The Brewer Cemetery (1810 Farmingdale ) where the North End Redevelopment Plan ought to be buried. Paul Goldfinger photograph. © 2015. Click to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger and Jack Bredin of Blogfinger.net
Re-posted 2021 with minor updates from 2018–a refresher course now that the Mayor Brantley (August 2021) says that the North End project will go ahead.
This post is dated 7/21/22—-following on the refusal of the Historic Preservation Commission to give their stamp of approval to the developers. We don’t know if the next step will be at the Planning Board of Neptune (the town not the planet.) Or will we be seeing all parties in a courthouse in Freehold?
Blogflinger.net. Ocean Grove, New Jersey. From the Blogfinger Department of Recent OG Past History devoted to keeping the truth alive in our beautiful little town.
A little historic perspective is now in order since the Township is insisting on pushing their unfortunate fifteen year-old North End Redevelopment Plan past the citizens and into the reality of a construction zone. They are determined to move quickly and to break a variety of rules along the way, and the public be damned.
But why not push this travesty through since they have had a lot of experience doing whatever they please with zoning abominations, architectural design, land use law, and condoization of our little town?
Let’s go back to 2008. The Neptune Planning Board received a request from the Township Committee to consider the idea of an Area in Need of Re-development for the long neglected and vacant North End. The Camp Meeting Association associated with a group of developers called WAVE and conspired to find a way to bypass the single family zoning of that time.
So they decided to exploit a State program designed to bring to life horrible urban land areas, such as the inner city of places like Camden, where nobody wanted to invest and develop.
The program was not intended to help affluent developers such as the OGCMA and WAVE do away with current local zoning and instead allow them to do pretty much whatever they wished.
The Planning Board had a meeting in 2008 where only 6 of 11 members were present to act on that request. Only 5 “yes” votes were needed to approve the Redevelopment project. For such an important meeting, 100% of members should have been present. Were those absences a form of protest?
One of the 5 who would vote “yes” was Denis McCarthy, the President of the OG Homeowners Association. If he had voted “no” we would have had single family homes over there a long time ago. But he voted “yes,” and the Committee accepted those 5 “yes” votes and went ahead and allowed that Area in Need of Redevelopment.
Fast forward to 2011. There was no progress at the North End, so the OGHOA, instead of insisting that the NERP be abandoned, met with the CMA to ask that the project be scaled back. Then Committeeman Randy Bishop presented that idea to the Township, but the historic reality is that the HOA had no authority to negotiate anything with anybody regarding that public project. And, the “HOA plan” was never officially approved, but they have continued to brag that somehow they made progress.
Now, as you know from our recent 2018 articles, a new re-developer has been named called OGNED. Mayor Williams said publicly at the last Committee meeting that the “OGNED Plan” would be approved. However, there is still only one legal plan extant, and that is the 2008 North End Redevelopment Plan. The explanation of the current situation and negotiation was presented in such a muddled way at the November meeting, that we called it “gobbledygook” in our last article.
On December 10, 2018, at the Committee meeting, a representative of the OGHOA, Joan Venezia, went to the microphone during the Public Portion to complain that the recent explanations by the Redevelopment lawyer and the Mayor were so confusing that no one at the HOA understood what was going on. Jack Bredin from Blogfinger concurred, as we did in a recent article.
But here is the rub. (2022): Now, after 15 years, the HOA is still supporting the NERP instead of taking the side of reasonable and caring residents. And, despite 15 years of their failure to accomplish anything meaningful regarding the NERP, The Groaners are not embarrassed to have said publicly in 2018 that they don’t know what is going on and that they have not employed any impartial experts to help the OG community understand the ongoing process.
When Ms. Venezia asked the Committee in 2018 when public hearings will be held on this matter, she was told by Mr. Gadaleta, the Township Business Manager, that the public can be free to ask questions when the HPC has its hearing and when the Board of Adherence has its rubber stamp session.
But, the HPC has no power to rule on the NERP–only the architectural drawings, and the Board of Adherence will not challenge any of this despite what public statements are made by Grover residents.
At Blogfinger we are still doing our best to stay on top of the situation and to demand that the fraudulent Area in Need of Redevelopment be abandoned, with a return to single family zoning, a decision that would be consistent with the Master Plan in this historic town.
But we don’t know if the next stop will be a courthouse in Freehold, The Board of Adjustment in Neptune, or a repeat visit at the HPC where they will probably eventually approve all the columns, windows, paint colors, roof-lines etc that they tend to fuss over.
We hope instead, that they will trash the whole plan and allow the Neptuners to do the same, clearing the field for a return to single family zoning.
After all, at some point over the last 15 years, the clock should have run out on these illegal “developers.”
VALERIE MASTERSON from the soundtrack of the marvelous movie “Quartet.” This is from Gilbert and Sullivan’s the Mikado.
“I think you ought to recollect
You cannot show too much respect
Towards the highly titled few;
But nobody does, and why should you?”
