These homeowners say they’re getting robbed
Coda
Greg Bean

If you think we’re making progress eradicating organized crime, you probably ought to take a look at Long Branch, N.J., where there are plenty of people who’d argue the city fathers have turned municipally organized crime into an art form.

Recently, the city took its first legal step in condemning 11 of 36 oceanfront properties the city wants to take by eminent domain, so that a private developer can tear down the homes and build expensive townhouses and condominiums on the land.

To begin that process in earnest — after the owners of the properties rejected the lowball offers made for their homes — the city filed two complaints in state Superior Court, asking that Judge Lawrence Lawson assert the city’s right to take the properties located in the Beachfront North, Phase II redevelopment zone.

City Attorney James Aaron (with a straight face) said the complaints were filed only after the property owners failed to negotiate in “good faith” with the city. The complaints ask the court to assert the city’s right to take the properties and to appoint commissioners to fix the price for the properties.

Adding insult to injury, the complaint also asks the court to hold the defendant property owners (none of whom wanted to sell in the first place) liable for any and “all remediation and/or cleanup of contamination or removal of solid waste and/or sanitary landfill closure” existing on the properties before or after the city takes ownership.

In the months since this controversy erupted, the plight of the homeowners comprising MTOTSA (Marine and Ocean Terraces and Seaview Avenue) who stand to lose their properties has turned Long Branch into the national poster child for eminent domain abuse.

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ignited a national storm of controversy after it ruled in a 5-4 decision in a case regarding some New London, Conn., homeowners — whose properties were being taken by eminent domain in order to build an office complex — that the government can seize homes and other private properties for private economic development, even against the wishes of the property owners.

That decision, which effectively put an “Up for Grabs” sign on the front lawns of every property owner in the nation with land that some future developer might covet, spawned a frenzy of proposed legislation across the country to curb the growing threat of eminent domain abuse.

At the national level, laws were proposed to prohibit the federal government, or any state or local government that obtains federal funds for a development project, from taking private property for economic development. At the state level, about 30 states are currently considering laws to limit the taking of property by eminent domain.

In New Jersey, a bill introduced by Michael Panter of Red Bank — who was recently re-elected to his seat in the state Assembly — would restrict eminent domain for redevelopment by prohibiting the taking of any legally occupied residential property that is up to housing code.

Another bill, introduced by Sen. Diane B. Allen, who represents Burlington and Camden counties, would establish a two-year moratorium on taking property for private development. The moratorium would be used by a bipartisan commission to study permanent changes to the state’s eminent domain laws.

Clearly, a state and national consensus is developing that eminent domain abuse by local governments must be stopped.

In Long Branch, meanwhile, the local government is acting like the bunch of drunkards who tried to slurp down as much whiskey as possible before Prohibition became the law of the land in 1920. They see the writing on the wall, and are scurrying to have their case heard and adjudicated in court before the sluggish Legislature can act and stop the practice for good.

Attorneys for the homeowners named in the complaints say they’ll challenge the city and ask for dismissal of the condemnation complaints, their chief defense being that the properties in question are not blighted and that it is the city of Long Branch that has failed to negotiate in good faith. They also note that they believe the appraisals the city has provided, and upon which offers were based, are half of what the properties are actually worth.

Among the 11 defendants named in the suit, the highest appraised value from the city’s appraiser was $625,000. Three other properties were appraised at $448,000, $410,000 and $408,000. Six were appraised in the low- to mid-$300,000 range. The lowest appraised offer was $210,000.

The average sale price of properties in Long Branch the last three years was $464,507. And, according to William Giordano, a professional appraiser who lives on Ocean Terrace, of 103 active listings of properties for sale in Long Branch as of Dec. 1, the average asking price of properties in town was $658,773. Only nine listed below $300,000.

And few, if any, of those properties came with ocean views or easy access to the water.

The developer who wants their property, meanwhile, plans to replace the homes with 185 condominiums. While they have not revealed the sale price of those units, the new condominium units in the city’s other beachfront redevelopment projects have sold for between $400,000 and $2.2 million, except for one that sold for $200,000.

Assuming that all units sell in the lowest range of $400,000, that’s still $74 million. At a price of $500,000, it’s $92.5 million; at $750,000 it’s $138.75 million; at $1 million it’s $185 million. At $1.5 million it’s .… well, you get the picture.

The total offered to the 11 property owners named in the complaint is just south of $4.1 million.

No wonder Long Branch is in such a hurry to take these properties and let the developer start building before the Legislature passes a law to stop them. If they pull it off, somebody stands to make a pile of money.

And it’s no wonder the folks living in MTOTSA feel they’re being robbed.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers.