The new home at the northern corner of Ocean Avenue at Ocean Pathway continues to evolve slowly:
New construction—Ocean Avenue at Ocean Pathway. October 14, 2012. Photos by Paul Goldfinger
Moving westward up the Pathway, on the same side of the street, work proceeds at the Manchester site where 25 Ocean Pathway is making progress. It will have 7 bedrooms, 6.5 baths (this means that 6 1/2 people can go simultaneously, perhaps breaking a Guinness record for a single family house). Also there will be 2 fireplaces (where you can roast marshmallows while waiting for a bathroom to become available) – -totaling 4,476 square feet.
There is a sign outside which says that the Manchester Inn contained two historic Victorian homes built in 1890 during the Ocean Grove “period of significance.” The sign says that the designs for #25 and #27 are based on old photographs and maps and were approved by the HPC. — Paul Goldfinger
25 Ocean Pathway. Ocean Grove, NJ. October 14, 2012. PG
SOUNDTRACK: We don’t know if those two fireplaces will be roaring by Christmas, but we can imagine it. Here are Frankie S and Old Red Eyes who are predicting a marshmallow world.:
I sent an email to the NorthEnd email address you had listed in your article, and it came back to me undeliverable. Is there a correct address for anyone on that committee?
Hey Gosh, you are 100% right. There have been over 38 B&B’s and hotels and they couldn’t make it. Any business or Camp Meeting is not going to invest 75 to a 100 million dollars for a hotel that will make the majority of their money during the four month season, plus spend millions of dollars replacing the wall at Wesley lake? You know there’s more to their logic to convert to condos.
I have a bridge for sale if the Camp Meeting is interested.
Regardless of what size hotel was there in the past, it was nonconforming then and it not be now. In the day you had horse drawn carriages, with few cars that had to park out of town on Sunday, there were no such fire and safety standards as there are today.
That same hotel back then couldn’t run in the black and eventually between fire and lack of business it was taken down,so now they want to repeat history. What Neptune needs to enforce is that if the hotel does not profit and go chapter eleven it will not be able to convert to condos. If this happens the structure would not have to comply with parking.
All Neptune has in mind is rateables, that’s all, and all C.M. has in mind is ground rent. The OGHOA should have pushed only for single family homes since we are a single family community and not a condo city.
I just read the short version of the north end plan, unfort. cannot make it to the meeting on the 27th, but sent my questions/concerns to the committee email listed on the website.
The upshot of all of this is that the Zoning Board granted variances that were based upon, and explicitly cite, the Department of the Interior’s Standards for Reconstruction.
At this point, in order to be fair to other applicants to whom they have denied similar variance requests, the Zoning Board needs to follow up on what they’ve started and work through proper Township channels (finding people who are actually qualified to assess the final product) to ensure that the promised reconstructions are actually delivered.
anon: Today the OGHOA sent an email to members and subscribers re: North End News/October meeting. In it is a link to the REDEVELOPMENT PLAN which details what is to be built. Only the hotel would be consistent with what was there in an earlier era. Also proposed are: multi-story residential buildings (condos? rentals?), about 7 single-family residences, an underground parking garage. Also see the plan for suggested site layout which is not like anything that was there (or anywhere in Ocean Grove) in the past. It is a very interesting 36-page read.
Just wondering, when it comes to approvals for the North End construction, will the new construction be consistent with what was there in an earlier era?
Dear Gosh, just for your information, if they did that in your town, it was legally incorrect. The only way to override the decision of any Zoning Board of Adjustment is to file an action in the Superior Court of NJ known as a Complaint in Lieu of Prerogative Writ within 45 days of the publishing of the Resolution of Approval. It has to be filed by a person of interest. The Town Committee can only change ordinances. Ordinances, if changed during an application to avoid development, become the subject of litigation.
The Zoning Board acts as a quasi-judicial body which is why we have evidence marked, present professional testimony, and cannot accept letters from anyone as evidence because under the rules of evidence, you must be subject to cross-examination to appear before us or present evidence. These are serious proceedings and none of the decisions are ever entered into lightly. The weight of the evidence, not the presentation (although a clear and concise presentation is appreciated) affects the decision.
To answer your questions, the Zoning Board can approve a variance for height or setback. It has nothing to do with the architectural embellishments on a building, ie…scroll work or columns or carpentry detail. That is the purview of the HPC. If there is a violation of a zoning resolution, the Township has a zoning officer to review the resolutions and issue violation notices, which can be coupled with code enforcement issues. It depends on the violation.
On Abbott, the building met height. ZBA has nothing to do with porch height, that is HPC. With Pathway, the Board found, among other things, that the Marini’s did not have appropriate historical evidence to increase stories of their house because their historical house was significantly smaller than what they wanted to build as proven by pictures. There were no surveys or other evidence presented of the previous structure to support their case and the Marini’s owned the lot directly behind the proposed structure, so could not make a case for legal hardship or lot restrictions, because legally, there was room for expansion.
On the other hand, the two houses being constructed next door were shown to match, in significant historical matters, the form and size of the homes which existed prior to the combination which created the Manchester through photographic evidence, surveys, engineering reports and historical architectural testimony. The HPC could have revised fenestration.
