Before and After

It would be nice to understand why an application that was basically variance free and followed the recent River Center zoning requirements  would encounter as many difficulties as it did. Former Red Bank Council Member and Zoning Board member, Monmouth County Freeholder John Curley, may have shed some light on the subject as well as why certain projects are approved while others are not. Here is his quote from Red Bank Green Curley says he began to sour on the administration during his time on the zoning board. “It was, ‘yes, yes, yes’ right on around the table, and it was too simplified, too orchestrated,” he says. “And I knew who was getting the telephone calls, and who from, and told this was a ‘go’ deal or this was a ‘no’ deal.” He does not allege outright corruption, though. What is interesting about the Monmouth/West/Oakland Street property is that BLT had approvals for over 30 condos on a smaller site than mine as I acquired 1 additional lot that they were unable to buy yet they were concerned about the density of my project when they had approved a greater density for a smaller parcel previously. The density on the BLT project caused a lot of turmoil between the neighbors, the town and the developer. The BLT developers were also closely associated with the Red Bank Democratic Organization. Now after I lost the property to Amboy Bank the property was rezoned to 35 units per acre. The bank was able to obtain 57 units on the property without having to follow the Rivercenter plan of creating street level retail along Monmouth Street. Again it is interesting to note that my application was considered too dense yet as soon as I gave the property back to the bank they more than doubled the density for the property and then gave an approval for even more than the newly created 35 units per acre. This property is 1.25 acres so roughly 44 units would have conformed to the zone. The 57  units contain 12 affordable units in 1 building and 45 market  units in another building. Former Mayor and current Rivercenter member Ed McKenna has been very vocal in support for the project. He also is a member of the non-profit Red Bank Affordable Housing Corporation which received a 36 unit project from the town for $1 after the town obtained $2.4 million in grant money to acquire the land. Another one of his non-profit organizations, the now defunct “Kids Bridge” aquired the former Red Bank Police Station for $1. The police station located at 51 Monmouth Street obtained over 1 million dollars from Amboy Bank for renovations after it was transferred by Kids Bridge to the YMCA. 51 monmoth tax record. Amboy Bank’s Red Bank location at 36 Monmouth
Street is also listed as an address for Kids Bridge.  In a recent court settlement, Red Bank has agreed to contribute $125,000 towards additional renovations to the building. This building is now being sold by the YMCA which took over Kids Bridge to Red Bank Catholic for over 1 million dollars. Amboy Bank is now scheduled for February 16, 2012 to subdivide the affordable housing building from the market value units. One would probably assume that 2 different developers will develop the Courtyards @ Monmouth Project.

Let’s Make him Follow a Law that Doesn’t Exist

 

By January 2008 I finally got to have a public hearing in front of the Red Bank Planning Board. It took nearly 1 year from when I applied to have this hearing. The application to be heard had just a few minor variances (parking which the town forced me into by not allowing me to park under the buildings, side setback, front setback and a distance from the corner for the driveway. It was probably one of the cleanest applications ever presented before the Red Bank planning and zoning boards. During the approval process the Council of Affordable Housing (COAH) was abolishted due to a court challenge. The town wanted me to abide by laws that did not exist which caused more delays with the approval process. My attorney and I agreed to abide by whatever laws existed at the time the project would be built. Finally the town agreed to this proposal and that at least 10% of the units would be affordable housing units. The approvals were further delayed because the town refused to write the approval resolution even though they told us it was being done. According to the town, they had trouble creating the language which would govern the affordable housing obligation. The resolution was finally done in May of 2008 over a year after the application was presented to the town.  

We only want to limit your density

After arguing for months about the concern of density on the property at Monmouth St, West St, and Oakland St the town decided to increase the allowed density around the train station to create a transit village. I sought a density of 16 units per acre by doing exactly what was permitted which was to build 4 units above retail space at a time 14 units per acre were allowed. This seemed to upset Rich Kosenski of T & M Engineering and was the basis for his denial of constructing buildings 1 inch a apart. Once the town found out that I was losing the property to Amboy Bank, they began to rezone my property based on those parcels identified in MLS tax records as being in pre-foreclosure. rb zoning changes As you can see the original map only covers the 3 lots in pre-foreclosure (2 tax records 3 lots), then a few months later they decided to re-zone my entire property which covered 8 parcels of land. I gave the property back to Amboy Bank in February or March of 2009 at around the same time that the town started working on the zoning change. You can even see how the map lines were an after thought You also notice that the original natural boundry would have been west of West Street and this group of properties are the only ones on the east side of West Street. The new transit village zone raised the allowed density to 35 units per acre. There were several people involved with the town that had access to the tax records in mls and it is probably not a coincidence that the rezoning of the property was done in 2 stages and then ultimately approved for 57 units by Amboy Bank a year later.