Ignatius Retreat House.

Alexander Levkovich, SynergyFirst’s attorney, withdrew a motion for a temporary restraining order last week after it was announced in court that the Jesuit order, which had previously owned the house, had sold the 33-acre property to the Manhasset Bay Group, Inc. for $36.5 million. 

Levkovich said the company believed Judge Randy Sue Marber was unlikely to grant the first motion because it had been filed against “John Doe” and not a specific organization.

Efforts to reach the Manhasset Bay Group Inc. were unavailing. The organization’s legal representatives at Cullen & Dykman, LLP declined to comment.

Dr. Eli Weinstein, who is overseeing the legal action for SynergyFirst, has said his organization made an offer in the last few weeks to buy the retreat house from the Jesuit Order that included a demand that the Jesuits reconstruct the Genevieve Chapel. The chapel had been removed in June and donated to Fordham University.

The Genevieve Chapel holds religious significance locally because Pope Pius XII celebrated mass there while on tour in the United States in 1936 while still a cardinal.

Weinstein said the organization would be serving the Manhasset Bay Group with a temporary restraining order in court “sometime Wednesday afternoon.”

“We are going to be serving the temporary restraining order [on Wednesday] and I expect no problem with that,” Weinstein said. “The only problem would be to restore the two rooms they took away because I won’t be happy until that’s done.”

The 87-room retreat house, named “Inisfada” after the Gaelic word for “Long Island,” was built for $2.3 million between 1916-1920 for industrialist Nicholas Brady and his wife Genevieve, who also had residences in Manhattan and Rome.

Following her death in 1938, Genevieve Brady left Inisfada to the Jesuit order, which used the Searingtown Road property as a seminary and retreat house for regional parishes and faith-based addiction help support groups.

The Jesuits maintained the property for more than 50 years, but officials said high operating costs led the order to sell off most of the 300-acre property over the years. The order put the property on the housing market for $49 million a little more than a year ago. 

It is unclear whether the buyer plans to maintain the mansion and build around it or demolish it outright. Village of North Hills mayor Marvin Natiss has said the buyer has expressed interest in building condominiums on the property and turn it into “the jewel of North Hills.” The property has zoning for two houses per acre.

In the last few months, local civic groups have tried to find an alternative buyer for the house, but officials have said the Jesuit order has not returned calls seeking to join the negotiations. 

Richard Bentley, president of the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations who has helped search for an alternative buyer for Inisfada, said Tuesday that he “wasn’t happy” with SynergyFirst’s delay in continuing its legal action and is exploring a “Plan B” to block demolition of the retreat house. 

“Our Plan B, what we would be looking at is direct legal action by our own group rather than SynergyFirst, but at this point the consensus would be to stay with their legal action,” Bentley said. “Of course, we’d rather not have to do that because we have neither the time nor the funds to really do something like that, so we’re going to go with SynergyFirst.”

In mid July, the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations filed an application to put Inisfada on the National Register of  Historic Places, in an effort to block the sale of the house.

Bentley said he was curious to see whether the next court appearance would yield any new details about the identity of the Manhasset Bay Group. 

The Jesuit order had previously identified the buyer to whom it was in negotiations to sell Inisfada as a developer based in Hong Kong.

“We still have not been able to connect those dots to a Hong Kong developer, so we’re hoping that once we get back into court, the court brings some new facts to light like with the last court hearing when we got the name associated with the buyer,” Bentley said.

Bentley said the Jesuit order’s relationship with a Chinese developer could be related to a recently announced Jesuit-run liberal arts college set to open in Fanling, China in 2015.