The Park View Inn: The ugliest rear end in Ocean Grove. Blogfinger photo October 17, 2013. ©
These front supports will surely inspire confidence in the neighbors who expect that this Seaview Avenue joint will soon collapse on itself or vanish in a firestorm. As Bettie Davis once said, “What a dump!” Blogfinger photo 10/17/13
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger Let’s review what was going on 8 months ago, and let’s compare that story with what happened to the Sampler: just click on the link below—by Charles Layton. Note that the mountain of debris has been removed from behind the Park View. There is new wood framing holding up that rear porch. The front has not changed.
Latest (June 23, 2014) still ugly rear end view of the Park View. Pull up a Margarita and a lounge and watch the bottles float by on Wesley Lake. ©
October, 2013: While Neptune Township tries to figure out what to do with the progressively deteriorating Park View Inn, the neighbors of that abandoned Seaview Avenue hotel remain concerned about the stability of the structure. The owner, Marshall Koplitz, has eluded attempts to punish him for his failures to comply with court orders. In 2011 he agreed to turn the structure into a 31 room hotel, but he never followed the schedule which had been imposed on him. This past summer he declared bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Township has been concerned with the structural integrity of the place, and the owner has recently been forced to shore up the front end, while taking down the back porches before they fall down.
Currently, thanks to the demolition of the first and second floor rear porches, there is a small mountain of debris in back, creating an extra ugly turn of events for our Wesley Lake skyline. One wonders how they will get that mess out since Lake Avenue is closed off. They will need a small army of Sherpas to climb up and drag it all out the narrow alley on the side. Either that, or bring a barge in from the Atlantic Ocean.
A fire sprinkler system was installed about six months ago, but it seems like a feeble solution to a risky situation that calls for a total demolition to provide fire safety for the neighbors. It’s hard to imagine that sprinkler system would control a conflagration originating in that aging wooden firetrap.
The Park View Inn is the poster building for derelict houses in the Grove. As we know from experience, we can pontificate all we want about such properties, and we have done so endlessly on Blogfinger regarding this one and others, but in the end, not much gets done when owner’s rights clash with the public good.
Meanwhile, the Park View Inn just sits there and decomposes, like some sort of beached whale, and nobody at the mother ship in Neptune seems to have a plan to get rid of the carcass.
The town fathers and mother should review the history of the Sampler Inn. They will find that this is deja vu all over again, and in that story, the Township finally decided to demolish the building themselves due in large part to an unrelenting campaign by Grovers. As with the Park View now, the same owner declared bankruptcy then.
The owner of the Ocean Plaza and the Ocean View hotels (on Ocean Pathway) is Marshall Koplitz, the owner of the Park View Inn. Blogfinger photo ©
You can read about it in Charles Layton’s 2012 Blogfinger article (link to the “Battle of the Sampler Inn” The story of the death of the Sampler Inn )
JIMMY BUFFETT: