TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said, on March 27, that he is drafting “Joseph’s Law,” after slain NPD Sgt. Joseph Azcona with his family’s support.
“Joseph’s Law,” said Platkin, would give state prosecutors the permission to try suspects 14-years-old and under in adult petit criminal court on specific felony charges. Azcona’s mother, Nerrida Vargas, had started an online petition to change the current juvenile law.
A minor 14 years and younger, by current law, is currently tried for charges like murder and weapons possession as a juvenile in Family Court. The suspect’s identity and legal proceedings are shielded. A convicted juvenile could be released from serving time at a fraction of a similar sentence served by an adult felon and be released when he turns 18.
The 14-year-old boy at the center of Sgt. Azcona’s March 8 fatality has been charged and held on murder, attempted murder and illegal weapons possession counts. Witnesses said that the shooter fired on Azcona while he was still in his patrol car on Broadway and Carteret Street that Friday night. He and his partner, who was shot and injured, were investigating an illegal gun trade at the time.
“Anyone who assaults an officer or, God forbid, kills an officer,” said Platkin, “should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law – period.”
The AG’s bill would go before the State Legislature for consideration and, if passed, signed by the Governor. While “Joseph’s Law” would take effect upon signing, it would be too late in being applied in Azcona’s murder case.
IRVINGTON – That vacant two-story building which had been the site of at least two fires in 10 years that sits at the northeast corner of Springfield Avenue and East 22nd Street, thanks to a March 27 Irvington Planning Board site plan approval, will more than be demolished.
748 Springfield Ave. plus the two vacant lots to its east at 740 and 734 Springfield are to be the site of a six-story, 156 unit apartment building as approved by IPB at that Thursday’s Zoom meeting. That passed resolution is to be memorialized at the board’s April 24 session.
Developer 21st Street Urban Renewal LLC is to follow plans as drawn by Taylor Architect & Design of North Plainfield. It will be built in the township’s East Ward/East Springfield Avenue Redevelopment Plan – Springfield Avenue District.
734-748 Springfield will hold all-ADA adaptable 66 one-bedroom, 85 two-bedroom and five three-bedroom units. There will be 140 on-site covered parking spaces and 11,000 square feet of storefront commercial/retail space. The “amenity-rich building” includes a game room, a package room, a fitness center, co-working space, resident storage and a community kitchen and lounge.
The approved project will replace the long standing vacant lots and the corner building that used to hold a daycare center, two other stores and five second floor apartments. 740 Springfield is municipally owned while 734 and 748 are owned by two separate but 21st Street UR LLC-related companies from New York City.
748 Springfield was already boarded up when all Irvington Fire Department hands, with Newark, Orange and Maplewood mutual aid, extinguished a blaze there June 19, 2020. The predawn blaze detoured NJTransit 25 and 70 buses and brought a unit each from East Orange, South Orange and Bloomfield to cover Irvington’s stations.
EAST ORANGE – Relatives and friends of Lois Scott, 76, are making her funeral arrangements while the ECPO Homicide Task Force and Orange police are investigating the circumstances of her being fatally struck at one of the latter city’s main intersections April 2.
Orange police officers, who responded to a 911 “pedestrian hit” call at about 10:55 a.m. that Wednesday at the intersection of Main and Jefferson streets. They found a woman lying in a westbound Main Street lane – and two plainclothes EMS technicians applying CPR.
The medics and witnesses said that a “charcoal gray Jeep Wrangler” was attempting to turn left from South Jefferson Street onto westbound Main Street when it hit Scott while she was walking north in Main Street’s crosswalk. The driver, who remained at the scene and cooperated with authorities, has not been ticketed or charged as of April 3.
The medics braved the intersection’s traffic, which Orange police began to cordon off, until Orange Fire Department’s EMS crew arrived. They rushed Scott to University Hospital – where she died of a severe head injury at 11:30 a.m.
Scott’s obituary has not been posted as of April 8. Main Street is Essex County Road No. 510 in Orange and West Orange.
ORANGE – City police officers, medics and county detectives converged on a North Ward intersection 6 p.m. March 27 on what became an accident fatal to a Montclair motorcyclist.
They found the motorcyclist lying by the intersection of Thomas Boulevard and Hayward Street and a stopped vehicle. EMT medics rushed the man – identified as Mark Elder, 52, of Montclair to University Hospital – where he was declared dead at 8:30 p.m.
