Resident wants Ranch developer to fix street

No access to driveway on Elberon Ave.; city says it

BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer

BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

CHRISTINE VARNO Construction of a private roadway for a new development has prevented use of the driveway and garage at Arlene and Elliot Mavorah’s house on Elberon Avenue, Long Branch. CHRISTINE VARNO Construction of a private roadway for a new development has prevented use of the driveway and garage at Arlene and Elliot Mavorah’s house on Elberon Avenue, Long Branch. LONG BRANCH — A Long Branch resident says she isn’t opposed to a new development project in her neighborhood, but she does want access to her home again.

“I have an unstable and unsafe situation here, and no one seems to care,” Arlene Mavorah, Elberon Avenue, said in an interview this week. “People actually stop and say, ‘How is the city allowing this?’

“We are trying to protect our interests and our safety.”

Mavorah’s property borders the future site of the Elberon Ranch project, which calls for 35 single-family homes to be developed by Park Avenue Estates, Ocean Township, on a 30-acre tract.

The property is bordered to the south by Park Avenue, the east by Elberon Avenue, the west by railroad tracks and the north by Lake Takanassee.

Park Avenue Estates received approval from the city Planning Board to turn a driveway, off Elberon Avenue that provides access to Mavorah’s driveway and garage, into a roadway that will become a one-way entrance into the new project, according to Mavorah’s attorney, Ronald Gasiorowski, Red Bank.

Mavorah said she has approval to use the one-way roadway as an exit.

“It is a one-way street, and I will be using it in the opposite direction of all other traffic,” she said.

The attorney for Park Estates, Ronald L. Shimanowitz, Woodbridge, could not be reached for comment.

“My house is directly on Elberon Avenue, and my garage and driveway are on the side of my house,” Mavorah said. “The [projects new roadway] used to be a driveway that lead to my garage.”

She said Park Avenue Estates began construction five months ago on the new roadway, which is adjacent to her property and perpendicular to Elberon Avenue, and since that time “the conditions have only gotten progressively worse.”

“[Park Estates] have done nothing to help us,” she said. “There has not been adequate access to my home. The snow was never plowed; I have had to pay to get my car towed out of the mud, there was a two-inch hole in front of my driveway and my car has mud stuck in the wheels.

“I just want to know what is going to happen?”

She added that she reached out to Mayor Adam Schneider for help and was told that the developer, not the city, owned the roadway.

Schneider said Monday that at this time the city does not own anything in the area of the project.

“The developers have put curbing in [on the new roadway] and they have put in piping, but they never put down real gravel,” Gasiorowski said.

Mavorah and her husband, Elliot, bought their home seven years ago, and are part of a group called the Elberon Voters and Property Owners Association that was started 75 years ago.

The group initially opposed the development, according to the president of the association, Leila Poch.

“[The group’s] initial reaction to the [proposed] development was to preserve the area as open space,” Poch said. “We failed to achieve that, and when the project became a reality we were concerned for Arlene [Mavorah].

“You cannot call [the new] roadway a road, it is a horror for Arlene.”

The group has filed a law suit in state Superior Court against Park Avenue Estates because there were environmental concerns and the group felt there was no reason to have an entrance off of Elberon Avenue, according to Gasiorowski.

The group, which is also represented by Gasiorowski, has lost the case in the lower courts, but now is waiting to be heard in the New Jersey Appellate Division, Gasiorowski said.

Mavorah said she has accepted that the project will be constructed, but now she wants someone to fix the roadway so she can have access to her home.

“I would have the liked my back yard to have remained as it was,” she said “But Park Avenue Estates bought [the property] fair and square, and they can do whatever they want.

“I am more concerned with the [new] roadway.”

Mavorah said she wants someone to take responsibility for the unsafe conditions that have been created on the roadway and make access to her home safe again.

“It has been five months, and now I want answers,” she said.