I agree with Johna below, but I hardly expect a city that did not have
the wherewithal to preserve CH, Paramount and the Casino to be able to
save the Metropolitan. But in essence I agree, there should be a local
preservation authority. I am not looking for further regulation or
tying owners hands, but it is a fact that property values in historic
districts are generally higher.
THE METROPOLITAN: Century-old Asbury Park hotel, vacant for two
decades and now deemed a hazard by city, will be demolished by next month
LANDMARK TO BE RAZED
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 09/25/07
BY NANCY SHIELDS
COASTAL MONMOUTH BUREAU
Story Chat Post Comment
ASBURY PARK The century-old Metropolitan Hotel, empty and decaying
for two decades, is to be demolished by Oct. 13 after city officials
agreed with the owner's structural engineer that the white classic
structure with Doric columns must come down.
Donald Cresitello, the mayor of Morristown who has owned the vacant
city landmark for 14 years, asked to raze the 180-unit hotel-annex
complex at 309 Asbury Ave. late last year.
The city approved that demolition request at first but then pulled
back because the building is listed on the city's scattered-site plan
to be preserved or rehabilitated, Donald Sammet, the city's director
of planning and redevelopment, said Monday.
Cresitello made a second attempt, providing the city with a structural
engineering report that said the hotel must be razed. Robert Corby,
the city's building construction official, went to the site, found the
hotel to be an imminent hazard, and told the owner it must be
demolished by Oct. 13.
The demolition ends an effort by the Asbury Park Historical Society
and others to save the building, and Johna Karpinski, the society's
president, lashed out at a City Council meeting last week at the
failure of those responsible for preserving the structure.
"We really need a historic preservation commission and certain
criteria for the owners," Karpinski said.
The longtime resort hotel closed in 1987 when Martin and Sylvia
Weinblatt whose family had owned the building since 1945 sold the
Metropolitan for $2.25 million to Jersey City developers Karim and
Gomaa el-Said. The Weinblatts had lived at the hotel, operating it as
a family-oriented, mostly seasonal business.
Their business declined as the city's tourist business fell off.
Shortly before they got out, they aired plans to convert the hotel to
a year-round senior citizen residence, but the plan was not pursued.
Their buyers, the el-Saids, came in at a time when the Asbury Park
market was hot with the promise of a massive waterfront redevelopment
project. But that plan soon fell apart.
The new owners said at the time they wanted to sell 150 individual
rooms at the hotel, starting at $65,000 and up, with the price
including three meals a day in the hotel dining room.
A year later, in 1988, they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection. Their bank, American Savings and Loan, took over the
building and tried to sell it, without success, for $2 million.
Early in 1992, city zoners approved a plan by a Texas developer,
Carpenter Property Management Inc., to convert the hotel into senior
citizen apartments. The developer had contracted to buy the hotel from
the bank for $600,000, but never got the financing.
The bank eventually sold the Metropolitan for $10,150 to a company,
309 Park Corp., in June 1993, which sold it the next month to
Cresitello's company for $150,000, according to city records.
When Cresitello arrived, he said his group of owners were seeking
private financing of $4 million to $5 million to convert the hotel
into a congregate care facility or a housing project of one-bedroom
apartments and efficiencies for middle-income residents or the elderly.
The city, at that time, was favorable to the building being used as a
senior citizen residence, and not a hotel.
Cresitello and the city soon sparred when the owners sought to open
the 40-unit annex as a daily or weekly motel to get cash flow while
moving forward with their larger plans.
At that time, the city had many former hotels and rooming houses for
the poor, and residents in the Metropolitan neighborhood said they
feared Cresitello's plans would create a welfare motel.
The city did not let him use the annex, and the property was never
developed.
In 2001, Carter Sackman, the New York developer who specializes in
historic preservation and is credited with saving the downtown
Steinbach Building, had a contract to purchase the Metropolitan. That
plan did not go through.
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