by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – The results of the State Historical Preservation Office’s recent split decision on NJIT’s Campus Gateway MLK Project can be seen here – for a limited time only – at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Central Avenue’s southwestern corner.
Construction perimeter fencing had been erected around 317 King Blvd and 156 Central Ave. since the Holidays. While a pair of contracted excavators tear down the Mueller Brothers Wholesale Florist complex at 156 Central, 317 King, the former 1887 TKE fraternity brownstone, remains untouched except for dust.
The HPO, after a December hearing in Trenton, is letting NJIT level the Mueller Brothers buildings. 317, 240-250 and 236-38 King, however, are to remain untouched for now. By “for now,” NJIT has to show how it can integrate the three King Boulevard buildings’ historic structures and characteristics into the university’s Campus Gateway Project.
All four buildings are (and with Mueller Brothers, were within Newark’s 20-block James Street Commons Historic District. Any remodeling, redevelopment and replacement plans within the 1977-established zone must pass SHPO and Newark’s Landmarks and Historic Preservation Commission muster.
The two HP bodies’ checks and balances have allowed, for example, CTS and Hanini to revamp the 1871 St. Michael’s Hospital into a mixed use of apartments, commercial space, new GlassRoots school headquarters and office space.
While many may view the original St. Michael’s, at 306 King, as a positive example, some may view the “late 19th Century” Mueller complex’s demolition as another step towards the James Street Historic District’s reduction. Mueller Brothers is the 176th, or 40 percent, of the district’s 425 buildings that have been demolished in the last 46 years.
154-64 Central was a group of late 10th Century buildings remodeled by the Mueller Brothers in the mid-20th Century. What the six Mueller brothers started here in 1938 ended with a going out of business sale June 30, 2019. 236-38 King is a pre-1926 commercial building; 240-50 King the former NJIT Economic Development Building and parking lot.
IRVINGTON – Authorities from here and Newark have been asking a man and a woman since their late Jan. 20 arrest along the 16th Avenue border about their connections to a string of recent armed robberies in both towns and elsewhere in Essex County.
The man and woman, whose identities remain undisclosed as of 1 p.m. Jan. 26, are believed to be the driver and a passenger of a black 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander with Texas license plates that Newark police pursued on their South and West ward streets 10:55 p.m. to almost 12:01 a.m. Jan. 20-21. The pair were among five occupants who bailed out on 16th Avenue.
The said Texas Outlander and/or its five occupants were seen in several stickups around the county – including one by the Irvington Bus Terminal 3 a.m. Jan. 19.
A 28-year-old Irvington man and three-out-of-towners said they were approached by two armed suspects. The felonious duo robbed the trio, who had just exited an NYC party bus, and then carjacked the Irvingtonian’s car. The Texas Outlander was not seen in this incident.
EAST ORANGE – City law enforcers remain on the lookout for a man who had committed an armed robbery of a Central Avenue cell phone store Jan. 18.
Those who were at the Boost Mobile store here at 429 Central Ave. told responding EOPD officers that “a black male wearing a black mask and blue jeans,” entered the premises at about 3:15 p.m. that Monday.
The suspect announced a robber and fled with an unknown amount of cash.
Details on the weapon supposedly the suspect used were not disclosed. The incident is being actively investigated.
ORANGE – News of Larry L. Johnson’s death Jan. 19 has rippled far beyond his law practice here at the Embassy Theater Building.
Johnson, 63, may be best known for practicing law here for 35 years and, for eight years, as an Orange Municipal Court Judge. He was also known as a scholar-athlete in Newark and Lewisburg, Pa.
Larry Lewis Johnson, who was born June 1957 in Wilmington, N.C., was a three-sport Essex Catholic High School-Newark Eagle 1971-75. The basketball player was a county and state champion shot putter and discus thrower who particularly excelled in football.
“No. 75” was on the undefeated freshman football team and the 1972 NJSIAA Varsity Parochial A State Championship team. Johnson’s gridiron performances helped bring him a full four year athletic scholarship from Bucknell.
The Bucknell Class of 1979 Bison returned to Newark and the Seton Hall Law School – where he received his juris doctorate in 1982. He was admitted to the New Jersey state bar that same year.
The attorney specializing in criminal, elder, planning and zoning law was appointed municipal judge by Mayor Robert Brown 1992-99.
“Being an Essex Man truly prepared me for my life’s journey, no matter how difficult,” said Johnson in his 2017 ECHS Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “I enjoyed the academic setting at Essex, which enabled me to receive a full academic scholarship at Bucknell.”
WEST ORANGE – Township Council President Cindy Matute-Brown and her colleagues took the first step in reviving the Rent Leveling Board by creating a council liaison post here at their Jan. 26 meeting.
