North End desolate ground. It could have been a contender: ie a wonderful park for We-The-People. Paul Goldfinger photograph 2022. Blogfinger.net Click to enlarge.
Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor. Blogfinger.net
In today’s Coaster-–July 17, 2025, is a letter from Barbara Burns of OG about the North End situation. It is ironic that she wrote this letter, because for many years she was an official of the now defunct “OG Homeowner’s Association.” During that time, the Groaners did nothing to demand that Neptune cancel the North End Redevelopment Plan–to just say, “No.”
Read that Coaster letter yourself and see how many past-tense observations are presented as if they are newly conceived.
Blogfinger has published at least 150 articles since 2009 consistently opposing the plan.
She is disingenuous when she asks why the North End Redevelopment Plan (NERP) has not been dormantt for nearly 20 years. She says that OG should now be saved because it has a “unique sense of place.” Did she just figure that out?
She has now determined that the North End plan would create parking problems along with construction filth, pollution, noise and repercussions all over town. She claims that she and /lawyer Robert Ignato are now trying to “preserve this sense of place.”
And here are the only newly found (by her) assertions in her letter:
“The development of the North End, as envisioned by OGNED is a terrible idea, lackng in forethought and imagination. Ocean Grove and the people who live and visit here deserve better.”
Talk about “forethought,” where was her forethought all these years? She never stood up with Blogfinger as we stood alone in opposing this abomination.
And the other truth which her “forethought” never came up with until now, “The architecture is undistinguished, and is inconsistent with any of the Victorian architectural periods represented in Ocean Grove.”
Has she never seen the Neptune Master Plan for our historic district?
She should be embarrassed to write that letter filled with old truths that she failed to utter publicly all these years and which now she claims to have discovered. You all can read her letter in the Coaster, and if you have been paying attention all these years, you will find little that is new under the sun.
We hope that her lawsuit is successful, but she is 18 years too late, and OGNED, overconfident, has been quoted recently as saying, regarding the current Burns/Ignato law suit, “They have nothing.—just delaying tactics.”
Yes….missed opportunities. It could have been a wonderful park or a single family home neighborhood.
Too bad: “It Was Almost Like a Song.”
From The Bridges of Madison County. Sung by Johnny Hartman