Razing New Jersey
LAST, JONATHAN V.
Razing New Jersey In which developers in league with city hall come up with a curious definition of "blight" BY JONATHAN V LAST Long Branch, New Jersey Ocean Avenue runs, with only a few...
...A little further north is tiny Ocean Grove—where the town's Methodist Church owns the land and leases it to homeowners...
...In many ways, Long Branch is the perfect storm of the Kelo era: a misleading master plan, an unprecedented exception from state environmental regulation, shifting redevelopment zones, a developer jailed for corruption, a lawyer working both sides of the deal...
...But, as the years passed, Long Branch declined...
...According to a report in the Asbury Park Press, however, Schneider told an October 2004 city council meeting that the plan couldn't be changed because "the city in 2000 signed a contract with the developer, and so any diversion from that would have to be consensual...
...As of December, there were 103 active listings in Long Branch with an average asking price of $658,773...
...There should be no taking of homes for economic development except in rare and exceptional circumstances...
...The city administration went into damage-control mode...
...Since the MTOTSA neighborhood was marked for infill, not demolition, on the plan's colorful maps, there was no great objection to the master plan...
...On the proposed map, some of the land was slated to be remade in its entirety...
...For his part, Mayor Schneider has internalized the struggle...
...A month later, yet another firm was retained for $25,000...
...The traditional American understanding of eminent domain is summed up in the text of the Fifth Amendment, which places two limits on the power of federal and state governments to take private property...
...On the land acquired in Phase I, the developers built not the glorious, integrated residences imagined by the master plan, but a series of bland, cookie-cutter condos and townhouses—a total of 283 units, which sold for between $600,000 and $1.2 million...
...Nostalgia" was one of the reasons Applied bid on the job, David said...
...The Monmouth County beaches, diminished from years of erosion, were about to get a facelift, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers...
...Residents, however, might have missed the mayor's flip-flops because of some distracting news: That same month, Joe Barry, the president of Applied Development, was sentenced to 25 months in prison...
...In Long Branch, it isn't clear that redevelopment has made anyone happy...
...The Strahlendorfs, for instance, had their compensation adjusted upwards to $500,000...
...Long Branch was playing in the big leagues: Thompson and Wood had been responsible for redesigning Baltimore's HarborPlace, Boston's Faneuil Hall, and Washington's Union Station, among other projects...
...Over the next seven months, planners from Thompson and Wood met with members of the Long Branch government and Long Branch Tomorrow 20 times to discuss what redevelopment of the town's coastline might look like...
...From the 1860s until World War I, seven different U.S...
...After she was rejected, the city asked her to sign a waiver saying that if she did raise her roof, she would waive her right to compensation should redevelopment occur...
...For instance, Fred and Dorothy Strahlendorf were given $179,500 for a house 235 feet from the beach...
...He refers to himself as the "poster child" for Kelo protesters...
...Long Branch was once a thriving resort town...
...Under New Jersey law . . . towns are allowed to seize only blighted properties...
...They believed the agency could be persuaded to give the Long Branch plan blanket approval...
...They bulldozed much of the heavily Italian First Ward to clear space for housing projects...
...There the master plan recommended "small-parcel infill with the option of upgrading and densifying existing dwellings to multi-family units...
...The irony, of course, is that the MTOTSA neighborhood is one of the few sections of Long Branch that isn't blighted...
...Barry had been caught making $115,000 in payoffs to the executive in neighboring Hudson County...
...Furlong's group raised $165,000, and used the money to hire the Boston urban design firm of Thompson and Wood...
...Forced out of his home a few days before Thanksgiving, he was put in a motel and given $140,000 as "fair compensation" for his 17-room Victorian house, 400 feet from the beach...
...those of more modest means chose places such as Long Branch...
...Currently 64 municipalities in New Jersey are pursuing redevelopment through the power of eminent domain, with developers trying to seize homes everywhere from Camden to Stanhope...
...The redevelopment in Long Branch rolled on undisturbed...
...That's why there are redevelopment clashes shaping up all along Ocean Avenue—in Belmar, Neptune, Asbury Park, and other towns...
...Thirty-eight homes were about to be obliterated, against their owners' wishes...
...The other 35 are scrambling to figure out the politics of the issue...
...That was only the first step...
...I don't know if the Institute of Justice [sic] is going to fund the campaign against me, but I can live with that...
...As 79-year-old Anna Defaria told the Star Ledger, "We lived through the slum era and this is the thanks we get...
...Schneider won reelection in 1994 and is still mayor today...
...In effect, the city of Long Branch was now responsible for signing off on the environmental protections for its own project...
...Nonetheless, some residents held out, causing the city to invoke its power of eminent domain...
...No formal announcement was ever made about the change of plans, but MTOTSA residents noticed strange signs—the first of which was that they could no longer get city permits to improve their homes...
...Mayor Schneider took a sympathetic stance: "We're going to get you involved in the process," he told the Asbury Park Press...
...The Asbury Park Press reported that the mayor thought "the city could have acquired the homes in 1997 when the development was getting under way, but instead allowed those residents to reap the benefits of redevelopment...
...David Barry, the son, took over the helm at Applied...
...Aaron, the city attorney, declared that "the interest of the city and K. Hov-nanian are the same...
...As the fight intensified, some local politicians rallied and held a fundraiser for MTOTSA...
...Last year, in a controversial 5-4 decision known as Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court upheld the extremely elastic definition of "public use" that undergirds most modern urban renewal schemes—namely, that a private developer's promise of "increased tax revenue" counts as a "public purpose...
...The plan called for private developers to invest nearly $1 billion in creating residential and business units and another $16 million in "public improvements" for the beachfront area...
...Over the last three years, one local reporter calculated, the average sales price of single-family homes in Long Branch was $464,507...
...Schneider, for his part, claimed to have done the homeowners a favor...
...Now that the Supreme Court has declined to protect homeowners, that duty has fallen to the states, with mixed results...
...Greenbaum held on for awhile, but in July "reluctantly" withdrew his firm as counsel, insisting there was "no basis to suggest that the city has been engaged in 'impermissible favoritism.'" Meanwhile, the city negotiated with MTOTSA residents, to little avail...
...According to the JAPA, the magazine of the American Planning Association, Furlong made this move "entirely on his own...
...According to JAPA, the Long Branch planners "decided that the only way to 'beat' CAFRA was to change it...
...Six offers were in the low $300,000 range...
...A February rally drew 250 eminent domain protesters to Long Branch...
...By November 2003, the city had all but given up the pretense that the MTOTSA neighborhood would be spared in the next round of redevelopment...
...The city of Long Branch adopted the plan...
...At a town meeting, after Aaron's firm was given an additional $30,000, a resident asked the city attorney who was paying for all of the lawyers...
...By 2005, the effort to save the MTOTSA neighborhood was gaining wider attention...
...As they wait to learn their fate, the longtime residents of MTOTSA are worried and dismayed...
...In another fit of pique, Schneider said that the MTOTSA residents had only themselves to blame...
...One resident was offered $625,000 for his house—a property that includes rental units...
...Six states have already held that "public purpose" economic condemnations are constitutional...
...Mayor Schneider flatly asserted that Greenbaum's dual roles "will not be a conflict of interest...
...The basic idea was to take 135.5 acres of land along the ocean and turn it into a mixed-use, urban renewal utopia, complete with bike paths and walkways and condominiums and high-value commercial zones...
...Many other homeowners were given similarly meager compensation...
...Twenty-one homeowners sued the city after the fact, with varying degrees of success...
...After all, in a February 2000 Asbury Park Press article, Joseph Barry had warned, "The holdouts will be losers...
...Go a few more miles still, and you arrive in Long Branch...
...The mayor had a good point...
...The total amount offered to MTOTSA property owners named in the complaint," Bean writes, "is just south of $4.1 million...
...These victories are the fruits of 12 years of planning done by the mayor, city council, and a consortium of local businesses...
...Bruce McCloud was a loser...
...In December, Long Branch filed a complaint in state Superior Court asserting its right to take the MTOTSA properties...
...In the wake of the Kelo decision, Long Branch is a case study in what the use—and the abuse—of eminent domain means to middle-class America...
...Atlanticville's Greg Bean predicts that the units will sell for between $400,000 and $2.2 million...
...Amid all the happy talk, a single sentence, buried on page 29, might have set off alarms in the mind of a wary citizen...
...His son, David Barry, told NJ Biz that when Joe was a teenager he spent his summers in Long Branch...
...Let's hear [residents'] ideas about how and why their homes can be saved...
...Part of the decline was an unexpected consequence of urban planning...
...They were right...
...For the president of Applied, Joseph Barry, the deal was a labor of love...
...The Newark Star Ledger explained the Orwellian nature of the affair: "The city has already declared these homes 'blighted,' although they are neat bungalows and ranch houses with solid roofs, carefully tended lawns, and flowerpots on porches...
...Robert Furlong, who conceived the Long Branch plan, died in 2000, before even one of the condominiums he had fought so hard for was built...
...Three others were given offers in the low $400,000s...
...The city in turn sold some parcels it owned to the developer at below-market value, and then helped arrange $18 million in state low-interest loans to acquire other properties, paving the way for a condo development known as Beachfront North Phase I. To help with the project, Applied brought on a partner, Matzel and Mumford, a subsidiary of development giant K. Hovnanian...
...They would not look out of place in a Homer painting...
...In the 1960s, in neighboring Newark, the city fathers began to experiment with public housing...
...It got so bad that, on February 21, 1994, in the middle of a heated mayoral election, a drug-related riot broke out, with a crowd of 300 residents throwing bottles, vandalizing cars, injuring two police officers, and burning down two vacant homes...
...For instance, when Denise Hoagland sought a permit to lift the roof of her house in 2000, her application was denied...
...By 1965, the influx of working-class residents finished off much of what remained of Long Branch's resort culture...
...In addition, he was fined and ordered to repay $1 million he had scammed from federal agencies...
...New Jersey is essentially two giant suburbs—of New York and Philadelphia—with an enormous coastline, as well as numerous interior rivers...
...Which may be why the original plans went out of their way to reassure residents their homes would be safe...
...Next comes Bruce Springsteen's crumbling hometown of Asbury Park, where the girls comb their hair in the rearview mirrors and the boys try to look so hard...
...Some could afford the ritzier towns in Monmouth County...
...Of course, there were other reasons...
...Most of the residents went quietly...
...As the Institute for Justice's Scott Bullock explains, the prime targets for developers are typically low to middle-income communities with waterfront homes within commuting distance of a major city...
...The document was public, and some residents—particularly those in the prospective redevelopment zone—were nervous...
...Razing New Jersey In which developers in league with city hall come up with a curious definition of "blight" BY JONATHAN V LAST Long Branch, New Jersey Ocean Avenue runs, with only a few interruptions, more than 40 miles along the New Jersey coast, from the northern tip of Long Beach Island all the way up to the southern entrance to Sandy Hook Bay— the effective end of the Jersey shore...
...No one wants to use eminent domain to redevelop the parts of Long Branch that are actually blighted—such as, for instance, the abandoned building across from city hall...
...But, while Long Branch may look like a success story, it is actually a cautionary tale...
...Governor James McGreevey, at the groundbreaking ceremony in April 2002, reaffirmed an $11.2 million pledge in state aid to Long Branch...
...The intricate, flavorful visions of the master plan have been realized as drab monoliths that look uncomfortably like Yuppie versions of Soviet-era housing projects...
