By Walter Elliott
NEWARK / IRVINGTON – The latest proposal to build on the Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery site has had its variances approved by the Newark Zoning Board of Adjustment and has been the subject of a virtual Zoom town meeting last month.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and West Ward Councilman Joseph McCallum had fielded the public’s questions about the 646 dwelling unit “Crown Village” via Zoom July 28. Newark’s adjustment board had approved height variances on the five five-story buildings to flank Grove Street and line the southern side of South Orange Avenue July 8.
July 8’s zoning board hearing was scheduled after neighboring property owners around the five-parcel, seven-acre lot were notified. The notices included Irvington address holders, since that township’s northern end borders the area.
Crown Real Estate Holdings, of Elizabeth, proposes building four floors of studio and one- to three- bedroom apartments of “multigenerational housing” atop of some 28,000 square feet of street-level commercial space. Its amenities include a daycare center “with a secured outdoor play area,” an outdoor basketball court, two gymnasiums, “a shared work space with a conference room, community rooms and an indoor parking garage of around 650 spaces.
Crown Village is the fourth proposal for the site since it was cleared in 2008 – and the third since it bought the property in 2015.
Baraka, in his 2017 State of the City Address named the site for a “Veterans Village” and polytrauma center, which combined medical offices with said housing and some commercial-retail space. Residents and community activists marched to and rallied at the site in 2018 to protest a proposal to place a juvenile detention and rehabilitation center there.
Welco Real Estate was initially involved with a proposed mixed residential/commercial redevelopment there. Essex County meanwhile realigned Grove Street north to its South Orange Avenue intersection.
Pabst, of Milwaukee, bought the 1930-built Hoffman soda bottling plant in 1945. It removed some of the brewery’s equipment and abandoned the rest in 1986. Its landmark 60-foot, 100,000-gallon bottle water tower, removed in 2006, remains in five sections in a T. Fiore warehouse.
EAST ORANGE – A city man, accused of going on a spree of assaults in Nutley and a police pursuit in Belleville, remains in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility since July 14.
Nutley police first got a call from a resident while she was receiving first aid at a Hawthorne Avenue store early July 13. The 31-year-old gave a description of a man – who punched her after she refused to talk with him along Nutley’s Bloomfield Avenue – and the 2011 grey Hyundai Sonata was driving towards Hillside Avenue.
A 60-year-old woman soon reported that the same man took a swing at her after refusing to let him use her cell phone along Hillside Avenue and the said car. Although she ducked his assault, she fell and struck her head on the ground.
Two more Nutley women called police from Franklin Avenue and Centre Street minutes later. The first, 43-years-old, described the man, who put her in a chokehold from behind until “she screamed for her husband. The other, 34, said the man crossed the street to punch her while she was waiting to enter a nail salon.
Nutley police broadcasted the incidents plus descriptions of the suspect and the Hyundai- which had been reported as stolen from East Orange.
Belleville patrol officers found a car matching the description in their township and tried to pull it over. When the driver refused, a pursuit ensued until the driver’s arrest 6:20 p.m. that Monday. BPD said that the suspect had collided with one of its cruisers, a parked car and a tree before attempting to flee on foot.
Quinn Mayweather, 22, has been charged with and held for aggravated assault with intent for serious bodily injury, knowingly receiving stolen property and recklessly eluding police after failing to heed instructions to stop. Mayweather is also being held on a Clifton robbery warrant; a sexual assault charge from Bloomfield is pending.
ORANGE – Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and East Orange Police Director Dominick Saldida, on Aug. 1, had identified the Orange bicyclist who was killed at a major East Orange intersection July 29.
The county’s Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force, added Stephens, is continuing its investigation of the death of James B. Allen, Jr., – including the identification of vehicles that had struck him at Freeway Drive East and Evergreen Place 2 p.m. that Wednesday.
Emergency responders, said Stephens and Saldida, arrived there by 2:30 p.m., to find Allen, 26, “severely injured.” Witnesses told them that Allen and his bicycle were struck by “multiple vehicles” there.
A medic declared Allen dead at the scene. The scene was taped off for several hours for a field investigation, diverting NJTransit No. 94 busses and other traffic.
Stephens and Saldida added that none of the drivers who struck Allen and had stayed at the scene were not charged.
Allen’s funeral or memorial service has not been announced as of 10 a.m., Aug. 5.
WEST ORANGE – Township elders and residents’ July 13 discussions on what to do next since the Valley Section’s Christopher Columbus statue has been removed, may continue during the Township Council’s Aug. 11 live/virtual meeting.
