BY NANCY SHIELDS
COASTAL MONMOUTH BUREAU
ASBURY PARK The redevelopment plan for the entire Springwood Avenue corridor
is
completed after months of committee meetings and public hearings, and the City
Council
has sent the plan to city planners for review.
Donald Sammet, the city's director of planning and redevelopment, wrote the
plan
working with a large community committee, and said he expects the Planning
Board to
schedule at least one special meeting to review it with final adoption by the
council
possible by the end of the year.
Councilman Ed Johnson, co-chairman of the Springwood Avenue Advisory Committee,
said
Wednesday that "everyone's committed to moving this forward as quickly as
possible."
Most of Springwood Avenue has been blighted since the 1970 riots, when many of
its
buildings were destroyed in fires. City politicians of that era chose not to
rebuild
what was lost.
The new plan calls for a gateway zone from Memorial Drive to Sylvan Avenue for
shops,
restaurants, offices, trade schools, museums, nightclubs and community
facilities, all in
buildings between three and four stories high, Sammet said.
The next zone going west will be residential for one- and two-family attached
homes and
multifamily housing with parking in the back. The buildings are to be between
two and
three stories.
A park is planned near Atkins Avenue. The last zone reaching west to the
Neptune
boundary is to be commercial with an emphasis on such businesses as cleaners
and
restaurants that meet day-to-day needs.
Sammet said jobs and affordable housing are the two highest priorities of the
redevelopment.
When the city begins negotiating agreements with developers, those agreements
must call
for at least 20 percent local labor and locally purchased building products, he
said.
Councilman Jim Keady, also a co-chairman of the Springwood committee, said he
would
like the Planning Board to consider moving City Hall from its Main Street
location onto
Springwood just off Memorial Drive.
Keady said such a move could bring immediate foot traffic and credibility to
the
rebuilding effort, and the city could fund the new building by selling its
valuable site
on Main Street. Johnson said the committee as a whole did not favor that
relocation.
One of the new Springwood developers, Chang H. Yi, owns the 6-11 Food Market at
Springwood and Borden and has city approval to build a larger grocery store on
his site
with 12 to 14 apartments above.
Yi is asking the city to move more quickly on the overall plan, which needs to
be
formally in place before he can proceed. The city has to transfer a strip of
land to him
and cannot do so until the redevelopment plan is adopted.
The City Council also is trying to regain ownership of several acres along
Springwood from
the estate of Philip Konvitz, the developer who had been negotiating with the
city when he
died in 2005. Thomas Hastie, a city redevelopment attorney, said a mediation
conference
has been scheduled in litigation between the city and Konvitz's estate.
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