A fine kettle of fish. Phrase made famous by Laurel and Hardy to describe a big mess.—PG
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor at Blogfinger and Jack Bredin, researcher.
At the October 26, 2015 Neptune Township Committee meeting, the following conversation took place:
OGHOA member: Did you hear from WAVE?
Gene Anthony (Township attorney:) No, but there are not any other developers knocking on the door.
Jack Bredin: Did you advertise a request for proposals?
Randy Bishop: It isn’t necessary because this is private property.
Jack Bredin: Did you ever hear of the Riviera Plan?*
Bishop: Yes.
This conversation indicates that the Township has abandoned the 2008 public North End Redevelopment Plan and has, instead, substituted a general development plan which is something that private land developers do, but ordinarily, to do that, they must conform to the Township zoning which, in Ocean Grove, is single family homes.
As you may recall, when the Committee allowed the North End to become an Area in Need of Redevelopment, it was approving a change in zoning to allow 165 residential units instead of single family homes.
In doing so, the Township Committee became in charge of the process and was supposed to advertise for redevelopers, however, somehow that step was skipped, and WAVE and the CMA were anointed as redevelopers, and now the Township wants to keep the Redevelopment zoning for 165 units while allowing the process to proceed as if this were a private development project. Mixing those two is illegal.
This quote is from the NJ Municipal Land Use Law regarding Areas in Need of Redevelopment: “The municipality shall be responsible for implementing redevelopment plans and carrying out redevelopment projects pursuant to section 8 of P.L. 1992, c.79 (C.40A:12A-8).”
WAVE will try to hide behind this subterfuge as they complete a new North End Plan which is something that a private developer could do, but not a redeveloper. Randy Bishop presented a new plan from the redeveloper WAVE at an April, 2015 Committee meeting, but that fishy plan has not yet been adopted by the Township. So far, no Redevelopers Agreement has been signed either, despite promises to do so.
The original 2008 NERP, under control of the Township, still remains in force. We expect that WAVE, acting through the Township Committee, will try to pass a new plan or use the old plan as the centerpiece of a private general development project.
What we are witnessing is a crooked manipulation of zoning in order to permit the abandonment of the restrictive redevelopment process while keeping the special zoning component and thumbing their noses at the people of Ocean Grove.
Randy Bishop says that the process is now “private,” so it seems unlikely that WAVE will divulge their members’ names as promised.
How to block this illegal situation? When the original or a new plan is submitted by WAVE without a “request for proposals” by the Township, a citizens group could file a suit in Superior Court against the Township.
Ideally, that would be the Ocean Grove Home Owners Association’s responsibility, but as you know, those Home Groaners are ineffective, feckless, clueless, enablers of this fine kettle of fish.
*The Riviera project was an extensive North End plan created by a serious and well known developer from Allenhurst who submitted his design for approval. He was rejected and he has angrily complained that the process was unfair and illegal and that he was treated badly by the Ocean Grove principals involved with the North End Redevelopment Plan. We have his comments expressed in an email exchange. Bishop said (above) that he knew of the plan.
http://ssjdevelopment.com/plan9.htm
The Township Committee and its cheerleaders including the OGHOA never respond to our articles about wrongdoing; they simply whistle a happy tune, but they have to know that someone besides Blogfinger might expose them in the future.
DINAH SHORE from the King and I.