...At an April meeting, the city awarded a $25,000 contract to the firm of Ansell, Zaro, Grimm, and Aaron—the Aaron of which was James Aaron, who also held the post of city attorney...
...Some of the doomed properties present an even stranger picture of "blight"—big, beautiful houses facing the ocean, with nothing between them and the beach except wide, rolling lawns...
...The setup was unprecedented and so attractive that five developers immediately submitted plans...
...One wonders if the townsfolk will find the benefits enough to make the project worth the trouble...
...presidents summered there...
...To avoid the clean-sweep practices of contemporary urban renewal yielding antiseptic uniform 'projects,'" the plan continued, "we recommend an incremental approach that is rather like repairing a valuable patchwork quilt...
...There were other unpleasant surprises in store for residents who had been impressed by the original master plan...
...But the master plan was filled with reassuring language...
...In New Jersey, the MTOTSA residents are hoping for salvation from the courts, but if that fails, they may find relief in the political process...
...The offers were not comparable to local real estate prices on the private market...
...In Phase I, Applied acquired 140 homes...
...In January 2004, residents met with Schneider and Paratap Talwar, the Thompson and Wood designer who had authored the master plan...
...At the sentencing hearing, Barry's attorney argued for leniency based on his client's passion for "social justice...
...A group of some 40 local businessmen headed by Robert Furlong, who owned a number of local clothing businesses, had just established a private redevelopment arm, Long Branch Tomorrow, to help goose the process...
...Schneider had long been a proponent of redevelopment, and in 1994 the stars began to align...
...one, a two-story cottage a block and a half from the ocean, was for $210,000...
...Driving north on Ocean Avenue, you're never more than a few feet from the beach, and the small towns whip by quickly, each with its own peculiar character...
...The leaders of Long Branch are undeterred by a court fight...
...The developers are funding it," he replied...
...Today, however, Long Branch is on the brink of a rebirth...
...one of them will host a concession stand...
...The town council, girding for a legal battle, began doling out contracts to law firms...
...MTOTSA homeowners provided the city with an alternative plan, which the city council rejected...
...They should have lawyered up as the city did: "If they had gotten proper legal representation and put together a plan to oppose this project when we began to study it in 1995," he explained, "it's likely this project never would have passed...
...Last fall, state senator Diane Allen proposed legislation for a two-year moratorium on eminent domain takings...
...other portions were marked as "residential infill...
...Since the late 1970s, developers along the Jersey Shore have been forced to deal with the state's byzantine Coastal Area Facilities Review Act, administered by the state Department of Environmental Protection...
...From that hotly contested race, the plan to redevelop Long Branch was born...
...In other words, simplifying only slightly, the government can compel you to sell your house to a developer who promises to build a more expensive one...
...Downtown businesses moved out, and the town went into further decline, which wasn't helped when, Jonathan V. Last is online editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...in 1987, the town's last tourist attraction, a large pier on the boardwalk, was destroyed in a fire...
...upscale businesses—trendy coffee shops and hip designer boutiques—are back...
...Now that Corzine has been sworn in as governor, it remains to be seen how he defines "exceptional circumstances...
...It wants to bulldoze them to make room for 185 more condominiums...
...In 1869, Winslow Homer painted Long Branch, New Jersey, depicting a pair of Victorian women on the bluffs overlooking the surf...
...Two years later, the city council selected its developer: Applied Development, of Hoboken, New Jersey...
...Four days before Christmas, the city council authorized another $300 million redevelopment zone, Beachfront South, which will empower K. Hovnanian to raze 30 properties in 2007 and replace them with 352 condos, priced from $600,000 to $1.2 million...
...The event was sponsored by K. Hovnanian...
...It is a testament to the power of eminent domain, as blighted old neighborhoods were bought up and cleared to make way for the new developments...
...You can't do [massive redevelopment] on a patchwork basis," he protested, abandoning the comforting "patchwork quilt" metaphor in the city's master plan...