A preliminary investigation, which ECPO detectives took the lead on, had determined that the vehicle was traveling north on Thomas Boulevard when it attempted to make a right-hand turn onto eastbound Hayward – and struck Elder’s cycle.
Thomas and Hayward, redesigned by an early 1960’s urban renewal project, is fronted by Rosedale Cemetery, Washington Dodd Apartments, a house and a General Plumbing Supply showroom and warehouse. Northbound Thomas leads to the convergence of the Orange, Montclair, Glen Ridge and East Orange borders.
Elder’s homecoming service was held in East Orange’s Divinity Missionary Baptist Church April 7. His obituary has not been published to date.
WEST ORANGE – Township zoning board members are still mulling on whether to permit a conjoined Popeyes-International House of Pancakes built to replace the long closed China Gourmet here at 470 Eagle Rock Ave as proposed by MPB Realty March 20.
MPB, on March 20, has kept its Popeyes, along with 24 dining seats and a drive-through window, from its original December 2022 application and as heard from its May 18, 2023 site plan application hearing. Gone, however, is the Sonic drive-in with outdoor seating.
IHOP has replaced Sonic on MPB’s March 20 application and as a sit-down-only place. While IHOP is proposed to operate between 6 a.m. and Midnight daily, the attached Popeyes will be open 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays and until 11:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
MPB, like it had in 2023, is asking for code variances in landscaping, signage, lot apron distance from curbing and lighting. March 20 public speakers questioned traffic volume to/from Eagle Rock Avenue and proper lighting and tree shading for its Rosney Terrace neighbors.
Traffic studiers Consulting & Municipal Engineers addressed having drive thru customers park while waiting for their orders – but had not considered potential traffic from the in-the-works African American Inventors Museum & Hall of fame and senior citizens housing that are to go up at the former Mayfair Farms banquet and catering hall at 481 Eagle Rock Ave. (Mayfair was open for business in MPB’s original application.)
A memorialization of the zoning board’s decision, as of April 7, had not appeared on their April 18 agenda.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Both towns have been bereft of a motion picture theater since 6 p.m. March 30 when CinemaLab suddenly closed The Village Cinemas at SOPAC. Both it and Maplewood’s Maplewood Theater, which has been closed since the March 15, 2020 COVID-19 pandemic onset, face unknown futures.
Prospective moviegoers and commuter parking lot customers found a posted CinemaLab notice that Saturday night on the lobby door. The theater’s latest operator, after four years, said it “will be moving from The Village, effective March 31, 2025.
“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, various challenges have made it impossible for us to sustain the operation,” continued CL’s statement. “While this chapter may be ending, we’re confident that SOPAC and the Township of South Orange will work diligently to rejuvenate the cinema experience in the area. We look forward to seeing the community continuing to enjoy and celebrate the magic of the movies soon.”
CinemaLabs’ departure means that SOPAC is looking for its fourth independent cinema operator – which is what the latter’s board of governors chairwoman Aida Jones said will do. SOPAC, in its FAQ release, confirmed that CinemaLabs had ended their lease and vacated the property.
“We view this transition as a tremendous opportunity to reimagine the cinematic offerings at SOPAC,” said Jones that Sunday night. “Our goal is to create an enhanced movie-going experience that contemplates our diverse array of live performances and educational programs.”
CinemaLabs reopened SOPAC cinemas July 22, 2021 after the five-screen theater was closed since November 2024. BowTie Cinemas had been running here until KO’d by the pandemic. It had floated bringing its boutique cinematic experience to the Maplewood Theater and Upper Montclair’s Bellevue, the latter closed since late 2017, during its four years in “Local Talk” land.
Maplewood Mayor Mancy Adams, at the Township Committee’s April 1 meeting, clarified that the North Village/Movie Theater Redevelopment Area is a non-condemnable area in need of redevelopment and that the 10-lot single block area allows for the reopening of the Theater and the then-Bank of America – but those uses is up to the would-be redeveloper, the planning board and Maplewood elders.
BLOOMFIELD – A pair of Halcyon Park brothers received uniform and volunteer help during and after a fire damaged their house here March 31.
All Bloomfield Fire Department hands converged at 217 Watsessing Ave. at 12:45 p.m. that Monday to find heavy fire from the 2.5-story house’s second floor. Occupants of the 1904-built wood frame house had self-evacuated by then.
BFD – with help by mutual aid units from East Orange, Orange and Newark – extinguished the fire in an hour. Bloomfield police units were on hand to detour local traffic.
Units from Belleville, Nutley and Montclair covered Bloomfield’s fire stations until the all clear was given. There were no reported injuries.
The two brothers were given an overnight stay at the Belleville Motor Lodge by the American Red Cross local chapter. Their April 1 appeal for clothing, food and temporary housing were met by neighbors.
MONTCLAIR – It took township police officers just under 24 hours – from report call to apprehension March 24-25 – to arrest a man for burglarizing the Montclair Film Festival headquarters and perhaps two earlier break-ins along South Fullerton Street.
Responding officers met an MFF employee at 505 Bloomfield Ave., who pointed to an unsecured door, at 11 a.m. March 24. The police and the employee entered the premises – and found that some $6,000 worth of electronic equipment had been stolen from the festival’s basement podcast studio.
MPD left with the building’s security recordings – where they found a burglar entering at 1:40 a.m. and left with a messenger bag full of the items. Detectives identified the burglar as Max Collazo, 34, of Montclair.
Detectives found Collazo while he was waiting for a bus at a stop by Bloomfield and Maple avenues at 10 a.m. A later search recovered the stolen MFF items – which Collazo has been charged with third-degree burglary and theft for.
Further MPD investigation has linked Collazo to two South Fullerton break-ins that happened “just days earlier.”
BELLEVILLE – Mayor Michael Melham and the Township Committee’s drive to make The Great Lawn at 520 Belleville Ave municipal property shifted into legal high gear by passing Ordinance 19-25 at its March 25 meeting.
The resolution green lights Belleville to purchase the 9.2 acres surrounding what started out as the Essex County Isolation Hospital that crowns The Great Lawn’s hill from Alma Realty, of Long Island City, N.Y.
The land on Block 2501, Lots 1.01, .02, .03, 2 and 3 were separated from the building lot from a 1993 county auction – which Alma bought back in 2017. Alma had intended to convert the landmark SoHo neighborhood 11-story, 275-bed hospital into luxury apartments.
Passing the resolution underscores the mayor and council’s 2023 “no build” open space policy. The resolution is listed as an amendment to “the former Essex County Geriatric Center Redevelopment Plan.” That geriatric center moved away in 1990, making way for the Garden State Cancer Center – which went bankrupt in 2017.
Melham, earlier that Tuesday night, asked his colleagues about “caretakers at SoHo.” The mayor was likely discussing the status of officially having Belleville DPW mowing The Great Lawn. The township had put “a clean and lien” on Alma last year; Alma, at the Feb. 25 meeting, countered that they had been maintaining the property since 2017.
NUTLEY – A Celebration Maas was held here at Grace Episcopal Church April 2 for long time resident and accident victim Lee Gilbert. Gilbert, 77, was declared dead at University Hospital 7:15 p.m. March 27 – 45 minutes after Nutley Police had responded to Franklin Avenue and Chestnut Street.
NPD told ECPO detectives that they had found a man lying in the intersection – and a car whose driver had parked nearby. A preliminary investigation determined that Gilbert was walking his dog when he was struck that Thursday night.
The driver, who cooperated with police, had not been charged as of March 28. The dog Gilbert was walking ran back to a curb and stood sentry.
Gilbert was the second dog walker in 15 months to be struck by a motorist at that crossroad. In October 2023, a woman and her dog – the latter wearing an orange vest – suffered non-life-threatening injuries. That driver was issued a failure to yield to a pedestrian.
Lee Thomas Gilbert, who was born Sept. 16, 1947 in New London, Conn, moved here while attaining a masters degree in marketing from Rutgers. He used his marketing education and his mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut while working for Telcordia, of Basking Ridge, until his 2006 retirement.
Wife Marcia, brothers Clay and Scott and Winston the canine are among the longtime Eastern New York MGA Club member. Internment was held at Clifton’s Crest Haven Memorial Park. Memorial donations may go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (stjude.org) and/or Shriner’s Children’s Hospital (shrinerschildrens.org).