The liaison, to be selected from among the council’s five members as early as their Feb. 9 meeting, will be a non-voting addition to the seven-member LRB. The all-volunteer board is made up of council-appointed residents holding one or two year terms.
Once the board meets with the council liaison and the board administrator, they will then decide on whether to hold regularly scheduled or as-needed meetings.
Matute-Brown suggested that the LRB, Human Relations Commission and Environmental Commission would benefit from council liaisons after public speaker Khabilah Myers, at their Jan. 5 reorganization meeting, pointed out that those panels were the only ones without a council representative.
Myers added Jan. 5 that the LBR “hadn’t met in two years” has services that will be needed should landlords start evicting tenants for nonpayment once the pandemic breaks. With “30 percent of West Orange residents living in rental housing,” she also suggested that CDBG funds be used to help renters’ payments.
WOPS Plans to Reopen Jan. 25
The West Orange Public Schools reopened its classrooms to Kindergarten-Second Grade and all grades’ special education students as planned Jan. 25. Schools Superintendent Dr. Scott Cascone, after holding a Jan. 21 “Town Hall” meeting, decided to go ahead with “Phase Two” of its reopening plan. The virtual meeting was also highlighted by a parents group submitting a 1,000-signature petition to postpone reopening.
SOUTH ORANGE – “Election 2021” has kicked off with two Village trustees leaving and three candidates announcing their bids Jan. 19-22.
Village Trustees Walter Clarke and Steve Schnall, in separate announcements Jan. 19, said they will not seek third terms. A majority of participating registered village voters selected Clarke, Schnall and Karen Hartshorn Hilton’s “South Orange 2017” slate.
Hilton, Bill Haskins and Braynard “Bobby” Brown, on Jan. 22, have announced their joint candidacy under their “Driven, Devoted and Dependable” team.
Hilton is seeking her second term. First-time candidate Haskins heads the South Orange Environmental Commission. Brown, a retired NFL player and a 2019 candidate, leads the South Orange Community Police Collaborative.
Village voters are to choose three trustees for four-year terms May 11. It is among several area nonpartisan municipal elections.
Prospective candidates who are registered voters and have lived in South Orange for at least a year may pick up a packet from the Village Clerk’s office now through March 8.
MAPLEWOOD – An early morning water main break near the Irvington border Jan. 22 turned Friday into an adventure for New Jersey American Water customers and local motorists.
The Maplewood Police Department, responding to calls of a water main break on Boyden Avenue at Evelyn Court 3:35 a.m., dispatched two squad cars and notified NJAW. Traffic was promptly rerouted via Van Ness Terrace and Berkley Street, the latter having the first bridge over Lightning Creek, onto or from Irvington’s part of Stuyvesant Avenue.
“Local Talk” saw NJAW work units and MPD cars stationed at Boyden and Evelyn 11:35 a.m. Friday. The avenue was reopened at 5:30 p.m.
Teachers Vow to “Teach From Home”
You will know if South Orange Maplewood Education Association members have returned to the two-town school district’s classrooms or if they are still teaching classes from their homes when you read this.
South Orange-Maplewood School District Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor initially canceled in-person instruction, PSAT testing and after-school activities Jan. 26 due to a looming day-long snow and ice storm. Taylor’s “snow day” call suspended in-person learning for all special education, English as second language students plus students in Pre-Kindergarten-Second, Sixth and Ninth Grades that have been on since Jan. 19.
The SOMEA, however, cited “deplorable” conditions that will keep them from returning onto school property as of Jan. 27. Union leaders said that only 25 percent of classrooms have been properly ventilated. Classrooms with opened windows recorded between 35 and 60-degrees F. – well below the 68-degree minimum set by state workplace standards.
Negotiations between Taylor and the SOMEA were continuing as of press time.
MONTCLAIR – The April 27, 2020 rent control ordinance that the Township Council had passed has taken effect since Jan. 15 – at least for now.
New Jersey State Superior Court. Judge Jeffrey B. Beacham, from his Newark bench that Friday, ordered Montclair’s elders to stop putting the ordinance on hold. Beacham’s ruling came while upholding Township Clerk Angelese Bermudez Nieves’ Dec. 14 rejection of the Montclair Property Owners Association’s latest “cured signature” ballot to place the ordinance under a public question voters referendum.
The rent control ordinance was to take effect May 16 until the MPOA started its petition signature drive within that 20-day grace period. The clerk’s office has since twice rejected the petitions for not exceeding at least 1,050 voters signatures, despite MPOA being allowed to electronically canvass, Sept. 23 and Dec. 14.
The ordinance may be switched off again should the MPOA file for another petition drive.
