Blogfinger

North End negotiator. When will the talking end?

By Jack Bredin and Paul Goldfinger, Blogfinger.net    April 10, 2019

A workshop meeting was held at the last Committee meeting.  A new addition to that agenda consists now of a Business Administrator’s Report  (Vito Gadaleta.)  Since he is the one in the hierarchy who knows what’s really going on, as compared to what the elected Committeemen know, this sounds like a good idea.  But, of course, his public pronouncements are fair game for the media.

It is reported that he said a couple of things which might interest Grovers regarding the North End Redevelopment Plan:

a.  He said that the deadline for a Redevelopers Agreement  might have to be extended.  Evidently, OGNED and the CMA cannot get their act together. Isn’t it strange, that so many years have gone by without beginning such a profitable project?

We speculate that ground rent fees are at the heart of the problem, and in the middle is the CMA who wants to get the most out of their ground rents, and we suspect that the delay stems from fear and the inability to agree.

If the CMA pushes to charge high ground rent payments for the new condos, stores, etc, then when will a civil rights suit occur to deal with the $10.50 payments which most of us are charged?  Equal justice under the law would be at stake along with the final pricing of the new units.  And then, are our 99 year leases at risk?  And will the entire concept of ground rents in the Grove be challenged?

b.  As a result of this announcement of a delay, Jack Bredin raised a question at the meeting  which has been brewing for a long time regarding the cost of a Redevelopment Agreement, and that is:

“How much did it cost?”

Jack asked that question during the Public Portion of the Committee Meeting (April  8, 2019.) He is referring to the fact that any Redevelopers Agreement must include a detailed list of all expenses incurred during the development of such a Redevelopment Plan and Agreement, and that list should be available going back to the very beginning of the NERP in 2007, because, so far, that original NERP was never officially blessed with an Agreement, and now there is the possibility that the developers want the Township to change the Redevelopment Plan.

In response to Jack’s question, Vito Gadaleta quickly answered, “$25,000,” but we know that a true reading of expenditures would have to be much more than that amount.

c.   OPRA requests:    In 2015, Jack put in an OPRA request to the Township Clerk for that financial information, but he was astonished to discover that “all those records had been destroyed.”

Now there are undoubtedly more expenses being incurred as OGNED negotiates with the CMA, and the Township hires a redevelopment attorney.  And a formal signed Redevelopment Agreement, which would be expensive, has yet to surface.

In the end, the re-developer would have to pay for those expenditures, not the Township.  That is why those monies need to be accounted for and paid for in order to complete a Redevelopers Agreement.

Yesterday Jack Bredin put in another OPRA request asking for a full accounting of all expenses as defined above.  He is trying to clear the smoke out of the room.

NIKKI LONEY: