Who, asks Lighty? Answer "Daffy Duck" From 1999: Mayor Saunders said: ''I'm willing to work with anyone. I'd work with Daffy Duck. The first ones that come in and show me the money I can work with.''
The Entire article follows, and the Times, at that time, summed it all up. Copyright New York Times Company Jan 31, 1999 SUMMER and winter are different here only because of the weather. The ocean breeze blows across an empty boardwalk and right through the spectral hulk that was supposed to become a condominium building. The streets off Ocean Avenue are lined with parking meters that rarely see a car, in January or in August. And in winter as in summer, Asbury Park residents line up at City Council meetings to plead for attention to the oceanfront blocks that many compare with Beirut. They have been devastated for 15 years, ever since the city made a deal with a developer who bought up acres, bought out businesses and then went bankrupt -- a failure that had a shriveling effect on the rest of the city, too. At the last meeting, Thomas Hayes, president of the Chamber of Commerce, given two minutes to speak like everybody else, told the five council members: ''Just this past week I talked to several businesses who said, 'We can't hang in anymore.' We need an answer from the council people.'' The question, asked over and over in Asbury Park, is: Why did the council turn down an offer from the state to set up a redevelopment authority that would extricate the city from its tortured dealings with the developer, pay his $7 million in back taxes and get started again? The council's 3-to-2 vote last fall against opening discussions with the state was especially frustrating to the residents who have staked their futures on the handsome old houses and small businesses here. They had been looking to an infusion of capital -- it will take hundreds of millions of dollars just to rebuild the redevelopment zone -- in the city that was once a magic kingdom resort with manicured lakes, elegant hotels and a mile-long carnival of a boardwalk. There were 200 hotels in 1938, and now there is one, the Berkeley Carteret, whose grand front entrance is nevertheless locked night and day. Except for a roller rink with a few video games, the amusements have vanished. The Stone Pony nightclub closed in September. And while real estate prices keep climbing along the Jersey Shore, the tax base -- the total value of taxable property -- in Asbury has shrunk each year since 1993. Innumerable hopes for revival have come to grief in local politics scarred by racial resentments, disruptions in city government and feuds that are too intricate to chronicle. Residents of all political stripes refer to sinister absentee landlords and developers' back pockets, though for all the criminal indictments of public officials over the last decade, none has shown corruption linked to the redevelopment mess. It is hardly clear what anyone has to gain from years of delay in development. Eugene M. LaVergne, a lawyer who moved his office to Asbury several years ago ''because I think it has a future,'' said: ''Everything's always been for sale in the city. What's enraging and ironic is that they're buying the town to keep it down.'' The city government's resistance to state help is even more puzzling to outsiders. ''I've kind of walked away,'' said State Senator John O. Bennett of Little Silver, who was Asbury Park's city attorney for eight months in 1997 and 1998. ''I don't know what else you can do for a city. This is the absolute best chance for the city. I can't understand why it doesn't happen. Is what they have now better? If not the state, why not?'' William E. Best, the executive director of the New Jersey Redevelopment Authority, acknowledged ''a degree of dismay'' at the council's vote, taken a few weeks after he addressed a standing-room- only meeting where dozens of speakers cheered on the state's proposal. ''We've said time and time again that it was our intent to work with the city as the plan was being modified,'' Mr. Best said. ''We want not only to work with the city but with community support.'' But the council members who opposed the plan reply that they are hamstrung by litigation with the original developer, Joseph Carabetta, and are close to a settlement that would transfer control of the redevelopment zone to the city or another developer. Finally, they say, they cannot accept the state's proposed local redevelopment authority, which would have a majority of members appointed by the state. ''They want a majority on the board,'' said Mayor Kenneth Saunders, one of the three council members who opposes the plan. ''No. This is our town, and we should have a majority.'' ''In the meantime,'' Mr. Saunders said, ''I've got some other things going, and I hope to be able to make a big announcement over the next few weeks. We've had 17 years of going back and forth, and we're closer than we've ever been.'' Those ''other things'' are settlement talks with Mr. Carabetta as well as other prospective developers. Mr. Carabetta, whose offices are in Meriden, Conn., declined to answer any questions for this article, and city officials say they cannot estimate his total investment in the project. But one group of investors interested in taking over the project reached an agreement with Mr. Carabetta last summer to pay more than $16 million of the developer's debts. This group was rejected by the City Council because it could not guarantee financing for the construction. Carabetta Enterprises Inc. went bankrupt in 1992, after negotiating an extension with the city and recasting the development plan to include entertainment centers and theme restaurants. The only construction that had materialized from the original plan was the skeleton of the Ocean Mile condominium high-rise and a row of town houses that burned before they were sold. As for who else might acquire the property and the redevelopment rights, Mayor Saunders said: ''I'm willing to work with anyone. I'd work with Daffy Duck. The first ones that come in and show me the money I can work with.'' Asbury Park has seen many builders express interest, only to recoil because of the bankruptcy proceedings and the litigation over the redevelopment agreement. Others, including K. Hovnanian Enterprises of Red Bank, have withdrawn in exasperation over the city's political leadership. I N recent months, three groups of investors have put plans before the City Council. After the Council rejected the first for its failure to guarantee financing, a second group also dropped out. The third, a consortium of builders that have completed projects in Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken, remains interested, if frustrated. ''We have been trying to do what we thought the city wanted,'' said Brian Doherty, the group's lawyer. ''We'd work with the city, we'd work with the state.'' But Mr. Doherty added that the city was poorly equipped to evaluate and broker a huge real estate development. ''There's no planning staff and no economic development staff,'' he said. ''There's no strong voice on City Council. You're dealing with laypeople who have other jobs and are called upon to be Council people. Twelve or 13 years later, it hasn't dawned on them that you've got to build something.'' The city is indeed in political shambles. It has had seven mayors in 10 years, and the Council seats have rotated with each election, including a recall vote in 1996. The recently departed city planner is suing the city, claiming his dismissal was racially motivated; the former public safety director is suing, too, claiming he was dismissed because he refused to fix a parking ticket for the Mayor. The school board attorney, who was subsequently removed, and the assistant city manager, among others, were indicted last year on bid- rigging charges and awaiting trial dates. The council members snap at one another in their meetings, which one former Councilman said he tried to persuade a television station to film because ''they're much better than Judge Judy.'' In their vote on the state plan, the two supporters contended that two of the opponents had conflicts stemming from business connections to Mr. Carabetta or his former partner. After the last Council meeting, Councilwoman Sheila C. Solomon, a supporter of state intervention, was fuming because Mr. Hayes had been cut off while pleading for a public forum to discuss the state's offer. ''All this time they've blocked out having a hearing,'' Ms. Solomon said. ''All these people are asking for is a hearing.'' ''This is wrong,'' she went on. ''In July it will be two years I've been sitting up here, and nothing has been accomplished. I wrote letters to the press, I had people calling me and I said, 'Keep up the pressure.' I've written the Attorney General. I've written the Governor. Somebody's got to listen.'' Councilman John J. Hamilton Jr., the first to ask the state Redevelopment Authority to intercede, said: ''I've spoken to Assembly people who say, 'What's wrong with people there?' We've spent more than $1 million on legal fees fighting Carabetta, and the state would take over all our litigation.'' ''I'm kind of stuck,'' Mr. Hamilton added. ''I've spoken out. I don't want to attack the council.'' But Councilwoman Louise Murray responds that it would be better to let the city or another developer strike a deal with Mr. Carabetta than to wait for the state to wrest redevelopment rights from him. Meanwhile, Ms. Murray said, ''I'm not ready to put Asbury Park in somebody else's hands.'' ''I laid awake nights when I made this decision,'' she said. ''I slept with a pad of paper by the bed. But every Council since Carabetta has thought they had the answers. They've all just made more of a mess.'' Councilman James G. Condos, who like the Mayor and Ms. Murray will not agree to a redevelopment board with a majority appointed by the state, said most residents did not want to cede local control. ''It's a vocal minority that shows up at Council meetings,'' Mr. Condos said. Another opponent of state involvement is Henry Vaccaro, Mr. Carabetta's partner in the original redevelopment contract with the city. Mr. Vaccaro, who says the developer's failure wiped out his assets too, is trying to organize a group to buy out Mr. Carabetta and hopes to get construction contracts in the eventual rebuilding. While Mr. Vaccaro said of the council that ''there's not a brain among them,'' he has no use for the state. ''Look at what the state's given us so far,'' he said. ''Subsidized housing all over the west side. Mental patients who ruined the beachfront.'' Mr. Vaccaro has a long history in Asbury Park politics. Though he no longer lives here, he runs a guitar manufacturing company in town and has bought and sold numerous properties in and near the redevelopment zone. In what he said was an attempt to revive the project, even though he had sold out to Mr. Carabetta years ago, Mr. Vaccaro backed a successful campaign in 1996 to recall two Council members. The recall also became a cause for a group of black activists who called themselves Asbury