TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Prudential Center and its security staff are looking for witnesses to go with a video where a Rangers “fan” sucker-punched one of their employees during the May 1 series finale with the hosting New Jersey Devils.
The man – who was wearing an NHL Rangers jersey, goatee and glasses – was seen in several videos getting up from his Section 16 seat late in the game’s third period. A Devils player had just scored the third of what would be a four goal blanking of the Rangers – ending the New York team’s season and advancing the Devils to a playoff series against the Carolina Hurricanes.
Prudential Center “Woo Crew” member Semaj McLeod was meanwhile walking downstairs waiving a sign in the Rangers fan’s direction The fan then approached McLeod and punched him in the head.
“Got sucker punched twice in the face by a Rangers fan at my job, doing my job, celebrating a Devils goal,” tweeted McLeod. “If anyone knows who he is pls dm.”
The 18,000-seat arena was one-third Rangers fans, some of whom may be loyalists long before the Devils had moved here from Colorado in 1982.
“We’re aware of the incident and there’s no tolerance for that behavior at our arena,” said a Prudential Center spokesman May 2. “We’re investigating the incident to identify the suspect.”
The Newark Police Division, as of May 3, had not received an incident report or criminal complaint.
IRVINGTON – A township man, after a 26-day investigation by the Maplewood Police Department, was arrested April 24 for allegedly throwing bleach at a diner employee there on March 30.
Keandre Myers, 25, according to the April 27 MPD release, is accused of throwing “a Gatorade bottle filled with bleach in the face of a 47-year-old female employee’s face” in the Maplewood Diner 11:24 a.m. March 30. Myers is also accused “of breaking things and fleeing the restaurant.”
Two MPD detectives said that they had identified and arrested Myers while all three were in Elizabeth April 24. His arrest ended a search “of several weeks.”
Neither the release nor an MPD spokesman said how Myers was identified as the man who threw acid in the worker’s face. The victim was taken to RWJBarnabas Health Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston for evaluation.
The diner owner told a reporter April 6 that the suspect had earlier looked for a job there but “was turned down for the lack of experience.”
Myers has been held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility on two counts of making terroristic threats and a count each of harassment with the intent to cause an alarm and attempted aggravated assault with an intent to cause serious bodily injury.
EAST ORANGE – The owners of the three cars that were destroyed by fire at an Ashland section street corner April 28′ have word from officials on the cause of their destruction. The blaze also prompted the evacuation of neighbors and a school to the local YMCA and was the scene of an East Orange Police officer’s injury.
East Orange Public Safety Director Maurice Boyd said that residents across from the Summit Street and North Munn Avenue, northwestern corner began hearing popping sounds at about 8:15 a.m. that Friday. They were calling for fire and police units when a final pop brought up flames from an underground transformer chamber.
The first arriving EOFD and EOPD units saw flames reaching underneath an SUV, catching it on fire. The flames spread out to a four-door car parked ahead of it and an NYC yellow medallion taxi minivan behind it.
The on-scene fire commander decided to contain the fire to those three cars. EOPD officers were deployed to close the T-intersection – which led to a police officer being struck by a car while directing traffic. The officer was treated at the scene for minor injuries; no information was given about the striking vehicle and its driver.
Students and staff of the Pre-Kindergarten-12th Grade school run by Masjidu Alhus Sunnah/Islamic Center of America were taken to the nearby East Orange Y. The school and mosque’s back wall are across the avenue from the scene. The school called it a day after authorities gave the “all clear.”
Representatives from Public Service Electric & Gas and the East Orange Fire Department said that they have traced the explosion and blaze under the to a faulty transmission cable. No power was lost in the neighborhood nor were there any other injuries.
ORANGE – It is one Reock Street apartment building done and, pending Orange Zoning Board of Adjustment approval, two to go in that street’s redevelopment zone.
The zoning board is anticipating a filing from PEEK Reock, LLC, of West Orange and Jersey City and Edgewater architect Mark Virgona for two variances. One variance is for the allowance of residential bay windows and the other to allow for cornices along the Reock Street facade.
The Orange Planning Board has recently approved plans for Reock II Orange Summit and Reock III – Orange Pinnacle that are to be built to Reock I’s east and along Reock Street’s south side. Each five-story building will average 57 housing units and 46 parking spaces.
The three PEEK Orange Crossing buildings, when complete, will total 171 dwelling units and 140 parking spaces. Virgona, in his testimony before the planning board, explained why he and PEEK went for three buildings instead of one.
“Having three buildings actually costs us more money because we have double elevators and double stairs,” said Virgona, “but it gives us the ability to have that open space between the buildings. It will help that street instead of having one uninterrupted 400-foot-long facade.”
Building Reock II and III, however, would also mean PEEL negotiating with Aen Ure, of Parsippany, who owns 256 Reock and the vacant lots at 258-274 Reock for a fair market value sale. Building Reock II and III means that it will be built on Ure’s three vacant lots – and demolish the 2012-built 256 Reock commercial/residential building.
Reock I-III are being completed on a block bordered by Reock Street, South Day Street, Freeway Drive East, South Center Street and NJTransit Morris & Essex Line right of way. They will take up a third of the original Reock Street Development Condemnation in Need of Redevelopment Zone. The three buildings are within the Orange Transit Village Zone.
WEST ORANGE – Some township residents and officials are not waiting for the Zoning Board of Adjustment’s May 18 meeting to sound off on the latest proposed replacement for the closed China Gourmet restaurant here at 468-470 Eagle Rock Ave.
MPB Realty LLC’s site plan application, which was to have been introduced at the zoning board’s April 20 meeting, is anticipated to be on the May 18 agenda. MPB, of Dallas, intends to replace the one story restaurant with a building each for a Popeyes and a Sonic. Both would have drive-through features, and both need C- and D-variances.
The Popeyes is to have 24 indoor dining seats within its 2,525 square feet. The Sonic’s 1,616 sq. ft. spa ace will not have indoor dining but will have a 764 sq. ft. outdoor seating area instead.
A pair of two-way driveways are to feed the drive through windows and 30 parking spaces. The western driveway is to have a right-turn-only exit, with a center traffic island to prohibit left-hand turns onto the avenue.
Other features are to include replacing 33 existing buffer trees with 38, a bike rack, two trash enclosures and the 30 parking spaces broken down to nine canopied spots for Sonic customers, three electric vehicle parking spaces and two for handicapped vehicles.
A reporter who surveyed four Township Council members and two residents May 3, however, had voiced their traffic and noise concerns regarding the Popeyes/Sonic proposal. Most said that the proposal demonstrated to them that West Orange needs a full-time planner instead of a hired consultant.
The zoning board had rejected a plan for a Mavis Discount Tire Center there in 2018. That hearing was taken, however, while Mayfair Farms was active across the avenue. The Mayfair, which closed on July 5 after 80 years, is becoming a food preparation kitchen for Wonder vans and for a proposed senior citizens center.
MAPLEWOOD – Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and his detectives can anticipate receiving a Township Committee resolution later this month urging them to reopen an unsolved 1966 murder case here.
The committee, Township Attorney Roger Desiderio and newly-hired Business Administrator Patrick Wherry have been drafting the resolution to reopen the murder case of Carol Ann Farino.
Farino, 17, was a Columbia High School junior who left her waitressing job at Milt’s Cup & Saucer, 174 Maplewood Ave., at the close of business Nov. 3, 1966. She was last seen walking north on the avenue towards home, where her parents and 11-year-old sister Cynthia were waiting for her.
Farino never made it home alive. Her body was found on a Sommer Avenue driveway. One of her stockings was used to strangle her. Her killer, to date, has never been found.
Journalist and former “Maplewoodian” blogger Joe Strupp, after talking with Cynthia Farino and researching Carol Ann’s case, took up their cause in 2020. He wrote “A Long Walk Home,” on Farino’s life and muddled investigation. He and Cynthia had run a crowdfunded memorial, which ended in the April 15 unveiling of Carol Ann’s memorial bench by the Maplewood Gazebo.
Strupp had also launched a Change.org petition to urge the ECPO to reopen the case. He and Cynthia particularly want whatever is left of Carol Ann’s clothing and possessions be tested for DNA.
“At the time of the investigation, we had an inexperienced detective who was never trained to investigate a homicide,” Cynthia told a reporter April 15. “They leaked to the public that my father was the primary suspect, to defame the family. People to this day think my father did it.”
BLOOMFIELD – The next move surrounding the closed Friendly’s Family Restaurant here at 1243 Broad St., may be in a Newark courtroom some eight miles to its southeast. A State Superior Court-Newark Law Division hearing for Finomous Bloomfield RE Holding LLC vs. the Bloomfield Planning Board has not been yet scheduled.
Finomous, of Warren, Somerset County, in its 34-page complaint filed on Feb. 10, accuses the planning board of an “improper and unlawful denial of a site application.” All nine board members denied the property owner and developer its proposal for a combined Wendy’s and Taco Bell restaurant on Dec. 6.
The developer had the option to reapply. It had been reported from a Second Ward Community Meeting on Feb. 28 that Finomous had been talking with the township’s zoning officer about converting the 54-year-old restaurant for Taco Bell only earlier that month.
The plaintiff’s main complaint that it had planned, since its Feb. 22, 2022 application filing, for 29 parking spaces when township zoning laws call for at least 25 front yard spaces, based on two customers per vehicle. Finomous said to the board that it could remove those four extra spaces.
Fencing and signage variances were only sought in the application. The plaintiff asserts that its plan otherwise adheres to the township’s B2 zone for a fast-food restaurant on the site – including not having a drive-through.
The other complaints included the board ignoring its attorney’s advice not to consider “traffic conditions or impact on Broad Street” and the board had relied on “facts and evidence nor relevant to the application or relief sought.”
Finomous bought Block 188, Lot 59 after Friendly’s closed the eatery on Dec. 20, 2021. Friendly’s had entered bankruptcy reorganization in 2020.
MONTCLAIR – Two African American members of the Montclair Fire Department have said that former Town Manager Timothy Stafford was among the hands involved in what they said was “egregious race discrimination” in the squad’s promotional exam process.
Stafford, who was fired by the Township Council April 28 over accusations of workplace hostility and intimidation, is among the names listed by MFD Lt. Marrari and Acting Battalion Chief Capt. Steven Marshalleck.
Their suit, filed in State Superior Court-Newark April 24, includes Fire Chief John Hermann, former Human Resources Director Sharyn Matthews and Michael Terpak. Terpak’s Promotional Prep LLC testing company and Montclair Township are also named as respondents.
Marrari and Marshalleck said that they and other African American firefighters were graded and ranked lower on the MFD promotional list because the department had used a test and criteria “that diminished the value of seniority.”
The two officers added that the respondents had used “a highly subjective job evaluation process.” They assert that Promotional Prep had offered test preparation services “only to white firefighters preparing for the promotional exam.”
