BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer
If Save Sandy Hook gets its way, the public will have a say after all in redevelopment plans for historic Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook.
“We will ask for a jury trial. Let the citizens decide whether they leveled the playing field,” retired Superior Court Judge James M. Coleman told a roomful of supporters at a fund-raiser for Save Sandy Hook (SSH) Sunday.
“We will ask for a permanent injunction to stop them, to throw out the lease. I don’t want to go out there and see the Sandy Hook Café and the Fort Hancock Bistro,” said Coleman, who, along with SSH, will be named as plaintiff in the impending legal action against the National Park Service.
The grassroots group formed to oppose private development on Sandy Hook has retained attorney Paul Josephson, of the Princeton law firm Hill Wallack, who said Friday he is wrapping up work on the lawsuit expected to be filed shortly in Federal District Court.
The suit will challenge the NPS’s awarding of a 60-year lease for 36 historic buildings at Fort Hancock to private developer Sandy Hook Partners for a $75 million rehabilitation project that will see the buildings leased out for a mix of uses.
“You have the right to know what we’re suing for,” Coleman told supporters gathered at the Navesink River Road estate of Coleman and his wife, Judith Stanley Coleman, president of SSH. “Our position is that the mission of the NPS doesn’t say you should do that with this narrow spit of land that is already overburdened.
“They have never told us the use of each building,” he continued. “That negates any possibility of preparing a meaningful traffic survey.
“The NPS is violating its own rules. The Request for Proposals [for the Fort Hancock redevelopment] said they [the proposer] should have all the money. Show us the commitment; at the time of the lease, show us all the money. They violated their own written statements.
“We are further asking why they signed the lease with the proviso that SHP has until Dec. 31 [to show proof of firm financing commitments]. They say he has the financing, but if he has it, why Dec. 31? He either has it or he hasn’t.
“Another count in the suit is that they bid the project with Wassel Realty Group; now they gave it to SHP.”
“I’m behind you 100 percent on this,” said Sea Bright Mayor JoAnn Kalacka-Adams. She said she is one of two or three mayors who are members of the Two River Council of Mayors who have broken with the group and oppose the SHP development proposal.
As a result, she told the gathering, the developer has lost the important support of the mayors’ group.
“One of the things that convinced me … is that it seems like what Wassel is trying to do there is make it a conference center,” Kalacka-Adams said. “Anybody can do that; the NPS can do that. I didn’t see anything he talked about at the recent meeting at Fort Hancock that got me to change my mind.”
“If they don’t make money, the buildings will have to get bigger,” said Stanley Coleman. “They have not said a word about the buildings getting bigger. Wassel went to nonprofit school, but he’s still a developer. It’s at our doorstep now.”
“This whole thing has been a railroad,” added Ben Forest, SSH vice president and a member of Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater whose proposal to rehab its longtime headquarters building at Fort Hancock was turned down by the NPS on the basis that the group lacked the funding. “It’s an underfunded, underwhelming plan that SHP has.”