By Charles Layton
It’s been more than two years since neighbors presented Neptune Township with a petition, asking that something be done about the dangerously derelict Park View Inn at 23 Sea View Avenue.
Although the Township has since taken the owner, Marshall Koplitz, to court and forced him to agree to rehab the building, little tangible progress has been made in the building itself. It remains an eyesore. Neighbors still live in fear that it could catch fire and burn them out of their homes. One elderly man who lives nearby is said to keep a packed bag beside his door in case he suddenly has to flee for his life.
But now these neighbors have a new concern. They say that paint, possibly contaminated with lead, is spreading from the Park View onto their properties. “You’ve got paint peeling, chips are blowing off the building, and the neighbors are getting it on their porches, it’s on the street, it’s in the alleys,” one man said.
This man, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, recently bought a lead detection kit and used it to test samples of the paint chips from the Park View. Most of those samples tested positive for lead, he said.
He and some friends are now circulating a new petition, which they hope to deliver soon to the Township Committee. It asks that the Township perform its own independent testing to confirm the existence of lead. “If lead paint is found,” the petition says, “we would ask that the Township of Neptune take steps to correct this situation immediately.”
“Our concern is for little kids, for pets, you know,” one of the petitioners said. “I don’t know what danger that paint is to adults unless you actually eat it, but I suspect if the town found out about it they would have to do something to get rid of the lead paint.”
The test kit these neighbors used contains pencil-like swabs. When a swab is pressed against a surface, such as the surface of a paint chip, a liquid chemical causes its tip to turn red if lead is present. If no lead is present, the tip of the swab remains white.
When this test was applied to the paint samples from The Park View, neighbors said, most of the samples turned the swabs red.
Some of the neighbors along Sea View Avenue are losing faith that the Township has the determination to force Koplitz to fix up his property. Back in June of 2010, when 33 of these neighbors submitted their previous petition, they were given to understand that the Township would keep them informed from that point forward. But this has not happened. “We’re getting no feedback from the Township,” one of the petitioners — the man with the lead test kit — said.
They worry that Koplitz will continue to make excuses and stall, just as he has done for years — and just as he did with The Sampler Inn, another of his derelict buildings that became a public nuisance and was finally demolished in 2009. Their greatest fear is of a fire breaking out inside the Park View and spreading to nearby homes, which has happened on two other occasions in the same general vicinity in recent years.
Koplitz is under a court order to rehab the Park View on a specific schedule, but the neighbors have yet to see many visible signs of improvement. He was, this spring, twice declared in default of the court agreement, although the Township’s head of code and construction, Bill Doolittle, has since said he is back in compliance. Still, so far as anyone in the neighborhood knows, he has not yet obtained bank financing for this rehab project, as the court order requires. A workman who has entered the building in recent months told one of the neighbors that the place remains a total mess inside.
To be fair, though, there was one positive development this week. Workers showed up and cut the grass and then edged all around the property.
Grounded in reality, if that’s the case then why haven’t any houses been built on the prime property that the Sampler sat on?
I don’t know much about the dangers of lead paint in a neighborhood, but I would certainly take issue with anyone seeking to trivialize the dangers of fire in a derelict Ocean Grove building such as the Park View Inn. The Sea View Avenue neighbors, in recent years, have seen two tragic examples of what can happen when a fire breaks out in an old Ocean Grove hotel. Both these incidents — the Manchester Inn fire and the Surf Avenue fire — happened just a few blocks from the Park View Inn.
While neither of those old hotels were derelict buildings at the time they burned, another spectacular Ocean Grove fire did start in a derelict building. I’m speaking of the fire in the run-down property at 17 Spray. The Township had cited that building repeatedly for fire hazards since at least 1988. But in 2005, as a result of political intervention, all summonses were dismissed and all fines were forgiven. And on the evening of September 2, 2008, that building burned to the ground.
Although the 17 Spray fire severely scorched and peeled the siding on a home across the street and did some damage to another nearby home, officials and neighbors said a far worse disaster was only averted because a strong wind happened to be blowing the flames in the opposite direction, toward Wesley Lake. This frightening fire is well known to the Park View’s neighbors, because it was just one block away from them.
Until just this spring, Mr. Koplitz had been fighting in court to resist an order of the Ocean Grove Fire Commissioners that he reinstall a fire alarm system in the Park View. The County Construction Board of Appeals upheld the Fire Commissioners’ argument that the Park View was “extremely susceptible to rapid spread of fire” and “a significant threat to harm to neighboring structures and occupants.” Superior Court also upheld that finding. And although the fire alarm has now been installed, a fire alarm system, by itself, does not prevent the outbreak of fire.
In short, these neighbors’ fears of fire are well founded. When people outside Ocean Grove belittle those neighbors and those fears, they only make it harder for the neighbors to press their legitimate case to Township authorities. And that makes it easier for scofflaw property owners to continue their resistance.
Electricity is supposedly being run into the Park View to power the supposedly active fire alarm system. About the two recent major fires, only one of the buildings was in operation but was vacant at the time, the other one was an empty shell under construction, hardly inhabited. By the way, when debris and paint chips ‘migrate’ to neighboring properties, it’s not a parental issue.
Amazing:
You must understand that the owner WANTS the building to be condemned and demolished. It will be far more lucrative (and easier) to build 3-4 new houses on the property. Thus, by delaying while the building further deteriorates, his investment in lawyer fees makes sense. Due to its historic nature, the town wants to avoid a tear-down (which, being honest, is the only possible outcome now). Neptune officials and the judge involved are weak — having not fined Koplitz meaningfully and having given him many, many chances. In the end, you can see that this strategy, which was also followed by Koplitz at the Sampler, is a very successful one to use in Ocean Grove/Neptune.
Our town’s leaders are apparently not capable of learning from past mistakes in dealing with this and other developers. The only successful approach is hard ball from day one, to include highly punitive fines.
Ahhh the Ocean Grove pastime….False Consternation and Outrage, usually under the guise of “for the kids.”
If your concerned about your kids tell them not to go on the property, don’t get involved with the stuff going on over there. What I’m trying to say is, be a parent and parent your kids.
Full disclosure…..the last two fires were not started in abandoned or derelict buildings, they were in buildings that were functional and regularly inhabited. If no one is in the Park View and there is not services to the building it won’t spontaneously explode in flames.
That being said, this is what happens when you elect a bunch of milquetoasts to the township government. People who are more concerned with the photo op and democrat v republican issues, along with the other myriad of stupid things this town churns out of city hall. You get derelict housing with no resolution but ordinances that won’t allow you to park an RV or trailer on your property.
It amazes me that a person would be willing to spend all that money on attorney fees but unwilling to put that money toward repairing his own property. Can anyone enlighten me. What goes on here?
Koplitz has first-rate legal representation and the township seems powerless.
Sure Neptune”s Zoning board approves porches for 14 Spray Ave, then a month later they condemn the home—REALLY. BUT for 4 years I have asked, for good reasons, to condemn the Park View, and they won’t. WHY?
The residents remain in fear of a fire. What a shame!
Residents really need to make changes in the local government.