MANVILLE: Borough acts fast on property lease

By Audrey Levine, Staff Writer
Lease approved enabling auto repair shop to stay
   Now that the borough owns the property at the corner of South Main and Kyle streets, the council unanimously approved a lease agreement for current tenant Frank Racz, of Frank’s Citgo, during a special meeting Tuesday.
   The borough officially took ownership of the property — formerly owned by Pennsylvania resident Kenneth Grant, who failed to pay taxes for more than 18 years — in February after foreclosing on the land. The property was cited in March 1993 by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) as being contaminated from leaking underground gas tanks, soil contamination and contamination of the Royce Brook, and borough officials did not act to take control of the site out of concerns over the cleanup’s costs.
   Tuesday’s meeting was held, according to council members, as a way to move forward as quickly as possible to begin receiving money for the property, and to accommodate redevelopment attorney William Cooper, who is not available for the borough’s upcoming council meeting.
   Mr. Racz declined to comment on the lease.
   According to the resolution, the lease — which will be written by Mr. Cooper, and will have to be accepted by Mr. Racz — will require the tenant to pay $3,000 per month for a period not to exceed three months, with the allowance that the borough can extend the agreement subsequently on a month-by-month basis.
   ”The longer we had waited to get a lease, the longer it would be until we started collecting money,” Mayor Lillian Zuza said in a separate interview.
   Councilman Ed Komoroski said, at the meeting, that the lease, if accepted, will be retroactive to March 1 because the borough took ownership of the property in February. This way, he said the tenant will have had a leeway of eight days, but will still be required to pay rent from the past month.
   If Mr. Racz does not accept the lease agreement, he will be required to vacate the property within 30 days.
   Although council members said they are unsure of when exactly the lease agreement will be completed, Mr. Komoroski said he expects to know if the tenant has accepted the agreement by the end of April, and Councilman Ken Otrimski said he hopes to know where the tenant stands by the second council meeting of this month.
   Borough Administrator Gary Garwacke said he expects the lease agreement itself to be ready in the next week.
   As for the cost agreed upon in the resolution, Mr. Garwacke said, in a separate interview, that he looked through tax assessments in the borough to find the rent paid for properties similar to Frank’s Citgo. He said he found a similar auto body shop renting space in the borough, and paying $1.15 per square foot of property each month. The South Main Street property, Mr. Garwacke said, is a total of 3,150 square feet, which would make the rent about $3,600 per month.
   ”I had rounded up to $4,000,” he said. “The council decided $3,000 was reasonable.”
   At the meeting, Mr. Cooper also announced that the council will be looking at a second resolution during Monday’s council meeting that will allow for a contract to be awarded for a grant application for funds for testing the contaminated land.
   ”This resolution (about the lease) should not be looked at by itself,” he said at the meeting. “There will be another resolution to allow for the environmental testing.”
   According to Mr. Garwacke, if the resolution is approved Monday, the borough will be paying $1,000 to its environmental engineers to put together the grant application for a preliminary assessment and a site investigation on the property.
   The application will be submitted to the NJDEP Hazard Discharge Site Remediation Fund, which Mr. Garwacke said pays 100 percent of the testing costs for accepted towns.
   Once the results from the testing are in, Mr. Komoroski said at the meeting, the borough can move forward to determine the best course of action for the property.
   ”For now, we want to try to get every penny we can,” he said. “The best thing is to sell a clean property.”
   Property owner Dean Shepard asked, during the meeting, if the council plans to move forward with the testing if a grant is not awarded, saying it would probably be in the best interest of the bor- ough to pay for it instead.
   Although Mr. Garwacke said he anticipates the borough will receive the grant, the council cannot decide until the grant decision has been made.
   ”If it’s only about $5,000, it would be to our advantage to do the testing,” Mr. Komoroski said.
   ”We don’t want a contaminated piece of property,” Councilman Ted Petrock added.
   Resident Rich Onderko asked if the borough could do anything about getting the more than $458,000 in back taxes owed to Manville by Mr. Grant, but the council said there is nothing that can be done about that.
   ”When we took over the property, that was it, we don’t care about what happened in the past,” Mr. Petrock said. “We are looking at what we can get now.”