Eviction turns man’s world upside down

McCloud now wants to help others fight eminent domain

BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer

McCloud now wants
to help others fight
eminent domain

BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH — The redevelopment of the Long Branch beachfront and downtown areas will put the city back on the map, according to officials, but for some residents it will mean losing everything.

For 50-year-old former Long Branch resident Bruce MacCloud, losing his home was the ultimate sacrifice.

MacCloud owned a three-story, 17-room, 100-year-old Victorian home at 47 Cooper Ave., just 460 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. The home was his for 23 years until he was physically evicted on Nov. 6, 2002.

“They [the city] took my home, they took my domain and I lost most of my possessions,” MacCloud said. “Part of my life has been ruined.”

MacCloud’s home was located in the city’s redevelopment area designated as Beachfront North, Phase I. The properties in that area were taken through eminent domain, the homes have been bull-dozed, and now townhouses and condominiums are being constructed there.

MacCloud, who holds a full-time job with the Middletown Board of Education, said he never believed his home could be taken from him against his own will in America.

“I wasn’t willing to accept what was going on, until it did,” MacCloud said.

He said he was the last resident to leave his neighborhood in Beachfront North, and the going-away party was a memory he can’t escape.

On the morning of his eviction, he said six police officers, a locksmith, animal control for his 13-year-old black shepherd, Shannon, and fire bureau officials gathered on his property to escort him out of his home.

“I was told they were executing a formal eviction,” MacCloud said. “It is a nice thing to find happening in the middle of your house.”

He was escorted to a temporary shelter at the Fountains Motel on Ocean Avenue, and his belongings were moved into nine storage units in Tinton Falls, Neptune and Long Branch paid for by the city for one year.

He stayed in a motel on Newman Springs Road in Lincroft for five months.

MacCloud currently is living with a friend in Red Bank, who, he said, “has been kind enough to take in a homeless man.”

“I can look for a place to live all I want, but if you don’t have any money in today’s market, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

A $140,000 deposit was made into a court escrow account for the house as the settlement between MacCloud and the designated Beachfront North developers, Applied Companies of Hoboken, according to MacCloud.

He said the price paid was $1,900 less than what his home was assessed at in 1987.

The prices for the condominium units that are being constructed on the property where his Cooper Avenue home once stood start at $400,000 and run up to $1 million.

MacCloud has hired the law firm of McKirdy & Risken in Morristown to represent him in an eminent domain suit and he is currently interviewing lawyers to file a suit for personal injury damages.

“I am a wounded man,” MacCloud said. “My life has been shattered. All I ask for is acknowledgment of my pain and suffering. Money won’t bring back all that I have lost. It will just help right the wrong that has been done to me, my family, and all the families that have and will lose their homes.”

He said he may have lost his home, but he wants to do what he can to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

He has joined forces with members of a three-street neighborhood, known as MTOTSA (Marine and Ocean Terraces and Seaview Avenue), that has been designated in the Redevelopment Beachfront North, Phase II zone. The area is slated for eminent domain with homes to be replaced with townhouses and condominiums.

“They [MTOTSA] are innocent people and should be allowed to stay [in their homes],” MacCloud said. “I hope they conquer this threat and I can only give them my full support to help them survive this atrocity that is threatening them.”