Once again, you may not like the decisions, understand them or want them, but they were both enforceable given the evidence presented. Sorry for the long-winded explanation but there are times too, when I may not necessarily agree with a decision made by the Board but I am the one who has to defend it and the reality is, this Board is very consistent, passionate and has become very savvy as to the legal requirements necessary for decision.
Mary Beth, in case you’re not up to par about zoning, if a case goes before the Zoning Board and is denied, or approved, and someone wants to contest the decision, that person can go before the Committee at their regular meeting and can state the case for a reversal, and the members of the committee would vote to deny or override the Zoning Board. I have seen it done in my town.
Mary Beth, when I used the word Township I intended to refer to the Township as a whole, not the Township Committee itself.
To continue with the example already given, I assume it was Construction that enforced the resolution of the HPC for the house on Abbott.
Whose job is it to enforce the Zoning Board resolution in this case?
The Zoning Board is a separate body over which the Township Committee has no control save for appointing members and professionals. It is a crime by state statute for any member of the governing body to exert or try to exert influence over a Zoning Board issue.
Thank you, Ken, for the clarification. It is good to see that the HPC follows up on these matters. Will the Zoning Board? Their decision seems faulty in this case, but they made it, and now one wonders if they and the Township will bother to see that it is enforced in any meaningful way.
Not very anon — I agree wholeheartedly with your Ocean Pathway opinion. However, the Abbott Ave. house was lowered because there was a deviation (porch too high from ground level) from the construction plans approved by the HPC.
What if the Marini’s DID consult with the “fancy lawyer” before they made their application to the zoning board. What if the “fancy lawyer” refused to take their case and advised the Marini’s they would not be successful in their application because there was NO HISTORICAL BASIS for their requests as their original home (destroyed by fire) was significantly smaller than what they wanted to build? What if the one who wasn’t shocked was the fancy lawyer who represented the guy next door who DID provide historical evidence of a prior structure on the site? What would you say then?
I too was at that meeting. Jennifer Krimko, Hans Kretschman’s lawyer, presented the case to the Zoning Board that these were to be such accurate reconstructions of the two “original” buildings that they would meet the stringent regulations of the Secretary of the Interior’s “Standards for Reconstruction and Guidelines for Reconstructing Historic Buildings,” and for this reason should be granted variances. The Standards were even entered as exhibits during the application.
Variances were granted based upon that testimony.
The Department of the Interior’s Standards can be found here: http://www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/standguide/reconstruct/reconstruct_approach.htm. From reading just the opening sentence of the Standards it is apparent that the Manchester structures do not even qualify for an attempt at reconstruction.
A potential problem that I see is that, apart from height, what’s going up now on 25 Ocean Pathway so far doesn’t look much like historic pictures of what was originally on that site. The proposed railings on the drawings presented at the Zoning Board meeting didn’t even match those in the original pictures (let alone the gingerbread, etc. — details that should be the easiest to reproduce from photographic evidence). And those are just details of the facade.
Is this what the Township is going to let pass as the promised “reconstruction”?
An entire house on Abbot was recently lowered (!) for fear of running afoul of zoning. I will be curious to see if the Zoning Board and Township Committee actually hold Mr. Kretschman and company to the letter of their variance, or if they will simply be given a pass.
IMHO things like flare and height should be inviolate. I can understand some leeway when it comes to ‘how Victorian’ or even color scheme and materials; however, architects should be able to design new construction to conform to those standards. Home buyers AND developers need to be fully informed of the standards and that those standards cannot be broached in any way. Six inches this year turns into 12 inches, then 24 inches and on and on. Things like height for present buildings can’t be easily ‘fixed’ I suppose, but any current flare violations need to be taken care of. Your hedge or steps or porch violate the flare, then it needs to be remedied. As stated above, just my humble opinion.
Charles is absolutely correct that there was definitely a double standard with the zoning board’s vote on these variances. It is sad to think that if you have enough money to pay for a fancy lawyer, an expensive architech with fancy drawings and a planner that you can be approved by the zoning board. Also, if there was political clout involved that should be checked out by the citizens and some of the good politicians. (In this situation and others.) Kudos to Barbara Burns for doing the right thing and the rest of the board should be embarrassed that they were not consistent with their variance approvals.
This is very unsettling to read. What can be done? I was at that meeting, and was shocked with the vote.
Ironically, this article was posted after another article about vandalism in Ocean Grove. Pushing over a structure is not the only way to damage Ocean Grove.
Regarding the two houses at 25 and 27 Ocean Pathway, cited above — A little over a year ago an unusually large crowd of Grovers turned out to oppose variances allowing these houses to be built beyond the size limits of the zoning code and in violation of Ocean Grove’s flared setback. The Zoning Board nevertheless approved those variances, just a short time after it had denied similar variances to another property owner on that same block, the Marini family. Many of those who testified could not understand why #25 and #27 and their developer, Hans Kretschman, were not held to the same standards as the Marinis. Many left the meeting feeling that whether or not an applicant receives a favorable treatment from the Zoning Board may depend, at least in part, on the applicant’s legal representation, the glitziness of the architectural drawings presented and the political clout of the applicant. I should probably add that Barbara Burns, the sole Zoning Board member who voted against the variances for Mr. Kretschman, was not reappointed to the Board this year when her term expired.