United. Recent campaigns have been vicious. An unsigned flyer supporting Mr. Saunders urged blacks, who make up about 60 percent of Asbury Park's population, to ''drop white supremacy''; it showed tombstones bearing the names of political enemies, including two African-Americans identified with the label ''slave.'' Still, opinions on redevelopment do not divide along racial lines, or even on discernible political lines. In September, for example, 16 civic groups issued an open letter to the Mayor supporting the state's offer; many minority organizations, including Asbury United, were represented, as were the Salvation Army and the Chamber of Commerce. ''It's not a matter of black or white,'' said Mr. Mauro, the former Council candidate, who has lived here for eight years. ''It's a matter of green, and of ignorance and greed. This city has been bled so dry with back-room deals.'' In running for office, Mr. Mauro said, ''you're vilified, you're threatened. They've made it so good people won't get involved. When it was over, I said, I must have been crazy to do that.'' Mr. Mauro's civic life began with the Asbury Park Garden Club, which he and a few friends formed to restore the once-spectacular gardens around the city. Both the club and the gardens flourished for a time, then withered from vandalism and official neglect. When the slate that defeated his Council candidacy took office, Mr. Mauro said, the Council scheduled concerts on the park grounds that had been the garden club's flagship project, and the plantings were trampled. ''That's when I threw in the towel,'' he said. ''It broke my heart.'' THERE still is a garden club, and Mr. Mauro, a lab technician, is still a keeper of the city's esthetic history, which he presents in a video -- another garden club project -- that uses restored frames of a 1938 promotional film to trace Asbury Park's stunning decline. When he showed the film at a housing complex for the elderly, he said, people were sobbing. ''One little old lady said, 'The developers have done to this city what the Depression couldn't do.' '' Dr. Angelo Chinnici, a former Council member, recalled how his tuition was paid by his family's restaurant and his own summers selling hot dogs on the boardwalk. ''In the 70's the typical boardwalk lease was $16,000 to $18,000 for concession space,'' Dr. Chinnici said. ''Now you'd be lucky to get $500.'' Dr. Chinnici is largely credited with regaining possession of the Paramount Theater and Convention Hall -- the elegant city-owned buildings that once generated so much boardwalk business -- when he was on the Council several years ago. The complex has been restored and is host to the New Jersey Shorecats basketball team and to concerts, though it is hardly lucrative. ''I invite the Attorney General and the state of New Jersey to take a good, hard look at what's going on,'' Dr. Chinnici said. ''There's no other city in the U.S. that's suffered so much financial blight because of a few individuals.'' While most properties near the beach remain in Mr. Carabetta's control, a few others have recently changed hands and raised hopes. The Berkeley Carteret was sold last month to a Queens businessman for $5.1 million. Preservationists keep fighting to save the Palace Amusements building -- they have already recovered its original Ferris wheel -- and a group of Bruce Springsteen fans is making contingency plans to save Tillie, the grinning clown face painted on the Palace building and pictured in Springsteen videos and posters. The state's more unsentimental interest remains alive, Mr. Best said. He noted that control of the board that would oversee the project is not negotiable, since the legislation providing state financing for urban redevelopment requires that a majority of board members be members or employees of the state Redevelopment Authority. But he insisted that the state's role would be limited in time -- to 10 years or until 80 percent of construction is completed -- and in substance. He said the funds to pay back taxes remain available, without any legislative approval, though they would have to be repaid when the development becomes financially viable. Mr. Best, who had met with City Council members individually in coffee shops to explain the plan, said he was baffled by their vote. He said that a few weeks later, in October, he wrote to the City Manager, the Mayor and Council members, asking them to outline their concerns. But except for a phone call from Mr. Hamilton, he said, he received no response. The City Manager, Wilbert C. Russell, said the state's offer, which does not exist in any written form, was vague. ''It's unclear what the state's intention is,'' Mr. Russell said, ''other than to give a loan and set up a board with a majority.'' John Loffredo, president of the Asbury Park Homeowners Association, said the Mayor had made campaign promises to seek help from the state. And while the state proposal ''isn't that great,'' Mr. Loffredo said, ''you don't dismiss it out of hand. You go back and talk.'' ''Everybody is waiting for some savior to drop out of the sky, whether it's the state or a redeveloper,'' he said. ''If we'd been running the city for the last 15 years the way we should have, we'd be fine. We'd be ahead of the game.'' ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> You can search right from your browser? It's easy and it's free. See how. http://us.click.yahoo.com/_7bhrC/NGxNAA/yQLSAA/Y2tolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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