Township Business Administrator John Sayers confirmed July 13 that the 28-year-old Columbus monument had been removed from its traffic island at Valley Road, Kingsley Street and Quimby Place earlier that month. The family of Joseph Doery, who was instrumental in the Valley Civic Organization’s 1992 Columbus fundraising and erection, had picked the statuary from the township’s DPW yard.
DPW workers had removed the monument at Mayor Robert Parisi’s late June instruction. The removal follows Newark’s pre-emptive taking down of its two statues.
Resident Akil Khalfani, July 13, said that he was “thankful that the voices of the people were heard – at least in part – and that it (the Columbus monument) was removed. The Essex County College Africana Institute director added that he believes that the monument be replaced with one that reflects West Orange’s diversity or the contribution of the indigenous Lenai Lenape.
Council President Michele Casalino’s response to Khalfani’s suggestion could be summed up as “Maybe not exactly there.”
“As far as in this spot and place, the reason why that monument went up was because of all the people who worked so hard with the VCO,” said Casalino. “Many of the residents are upset because the monument was about the people of that neighborhood – and there are people who’re still there.”
Neighboring Orange, Bloomfield, Nutley and Belleville have so far kept their Columbus monuments in place. There are petitions circulating to remove or retain the statuary in Orange, Bloomfield and Nutley.
SOUTH ORANGE – An Our Lady of Sorrows pastor’s Aug. 2-8’s leave from his parish would not normally generate comment – except for a letter to a lector on the latter’s wearing a “Black Lives Matter” shirt at a recent Mass – that had been leaked to the public Aug. 1.
Rev. Brian Needles, in the letter that first surfaced on the SOMA Lounge Facebook page, wrote to Lector Tom Morris, 68, that he had objected to his wearing a BLM t-shirt when it was his turn to quote Scripture at a Sunday Mass. A lector is a lay church officer who provides a Biblical passage reading before the public during service.
Needles, in the letter, agreed that “the lives of black people matter” but added that he finds the agenda of the actual BLM organization “very controversial, to say the least.”
Pastor Needles therefore said he “respectfully request that you (Lector Morris), in a spirit of goodwill, refrain from wearing that t-shirt or any other t-shirt with an overtly political slogan on it while lecturing.” (Morris has since been attending St. Mary’s Church in Newark.)
OLS’ Parochial Vicar, Rev. Richard Pfannenstiel, when asked Aug. 1, said he was not privy to Needles’ letter – and therefore could not comment.
The Archdiocese of Newark has meanwhile reminded parish pastors of its dress code in an Aug. 1 letter.
RCAN’s letter opened with the parishioner’s right to wear clothing that “promotes a cause or a movement.” Lectors, however, are responsible to follow RCAN’s dress code – including the prohibition “of any clothing that distracts from the word of God by drawing attention to the individual.”
MAPLEWOOD – A predawn collision along Union’s part of I-78 July 29 has left one township family mourning, a township woman healing and the New Jersey State Police trying to pinpoint its cause.
NJSP Troopers and Union police and fire units responded to a 3:04 a.m. call of a car and semi-tractor trailer truck collision by 78-East Milepost 52.8 that Wednesday. They found a BMW 328 and the Volvo-pulled tractor trailer on the right shoulder – with the BMW partially wedged under the trailer and on fire.
BMW passenger Tamu I. Waluye, 28, of Maplewood, was swiftly extricated and taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries. Volvo truck driver Dorel Gherman, 57, of Citrus Heights, Calif., was uninjured but taken to Newark’s University Hospital for treatment.
Union firefighters found themselves putting out fires from the BMW and in the tractor’s trailer. The latter was carrying Grade 5 polypropylene plastic Chinese food containers – some of which had melted and re-hardened on the shoulder.
All of 78’s local eastbound lanes were closed until 7 a.m. and were not completely reopened until Noon. Eastbound drivers who had not made the switch to 78’s express lanes in advance found themselves in a mile-long backup that started at Exit 49-Rt. 124/Morris Avenue.
Arriving responders, however, were unable to do anything for the BMW driver – Kadeem R. Buckham, 29, of Maplewood. Kadeem, who was declared dead at the scene, was a Montclair-based real estate agent for Steven Lewis Group/eXp Realty.
Funeral arrangements for Buckham, who had studied fashion marketing in Manhattan’s Wood Tobe-Coburn School, were not announced as of 10 a.m., Aug. 5.
MONTCLAIR – Mayor Sean Spillar and the Township Council, while you read this, are considering a Senior Citizens Advisory Committee report on converting The United Way’s Miller Memorial Building into a community senior center.
The first floor of the United Way of Northern New Jersey’s Suburban Essex Office here at 60 North Fullerton Ave., said the committee report, would have ample space for the township’s senior center. The United Way, which has owned the building since when it was the Community Chest in the 1920s, would retain use of the basement and second floor for itself and its current tenants.