...Five rioters were arrested, and Mayor Adam Schneider was forced to declare a curfew...
...In July 1995, they delivered their master plan, a slick, 67-page document that outlined a dramatic vision...
...There's the Richie Rich enclave of Sea Girt with its multimillion-dollar mansions next to the merely wealthy town of Spring Lake, with its million-dollar homes...
...Young people with wads of disposable income are flocking to it...
...The residents of MTOTSA are fighting back, and the beginning of the court brawl is scheduled for February 24...
...The New York Times and National Public Radio both did stories about the fight...
...By forcing developers through a rigorous clearance process, the act often slows down redevelopment in beach communities...
...Land can be taken only "for public use"—a new highway, for instance—and it cannot be taken "without just compensation...
...When things went awry for Long Branch after the 1960s, the city of 31,000 hollowed out...
...Even the master plan's idealistic projections envisioned only an extra $7.8 million in new tax revenues, and the "public use" features are modest: A series of "gateways" by the boardwalk that will house restrooms and storage space...
...It wasn't chi-chi, but its 37 well-cared-for properties, home to both retirees and working families, made it one of Long Branch's last middle-class enclaves...
...Unlike many other parts of Long Branch, the MTOTSA neighborhood was still an enviable place to live...
...In a recent speech to New Jersey's League of Municipalities, he boasted, "Six months from now, I'm going to run again...
...That measure stalled, but during the gubernatorial race, candidate Jon Corzine also made noises friendly to the idea: "My principle on this issue is a simple one," he explained...
...The logic of Kelo-style takings is to redevelop attractive land—regardless of who lives there...
...Perhaps sharing his imprisoned father's passion for "social justice," developer David Barry described the residents as "opportunists looking for higher prices for their property, or the limelight...
...Nonetheless, the city moved ahead with its eminent domain proceedings...
...Not by sweeping reform but by an incremental process, new buildings and blocks will fit in among the old," it promised...
...A $75,000 contract was given to the firm of Green-baum, Rowe, Smith & Davis to handle eminent domain proceedings...
...There's middle-class Belmar and working-class Bradley Beach...
...One such "infill" neighborhood, known by the unwieldy acronym MTOTSA (for Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace, and Seaview Avenue, the three streets which bound the area), was a refuge for longtime homeowners...
...Residents presented the council with a petition with 500 signatures protesting Phase II...
...According to the press account of the meeting, Talwar explained that, contrary to the vision of his original plan, razing the MTOTSA homes was "necessary to the success of the plan...
...One of these, by way of example, is an 1,800 square-foot bungalow with ocean views, a block from the beach...
...Which brought on an interesting moment in May, when a local weekly paper, Atlanticville, broke the story that Arthur Greenbaum, of Greenbaum, Rowe, had a personal stake in the redevelopment: He sits on the board of directors of Hovnanian Enterprises—the parent company of Matzel and Mumford, the developer that Applied had quietly let in on the action after winning the contract to remake Long Branch...
...Mayor Schneider began to come unhinged...
...few of these boast the ocean views enjoyed by many of the MTOTSA homes...
...The homeowners have worked closely with both local counsel and with the Washington-based Institute for Justice, which represented Susette Kelo in her case against New London, Conn., which ended up before the Supreme Court last year...
...Newark residents fled to the suburbs...
...Nine have decided that they are not...
...Somewhere along the way, the MTOTSA neighborhood was marked for "redevelop-ment"—not infill...
...No one noticed this important modifier...
...New Jersey residents are particularly vulnerable to this kind of forced redevelopment...
...The reason for this declaration of "blight...
...When Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her Kelo dissent that "the specter of condemnation hangs over all property," she wasn't scaremongering...
...In May 1997, after two years of lobbying, the state ceded its CAFRA authority to Long Branch...
...Drugs became rampant, much of the town fell into disrepair, crime took hold...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 21
