FILE PHOTOS Above: A group of residents from the MTOTSA neighborhood continue the legal fight with the city to stop the condemnation of their properties. Below: Residents of the MTOTSA neighborhood are joined by supporters outside of the courthouse in Trenton in May. With the state Supreme Court declining to hear a Long Branch eminent domain appeal, the case could go in a new direction that would include taking eminent domain off the table for the beachfront neighborhood.
The New Jersey Supreme Court denied two motions on Oct. 31 to hear appeals by both the MTOTSA homeowners and the city of Long Branch. There was no opinion accompanied by the orders.
The next step for the case is to be sent back to state Superior Court Judge Lawrence M. Lawson, unless an agreement can be reached between the two parties prior to the yet-to-be-scheduled court date.
“This is not totally unexpected,” Long Branch Mayor Adam Schneider said about the Supreme Court decision. “We had figured that the odds they would take the case was one in five, if that.
“Now it will probably go back to Judge Lawson, but I would prefer to resolve it before that,” he said. “It has been made very clear that [MTOTSA] won’t accept any settlement with eminent domain on the table.
“Is taking eminent domain off the table a possibility?” he asked, before answering, “Yes. That would be the goal.”
Each side in the long-running dispute over the use of eminent domain in Long Branch had asked the state Supreme Court to review the August decision of the Appellate Division of state Superior Court, which ruled that the city’s condemnation of the MTOTSA neighborhood for private redevelopment was illegal under the evidence presented.
The case was remanded to the trial court to give Long Branch an opportunity to present more evidence to prove that the threestreet neighborhood was blighted.
Attorneys for the MTOTSA group, which is an acronym for the three streets of the redevelopment zone — Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue — petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Appellate Division victory and end the case.
The city also petitioned the Supreme Court, seeking that the court overturn the Appellate Division’s ruling.
The high court did not side with either party, and ruled that the case does not yet present an issue requiring the Supreme Court’s intervention.
“We are disappointed,” said Jeff Rowes, an attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ), who is acting as co-counsel in representing some 17 MTOTSA homeowners.
“The Supreme Court decided not to take the case and end it when the homeowners won,” Rowes said. “We are willing to talk to Long Branch to reach an agreement as long as eminent domain is off the table.
“The city has never contacted us and said eminent domain is off the table,” Rowes said, adding, “We are optimistic that they will contact us and say the homeowners can stay in their homes.”
In its August opinion, the Appellate Division ruled that Long Branch could not condemn the homeowners’ homes, because the city’s blight designation, which was the basis for taking the homes, was not supported by evidence. On remand, Long Branch must produce evidence of blight from 1996.
“The burden is entirely on Long Branch,” Rowes said. “Long Branch cannot manufacture new evidence. It also can’t merely take its old evidence that failed in the appeals court and hand it over to a paid consultant to say there was blight when in fact the appeals court said the city proved no such thing.
“That’s why we see the appeals decision as a fatal blow to the city’s case,” Rowes added.
IJ is acting as co-counsel with Peter Wegener of Bathgate Wegener & Wolf of Lakewood, in representing some 17 homeowners. William J. Ward of Carlin & Ward of Florham Park is representing one MTOTSA family in the case.
Ward said that a trial court date has not been scheduled yet, but that he and the other attorneys representing MTOTSA are willing to come to the table with the city to discuss a negotiation that does not include the use of eminent domain in the plan.
Schneider said that in order to reach an agreement, everyone on both sides of the case would have to come together at the same table, but attorneys representing MTOTSA contend that the city has never reached out to them to discuss a settlement.
If everyone does come to the table, Schneider explained that devising a plan for the MTOTSA neighborhood and reaching an agreement will still be no easy task.
“It is a fairly complicated issue when a developer owns about half of the property [in MTOTSA,]” Schneider said. “If you drop the redevelopment designation, it leads to other issues. You have a zoning plan [for MTOTSA] that probably only works in a redevelopment zone. You need to amend zoning ordinances.”
He continued, “A developer owns half the property and he still has a contract. Even if we negotiate his leaving, which we are trying to do that now, then what is going to happen to his property?
“Just walking away is not in anybody’s best interests,” Schneider said, adding, “We need to come up with a resolution that resolves all of the issues, and if the property owners don’t come to the table, that is very hard to do.”
Councilman Brian Unger, who was elected on an anti-eminent domain platform in 2006, said in an email last week that he is urging his fellow council members to end the eminent domain litigation with MTOTSA.
“Enough is enough, as the mayor has been quoted saying,” Unger said. “Perhaps the city is never going to win this case against our own residents.
“Perhaps it’s time to bury the hatchet, stop fighting our residents, and publicly renounce the use of eminent domain against these homeowners,” he said, adding, “It has been a demoralizing chapter in city history, and with the current pressures in the real estate market, maybe this is the right time to ask the developers of [MTOTSA] to rethink their plan and redraw their project.”
Lori Vendetti, a MTOTSA homeowner and activist against the abuse of eminent domain, said she was disappointed in the recent Supreme Court denial.
“The Supreme Court could have resolved this once and for all, which would not only have protected us, but the American dream of every homeowner in New Jersey,” Vendetti said. “We are ready, willing and able to meet with the mayor to try to resolve this … but the one, nonnegotiable point we have is that we will not give up our homes.
“They are ours, and we have a right to them,” she said, adding, “If we have to continue this fight in court, so be it. We’re in this for the long haul.”
Rowes added, “What the public needs to understand here is that if the city continues this appeal … it is solely because of the private interests of the developers who now own property in the MTOTSA neighborhood.
“If it were up to the homeowners and the city, this case would just go away and the homeowners would get to keep what is rightfully theirs,” he said.
Although Schneider said he would prefer an agreement rather than drag the case out for the next couple of years in a legal court battle, he said that just going away would not resolve anything.
“A legal fight for years, I don’t want to do that,” Schneider said. “I will not just drop the [redevelopment] designation unless we get a resolution that makes sense.
“Then we have to deal with the developer,” he said, adding, “If you tell the city to just walk away, what is going to happen?
“A negotiation is a give and take and figuring out the way out of this. Maybe we end up back before Judge Lawson. Avoiding the legal fight is easier if everyone comes to the table,” Schneider said.