Redevelopment puts life, business on hold

Resident becomes activist as eminent domain looms

BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer

BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer

MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Long Branch resident James Keelen's home and bus company business on Belmont Avenue are in the city's Broadway redevelopment zone. MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Long Branch resident James Keelen’s home and bus company business on Belmont Avenue are in the city’s Broadway redevelopment zone. Long Branch resident James Keelen thought he was living the American dream.

Keelen, 49, began operating his business, Keelen Bus Co., at 142 Belmont Ave., in 1992 and just seven years later, purchased a home next door to his company where he is raising his family.

Keelen found his American dream was short-lived when he learned that both his business and home are located in the city’s Broadway redevelopment zone and could be slated for eminent domain like homes in other zones.

“This is my whole life,” said Keelen in an interview Monday. “Everything I have ever worked for is here, sitting on this property that could be taken from me.

“What if I wanted to give [my company] to my children or sell it and retire?” he asked. “I can’t do it. It is all on hold. They have my life on hold.”

The Broadway Redevelop-ment zone, one of six redevelopment zones designated in the city, extends 72 acres from Second Avenue west to the railroad tracks.

Permitted uses in the Belmont Avenue section of the redevelopment zone where Keelen’s home and business are located include college campus housing, Long Branch Councilman Anthony Giordano said in an interview Monday.

The city has not entered into an agreement with a developer for the zone at this time, but has received a couple of proposals for the area that are currently under review, according to Giordano.

“Each of the developers have been asked to submit additional information,” Giordano said.

Keelen said he is not ready to turn his business and home over to the city and has decided to get involved to protect the property he owns from the prospect of eminent domain abuse.

Keelen has been hosting meetings twice a month at his place of business with residents from some of the city’s other redevelopment zones, including Beachfront North, phase II and Beachfront South.

This combined group of residents fighting what they believe is abuse of the city’s eminent domain authority does not yet have an official name, but Keelen said the residents are joining forces to save their homes and businesses from being condemned to clear the way for redevelopment.

The group has organized a rally to be held Friday at 6:30 p.m. beginning in front of 38 Ocean Terrace on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Kelo vs. New London (Conn.) case that ruled that eminent domain could be used to take homeowners’ property for private development.

Keelen said in addition to the advocacy meetings, he has also started to attend City Council meetings twice a month.

At the June 13 municipal meeting, Keelen told the City Council, “I would like to talk about the disease this city has inflicted on me, my family, my business. A disease called blight.”

Keelen continued, “You can’t work on your home. You can’t work on your business. You don’t know when it is going to be torn down. It’s a disease. It’s like a cancer.

“I plead with you to remove this blight from my neighborhood,” he said.

Keelen said the location of his company is essential for business and a benefit to the community as a whole. The bus company employees 112 workers, 65 of whom are residents of Long Branch, according to Keelen.

“People can walk here,” he said.

He added that he has donated bus services for Long Branch Pop Warner as well as for transporting residents to the different locations for the Jersey Shore Marathon in previous years.

“I have been called to respond to hurricanes and I have even been called for fires,” Keelen said. “The city can call me at the drop of a hat.”

But what Keelen does not understand is why he was not informed earlier that his home and business could be taken from him.

“I did not know this was a redevelopment zone until I started reading articles and seeing homes on the oceanfront being knocked down and [condominiums] going up,” Keelen said. “I was never made aware of it and I am not getting any answers from the city. There is no communication.”

The hardest part for Keelen, though, is planning his future, he said.

“I just want to know what is going to happen,” Keelen said. “I don’t want to wake up everyday and ask if I still have a home and a job.”

While a developer has not yet been designated for the redevelopment area where Keelen’s home and business are located, the city has designated Broadway Arts Center (BAC) as the developer for the first nine acres of the entire Broadway redevelopment zone which extends from Second to Memorial Avenues and from Union Avenue to the north and Belmont Avenue to the south.

Plans for that sector of the zone call for all the properties to be razed and replaced with an estimated $180 million arts district project.

According to a spokeswoman for BAC, 43 properties have already been acquired and eight properties were already owned by the principals in BAC. Negotiations are ongoing with the remaining six properties in the zone, she said.

Property owners, Kevin Brown who has been trying to establish a place of worship at the property he owns at 162 Broadway and Paul and Kavita Panday who operate Rainbow Liquors at 141 Broadway, in the Broadway Arts Redevelopment zone, filed suit in April to challenge the taking of their properties by eminent domain.

The plaintiffs claim in the suit, filed in state Superior Court, that BAC is “in large part” responsible for the blight designation of the zone for “intentionally” keeping the properties they owned in the area “undeveloped and in disrepair,” according to the suit.

Redevelopment underway in the Beachfront North, phase II area, known as MTOTSA for Marine and Ocean Terraces and Seaview Avenue, calls for the properties, some of which are slated for eminent domain, to be razed and replaced with luxury condominiums.

Members of the MTOTSA alliance have filed a motion in Superior Court to dismiss condemnation complaints served by the city on 20 residents in the zone and residents are currently awaiting a decision by Judge Lawrence M. Lawson.

In Beachfront South, plans also call for razing the neighborhood and replacing it with luxury condominiums.

The developers of the zone are negotiating with the property owners for the purchase prices of their homes which could result in eminent domain if an agreement is not reached by the July 1 deadline.