Such conversion, however, would be subject to an agreement with United Way NNJ and the township.
Montclair’s Edgemont Park House, which has served as its de facto township-wide senior center since 2016, has been closed while the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus pandemic is being curbed.
Edgemont Park House, said its pre-pandemic users, is too small for its senior programs. Montclair seniors’ only other option, since 1974, is using Essex County’s Glenfield Park Community Center.
Montclair, Glen Ridge and “West Essex” comprise United Way NNJ’s Suburban Essex territory. The Cedar Knolls-headquartered region includes Morris, Somerset and Warren counties.
60 No. Fullerton is similar in size and age to the Manton Bradley Metcalf Memorial Building at 439 Main St., Orange. It was built for and presented to the Welfare Foundation of the Oranges and Maplewood (another United Way forerunner) in the wool merchant heir’s memory. The local United Way had sold it off by the 1980s.
BLOOMFIELD – Township police detectives are looking for a shotgun-wielding robber – and the SUV and its driver who accompanied him – during a corner store holdup and assault here July 22.
The employee at Gerard’s Deli told responding BPD officers that he noticed “an African American male with a shotgun” entering 220 Hoover Ave. at 6 p.m. that Wednesday. The suspect demanded money and hit the employee over the head with the long-gun.
The employee watched the suspect flee in a black Jeep Cherokee driven by another African American man. The driver was described as wearing a white t-shirt and as having a tattooed left arm. The suspect is described as being of thin build, 5-ft, 7-in. to 5-8 and weighing 155-160 lbs.
The corner deli has served the neighborhood since the 1950s under several names.
GLEN RIDGE / NUTLEY – The Mountainside Medical Center, of Glen Ridge, and its parent, Hackensack Meridian Health, are to be sued by a Nutley resident and her attorney over how they had handled her post-June 26 counter-demonstration pictures that led to her dismissal.
Valarie Pastore, 62, and her attorney Joseph Tripodi, of West Orange, have notified Mountainside and HMH July 25 of their intention to sue.
It is not clear whether Pastore and Tripodi are seeking damages and/or her return as Mountainside’s Director of Physician Recruitment. What is clear is that Pastore wants to clear her characterization of being a racist.
Various social media forwarded footage of Pastore among other counter protestors at Nutley’s Christopher Columbus monument at Chestnut Street and Kennedy Drive June 26. The video and still clips appear to show Pastore, who was wearing a red MAGA hat, making a Nazi salute at the Nutley for Black Lives demonstrators who had finished their march before the statue and municipal building.
Pastore, said Tripodi on July 25, was actually “waving good-by at the departing protestors.” That frozen-in-time wave or salute, plus related social media received by HMH, prompted Mountainside to fire Pastore by July 1.
Both Pastore and Tripodi assert that Hackensack-Mountainside had conducted “a sham investigation” and “bowing to a Twitter mob that demanded the termination and reputational lynching” of Pastore.
Pastore, said Tripodi, had come to the Columbus monument after hearing rumors that NFBL members would tear it down. The BLM-affiliated group had told Nutley’s municipal and UNICO officials beforehand that they wanted to end their “Roll for Black Lives” march at town hall and would not touch the statue.
BELLEVILLE – Mayor Michael Melham has been explaining what he had meant by proposing that the entire township be declared “An Area in Need of Redevelopment” since his July 14 introduction of the ordinance before the council.
Before Belleville’s elders consider the township-wide AINOR measure, it has to be first approved by the Belleville Planning Board at their Aug. 13 meeting. The measure may also have to go before the Belleville Zoning Board of Adjustment prior to any final council decision.
The measure, as drafted by Melham and Township Attorney Steve Martino, would apply to existing one- and two- bedroom houses. It would amount to a five-year property tax increase deferral program for homeowners.
“When you make an addition on your house, your property taxes go up the second you put the addition on,” said Melham. “We’re incentivizing anybody who wants to make a major improvement on their houses.”
Improving a property affects both the market and assessed value. Since the assessed value of a property is set at 25 percent of its market value, the improvement would also increase a homeowner’s tax bill.
The Melham-Martino AINOR tax abatement plan would defer the property tax increase over five years. An improvement that averages a 20 percent property tax increase, for example, would not show up on the first year’s tax bill.
The improvement’s tax increase, instead of getting a 100 percent hit, would be a 20 percent hike on year two, up to 40 percent on year three and so on until the full increase is reflected on year five’s bills.
While Melham’s AINOR plan will open Belleville up to tax abatements and incentives, the township will not be using the power of eminent domain. The mayor said that similar tax increase deferrals on improvements have been made in parts of Bloomfield, Newark and South Orange.