Teachers’ Absence Ices: Jan. 25 Schools Reopening
Montclair’s Jan. 25 elementary school hybrid remote/in-person instruction model, depending on a mediator’s decision, may or may not be happening when you read this.
Superintendent Dr. Jonathan Ponds announced late Jan. 22 that his reopening of the elementary schools on Jan. 25 has been indefinitely postponed because he “is unable to properly staff our schools.”
Montclair Education Association officials said they and their members will not return to school until their demands are met. The teachers’ union wants all 840 classrooms having ventilators installed; MPS has installed 400 with another 200 coming. They also want to wait until they have all been vaccinated.
Pond’s Friday postponement caused some 800 parents protesting his decision before the district’s grade schools Monday morning. The parents – including Montclair Parents for in-Person Learning (FAIL) and Concerned Parents and Community Members of Montclair (CoPCoMM) demand schools’ reopening.
BLOOMFIELD – The widow of a retired Newark police officer who committed suicide while in township police custody has filed a negligence suit near the incident’s two-year anniversary.
An attorney on Corinne O’Connor-Montella’s behalf filed the wrongful death suit over the Holidays against Bloomfield Township, its police department and the 11 officers who were in police headquarters Jan. 15-16.
The suit asks how Patrick R. Montella, 58, found a handgun, which he used to shoot himself at around midnight. The retired 29-year NPD Lieutenant had been taken under custody after a domestic violence and was about to be handed a summons and released.
The suit may also clarify whether the handgun was PBD property or Montella’s own service pistol. The filing has not specified specific monetary damages.
A Funeral Mass was held for Newark native Montella at St. Lucy’s Church Jan. 23, 2019. Daughter Casey O’Keefe and brother John are also among his survivors.
GLEN RIDGE – There are now 53 of the borough’s public school district community, as of Jan. 25, who are under quarantine.
GRPS Superintendent of Schools Dirk Phillips, in his Monday email, said that four new COVID-positive cases were detected in the last week. They include “an individual” in the Ridgewood Avenue Upper Elementary School, “whose cohort has been quarantined and families whose children have been in close contact with the individual have been contacted.”
All five schools, as of Jan. 18, have at least one of its community members isolated.
The increasing GRPD positive and under-quarantine cases reflect that of the borough as a whole. Glen Ridge’s overall cases have gone from 51 on Oct. 1 and 59 Nov. 1 to 98 Dec 1, 170 Jan. 1 and 218 as of Jan. 22.
BELLEVILLE – “Local Talk” area ShopRite customers may want to ask their in-store pharmacists if they will remain open after Feb. 1 – or will be closed like the one here at 726 Washington Ave.
ShopRite parent Wakefern Foods, of Woodbridge, announced that Belleville and 26 more of its supermarkets across New Jersey will be closed for “lack of sufficient sales.” Customer prescription files will automatically be transferred to the nearest CVS – which explains for the “Welcome ShopRite Customers” sign up at 519 Washington.
Wakefern’s closing of 27 pharmacies comes as a two-fold surprise for local and area customers.
The Belleville SR is owned and operated by Nutley Park SR, the latter run by the LoCurcio and Infusino families since 1953. They had kept the in-house PathMark pharmacy when they bought and remodeled the liquidated supermarket in 2012-13.
It is not known, as of 9 a.m. Jan. 27, whether Nutley Park or any other “LTN” area SRs will lose their drug stores. Wakefern had not yet posted a list.
It appears that Brookdale SR, in Bloomfield, will keep its pharmacy during and after its current expansion. The East Orange SR pharmacy will close with its supermarket for Brick Church Shopping Plaza replacement – but it is not known if the drug store will reopen with the new supermarket.
SR Pharmacies are also found among its Newark (Springfield Avenue) and Essex Green-West Orange.
NUTLEY – The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Crash and Fire Investigations Unit have ruled Jan. 15 that last year’s fatal house fire here at Park Avenue was accidental in nature.
ECPO unit investigators had traced the start of the Jan. 18, 2020 fire at 320 Park Ave. to the second floor room of Danny Russo, seven. Mother Amanda, 29, was inside as well as grandfather Alfred, 74, who was making breakfast at the time.
Al Russo told passing Nutley motorist and first responder Joe Caprio that he went upstairs to find the fire coming from Danny’s room. He was unable to open that room’s door.
The first firefighting units had arrived 12:40 p.m. that Saturday to find heavy smoke and flames engulfing the house’s second floor. They also met Al Russo, who was just pulled out by Caprio.
Firefighters found Amanda and Danny, who were rushed by EMS to RWJBaranbas Health Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville. They were later declared dead there.
Fire department units from Belleville, Bloomfield and Lyndhurst provided mutual aid. Volunteer Emergency squads from Nutley and North Arlington were also at the scene.
