This article gives a very simple version of what happened at that
meeting.
Dan Sciannameo did a great job explaining why the June 5, 2002 Plan should
be followed.
At the meeting Councilmen Johnson, Keady, and Lofferdo seem to be very
concern.
Does anybody even care if C-8 is rebuilt or should the new buildings on
that block conforms with the June 5, 2002 Plan.
CITY OFFICIAL: Mistake won't derail redevelopment
Asbury: Developer sent wrong plans to DEP
BY
NANCY SHIELDSCOASTAL
MONMOUTH BUREAU
ASBURY PARK — The city is
correcting a mistake made by the waterfront developer's planner that allowed the
wrong version of the 2002 waterfront plan to be sent to the state for the
Department of Environmental Protection's approval.
City Manager Terence
Reidy said an analysis of the plan approved June 5, 2002, by the City Council
and a different version that had been disseminated to the public and the state
showed that differences between the two plans did not affect the state's
analysis before they issued the Coastal Area Facility Review Act permit in March
2004.
Officials say that Asbury Partners' planner, Clark Caton Hintz,
came in with a different version at the last minute when the council approved
the plan on June 5, 2002. But the city's redevelopment attorney, James Aaron,
did not allow the council to act on it because the plan with the changes had not
been through the Planning Board.
The planner made the mistake by later
releasing the wrong version for the city and public's use and also attached that
version to the CAFRA application.
"You're not going to get away with
this," said Daniel F. Sciannameo, a New York City appraiser who owns a home in
the city, when he spoke at a City Council meeting Wednesday night. "I'm the one
who blew the whistle on you and asked the DEP to shut you down. You're working
with an illegal CAFRA permit."
"Mr. Sciannameo, I know you are the one
who called. . . . You uncovered it," Reidy told Sciannameo later in the
meeting.
The city met with the DEP on Wednesday and is to send a letter
to make a modification that could take about two months to complete, Reidy said.
Construction on waterfront projects already under way can continue in the
meantime, although any new construction will have to wait.
The mistake
came to light after one of the beachfront builders, Metro Homes of Hoboken,
learned it could not use the abandoned 1989 condominium steel skeleton between
Third and Fourth avenues known as C-8 on planning maps because the pilings could
not be certified as safe.
The waterfront plan the city says it approved
would allow Metro Homes to build its planned 224-unit Esperanza to the same
16-story height of C-8. The plan that Hintz distributed and sent to the DEP said
that if C-8 came down, the height of its replacement was limited to eight
stories.
The city did not have its own in-house planner at the time the
mistake was made, and Reidy, who also was not yet hired as city manager,
believes the city's current planner, Donald Sammett, is a safeguard against such
mistakes in the future.
A group of critics, who often say the city has
given away too much of the waterfront to the developers, jumped on the mistake.
Councilman Jim Keady said he wants an investigation by an outside
agency.
Larry Fishman, Asbury Partners' chief operating officer, said
Thursday the plan that was approved "is the only draft that matters — that draft
and the ordinance that adopted it are the control documents that Asbury Partners
has always used for redevelopment."
Fishman said that Clarke
"inadvertently submitted the wrong plan" for the CAFRA permit but said the
differences are "relatively minor and all indications are there should be no
delay whatsoever."
Deputy Mayor James Bruno said he believes Clarke
thought there was a council consensus that C-8 should come down if not built
out, but there was not a consensus.
"It concerns me that there are people
in this city that do not want redevelopment, do not want progress in Asbury
Park. It bewilders me why people would want to hold up development," Fishman
said. "We're human. There was an error. We're taking steps to correct that
error."
