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[In the News] "Towne Center" update from today's Bergen Record
Posted By: Mark
Date: Tuesday, 23 August 2005, at 2:14 p.m.
Landlords fight redevelopment
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
By PETER J. SAMPSON
STAFF WRITERCLIFFSIDE PARK - Property owners in a downtown business zone targeted for redevelopment are gearing up for a legal battle over the borough's bid to condemn their properties.
With the arrival this month of formal purchase offers, Robert Miller and Michael Brusco, two Anderson Avenue landlords, formed the Cliffside Park Private Property Rights Coalition to challenge the borough's eminent domain claim.
The pair have hired a lawyer and a public relations consultant and are inviting other unwilling sellers to join the fight against Towne Center, a mixed-use project proposed for 3.3 acres bounded by Glen Street and Lawton, Anderson and Knox avenues.
"We simply do not think it is right for the government to take our property and give it to a developer who will profit from our investment," said Brusco, who has owned a two-story building at 689-691 Anderson Ave. since 1986.
Brusco, whose building includes four apartments, a beauty salon and an appliance store, said the town should have invited the property owners to be part of the redevelopment plan.
Miller, a retired pharmacist whose family has owned the one-story building at 693A Anderson Ave. since the 1930s, said the town is stealing his retirement nest egg.
Miller, who leases space to a liquor store and tanning salon, said he has no desire to sell his property and wants to be taken out of the redevelopment area.
Working with a prominent development team, borough officials are planning to transform the block that includes the Department of Public Works garage, storage yard, recycling center and municipal parking lot into an upscale commercial and residential complex that would revitalize the business strip.
More than half of the area, however, is privately owned. About a dozen businesses, five houses on Glen Street and 20 families would have to be displaced.
Thom Ammirato, spokesman for the newly formed group, said the borough's redevelopment plans bear all the earmarks of an "insider deal."
The developers, Frank Raimondo, Fred Daibes and James D. Dememtrakis, are longtime contributors to the Democratic Party and have been involved in some of the borough's largest developments. They were the only group to respond to a request for proposals published in several major newspapers.
Despite the pending condemnation, Ammirato said Brusco received a purchase offer for his building in March from a real estate company owned by the mayor's son. The quote was several hundred thousand dollars more than the borough's offer, he said. "When Mr. Brusco asked who's going to want to buy my property, the reaction was, 'Don't worry about it, we'll take care of it.'Ÿ"
Mayor Gerald Calabrese dismissed the notion that any political favoritism was involved in the redevelopment plan.
"That's bull. ... If it wasn't for us needing a new DPW, I don't know whether we'd be involved in it," he said.
"We got a dying Anderson Avenue," the mayor added. "Now we have an opportunity to get together with Fairview to build a new DPW building, with aid from the state and the county, and that's why we're redeveloping that whole area."
Calabrese said a new complex will have to be built before any property is condemned in Cliffside Park.
The $40 million project calls for an 11-story building with 220 apartments over street-level shops, boutiques and restaurants flanking an expansive public plaza with cascading fountains, a vest-pocket park, and underground parking.
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