Blogfinger

By Charles Layton, Blogfinger staff reporter.  2011.

By a voice vote, with no nays, the Ocean Grove Home Owners Association approved a North End resolution Saturday containing a long list of suggestions aimed at easing the project’s inconvenience for Ocean Grovers.

The North End Redevelopment promises to be the most massive building project in Ocean Grove for many decades. As presently planned, it calls for a maximum of 80 hotel rooms and a maximum of 85 residences, mainly condos with a few single-family homes.

The Township Committee has already enacted an ordinance describing the project’s outlines, but now the Committee must negotiate with the developers on a much more detailed agreement, which also is to be enacted into law.

The HOA’s list of suggestions will be passed along to the Township’s negotiators, who are Committeeman Randy Bishop and Committeewoman Mary Beth Jahn.

In general, the HOA hopes to mitigate the adverse impact of the project on the lives of Ocean Grovers both during construction and thereafter. The organization’s proposals therefore emphasize the need to prevent parking and traffic problems as a result of the increase in density at the North End.

The proposal also calls for a maximum of transparency, including publication on the Township’s website of all relevant findings and reports, especially those related to traffic, environmental impact and the nature of the water table at the site. (Problems with the water table could affect the developers’ ability to provide the necessary amount of underground parking.)

It also calls for public release of information relating to the developers’ financial ability to complete the project. It asks that the developers be made to build the complex in stages, beginning with the hotel, followed by the single-family homes and then the condo units. “Each block of condos must be 75% sold before other condos are started to insure no empty partially constructed structures,” the resolution says. These suggestions are intended to avoid the fate that befell Asbury Park when a developer began construction on a large condo project only to have the project fail financially, leaving a large, ugly skeleton of an unfinished building.

The HOA also asks that a swimming pool be included in the complex, with public access.

The developers of the North End are the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association and a company headed by Ocean Grove contractors William and Paul Gannon. Other investors in the Gannon company are unknown, and the HOA resolution urges that the Township require that they be identified.

There has been no indication as to how long the Township/developer negotiations might take, or how long before construction begins.

BACKGROUND —  Here are some basic facts about the North End Redevelopment Plan, as presently written. During negotiations, however, some of these details could change:

*Location: Between Spray Avenue and Wesley Lake, from the boardwalk west to Beach Avenue

*Elements: a hotel, condos, a few single family detached homes, townhouses, retail commercial space

*Maximum number of hotel rooms allowed: 80

*Maximum number of residences of all types: 85

*Off-street parking requirements: one space per hotel room; approximately two spaces per condo unit (in compliance with state RSIS standards); one space for each 300 square feet of banquet, conference or restaurant space in the hotel.

*Other parking requirements: Off-street parking for the hotel and residential structures must be below ground and sheltered from street view, although the below-ground lot or lots may rise a maximum of 3.5 feet above street level. A maximum of 20 surface parking spaces are permitted for loading, valet and pickup/drop-off, provided these spaces are screened from public view. Any existing on-street parking spaces eliminated due to the development must be compensated for with additional on-site spaces.

*Height limitations: Hotel no higher than 65 feet. Condo buildings no higher than 48 feet.