The Grover home’s ninth life gave out Monday night when the Township Council sounded its death knell with a 3-2 vote to ultimately go through with its demolition.
By Charley Falkenburg, Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR — The Grover home’s ninth life gave out Monday night when the Township Council sounded its death knell with a 3-2 vote to ultimately go through with its demolition.
The future of the Grover home has been in limbo for more than a year. Since last June, the grassroots Grover Homestead Restoration Committee has been creating a viable business plan to persuade the council to squash the resolution asking for the home’s destruction.
However, their efforts appeared to fall short on July 8 as the majority of the council remained unconvinced the house and other surrounding structures on Village Road East should be saved.
Council members Bryan Maher and Kristina Samonte voted against the demolition, while Linda Geevers, Kamal Khanna and Council President George Borek voted to tear it down.
For Mr. Borek, the committee’s final proposals lacked official, documented commitment from potential volunteers and organizations. If he was the committee’s chair, he said he would have gone to places such as Home Depot and volunteer groups and obtained official forms of intent of their future involvement.
”The concern I had was that they had no plan. They had the opportunity to do that and if a plan had been presented to us, it might have been a different vote not only from us, but even the administration would have embraced it,” said Mr. Borek. “They could have showed us there was a strong commitment from individuals willing to partake in this and nothing like that was presented.”
The Grover Committee ultimately proposed to use $53,000 of the $60,000 that was initially set aside for the demolition to pay professional contractors to fix the windows, doors and roof to prevent further deterioration. The rest of the restoration would be done through volunteers, donations and fundraising without using any tax dollars. Upon completion, the committee would leave the home’s ultimate purpose up to the township and its residents.
Like Mr. Borek, it was Ms. Geevers’ second time voting in favor of the home’s demolition — the first was in 2010 when the council at that time approved a resolution to allocate money in the capital budget for the project. However, this time Ms. Geevers said she based her vote on public feedback.
”My vote wasn’t based on what I personally would have liked to see, but rather on the feedback I received from numerous residents — many who have lived in town for decades,” said Ms. Geevers, who was one of the liaisons for the Grover Committee. “The township does not have an open checkbook for this project — the support simply was not there. The bottom line is you have to sell the plan and I don’t think they made the case.”
For the past year, the tension accompanied with the Grover saga has consistently increased with its criminal investigation to find missing Grover property, a confidential police report and many inquiries as to the delay of the final business plan.
Ms. Samonte, who cast her vote in the other direction, was the other liaison for the committee. For her, there wasn’t enough information to make a decision and she expressed the need to see a historical report and multiple sources of professional estimates for up front costs for restoration and maintenance.
”You look around and see all these boxed stores and office buildings and I really do feel like these kinds of structures on farmsteads are being lost throughout New Jersey,” she added. “I thought there was a window of opportunity to come up with a creative solution requiring minimal or no local tax dollars.”
But now that window of opportunity has closed and now the administration is taking the necessary steps to take it down. Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh had expressed the desire to try and demolish in-house with its township Department of Public Works to save money. However on July 11, Mayor Hsueh said the township would have to go out to bid instead.
”We tried to look into what we can do in-house, but after reviewing the state requirements, we decided to go through the open competitive bidding process,” he said.
He attributed the decision to the steep expenses associated with hiring the necessary experts and purchasing special equipment that would be needed in the process such as dealing with termite and asbestos issues.
Mayor Hsueh estimated they would have a prepared bid package ready for the bidding process by next week and is aiming to have the demolition take place sometime in the fall.