-- Winter 2005 Edition --

Private Property  A couple of years ago, a Raymond Street resident wrote an important article about the old Lamring Dairy on River Road.  You can see what’s happening to that historic site if you drive on River Road between Shop Rite and Fair Lawn Avenue. She recently got into this discussion (on Fair Lawn's Discussion Forum) with an Interested Party about protecting private property. Raymond Street Resident said: The Old Library and the Lamring Dairy were deliberately allowed to become eyesores. In the case of the Old Library, there was an estimate of $1 million to completely rehabilitate the building, and a lesser amount to make the wanted improvements. This is versus a $9 million new recreation center that was not needed or particularly wanted. The land under the Old Library was wanted by a developer. So it went. The Lamring property was part of a proposal to transform it into a series of shops by rehabilitating the existing buildings. Zoning changes were needed, but they were minimal. It was refused. So the property changed hands, no effort was made to force the new, politically connected owner to maintain the existing buildings, and, voila! the buildings were just too run down to preserve.   The Naugle house will be next. It's already being allowed to fall into disrepair. If you don't believe me, go look at it.  [See Summer 2004 article and Winter 2004 article].  It will be the next property to fall to the wrecker because it's "too far gone". And the land it sits on, made artificially more valuable by a shake-hands deal of redevelopment zoning by the town. It's amazing that a community that needs to be protected with such vigor from the horrors of a McDonald's drive-in window is being stripped of any protection of historic buildings and traditionally residential neighborhoods. Interested Party replied: I call it economics with private sellers and private purchasers getting together to meet their common goals. The approvals come after a deal is struck between these two parties. Remember the Lamring site straddles two zones 1) Residential 2) Business. In the end the residential side of the property stayed as single family residential lots and the commercial side stayed as what is permitted in the commercial zone. If Fair Lawn doesn't have a strong historic preservation commission to nominate and preserve historic structures in the Borough, we will continue to lose these properties. It takes money to preserve what's left and the funding would have to come from our tax dollars. Maybe when an open space referendum comes up again it would include the preservation of historic structures and open space without the rest of the garbage that was tacked on - which basically ensured defeat.  It is up to those living in town to push the local government to enact an historic preservation commission with teeth and appropriate funding. But until then or when and if a private group comes to the table with the funds necessary for preservation we are going to lose the Lamrings still left. Bergen County simply doesn't have open space to build on, the area is desirable for the ease of commuting, the income of the residents in the area and the infrastructure in place. Current property owner area seeing their property values skyrocket because of these (and other) reasons, so they are taking advantage of purchasers’ desires to be in this area. And why not? Free enterprise is all about supply and demand and demand is great and supply is not. So now what is happening is that in order for new building stock to be erected, the older stock needs to go. When a property owner can or doesn't want to maintain a property and they have the opportunity to sell it, why not do so? If a purchaser gets a property in this area they are going to build what they can under the zoning in order to maximize their profit – again, simple economics. In order to save these “historic properties” and open space money and a lot of it is necessary to do so. A property owner has the right to sell to the highest bidder and that is not selling out, it is looking after themselves and their family to secure their future. The only was preservationists can counter this is to come up with the required money on their own. It is not the job of the local land use boards to say whether or not a property should be redeveloped by private property owners. It is their job to make sure that the proposals are within the bounds of the laws and that the directly effected public has the opportunity to be heard. The public does come out and has recently been heard in regards to many new construction plans. These property owners have been required to amend their plans in response to the concerns that the effected public has about the plans and the boards did place additional requirements in the approvals to meet the concerns of the residents. Real estate is a complicated balancing act between the rights of private owners and the effect on surrounding property owners. There is no complete win for either side, but a compromise is in the best solution to keep changes in balance. In regards to LAMRING: Private property rights are held in the highest esteem in this country. If, as Raymond St. Resident suggested, that pressure was to be placed on either the old or new owner of the property to maintain the existing buildings with the same uses and architectural features, then you would have a taking of some of those private property rights, an owner is allowed to transform their property to suit their needs. If you restrict thier ability to change their properties - over and above zoning restrictions - you are lessening their property rights, which would require some type of compensation to the property owner - where would that compensation come from? Anytime the government takes away the individual property owners' rights, they, the government, needs to compensate that owner. Lamring was never a "protected property" so the private sector dictated what was going to happen to that property, just as if you were going to sell or purchase a piece of property - why should the government come in to restrict YOUR use of YOUR property if they are not going to compensate YOU? And the only way a property owner would be compensated for their loss of their property rights would be through tax payer funds. Now if a group interested in keeping the status quo and fixing up the buildings purchased the property in question for the price asked for by the SELLER, it probably could have been preserved. Remember the seller was a private individual. Also as a bit of history; the Lamring property is actually split by the Zoning Ordinance. Part of the property is zoned single family residential (along Lamring Dr.) and part B4 Business (along River Road ). The final approved plan was the second one presented to the local zoning board. The first plan was for a series of high density townhouses that would have dumped the traffic on the residential street to the rear of the property and placed a huge wall on the River Road side of the property. This plan was not in conformance with either of the 2 zones for this property. This plan was defeated after the neighbors and the River Road Improvement Corporation (RRIC) objected to that plan as it was so out of character with the area and the River Road Master Plan for the Revitalization of River Road. The final approved plan calls for three residential houses on Lamring Road, which is in character of the neighborhood and consisted with the residential zoned part of the property, the other component of the project calls for a mixed-use building (commercial/residential) on River Road, without any access to the residential street, again consistent with the zone for this part of the property. The neighbors and the RRIC see this as the better alternative to what was originally proposed. This shows that the process works and it did in this case – the developer originally wanted something that was hurtful to the neighborhood, the residents fought this plan and won a balance between the rights of current property owners (the neighbors) and the rights of someone to improve their property to meet their needs. The RRIC fought to preserve the Revitalization Master Plan to encourage the extension of the building set-back and streetscape theme and to eliminate the construction of a wall along River Road which would have disjointed the corridor. In the end of the day, the property was sold by a private owner to another private owner in a private transaction. The purchaser, as I understand it is a resident of Fair Lawn for 40 years, so this person seems to have a stake in where this town is going – and is he “politically connected” which in this case seems to be something evil? I don’t know and it should matter because noting special was given to this person, the entire zoning process was open to the public and the public was heard! And concerning NAUGLE HOUSE the situation is similar to Lamring. There is a private sale by the property owner to another individual. Again, the property apparently isn’t protected so what can the government do? It is my understanding that some agreement ahs been made in the final approvals requiring that the house be saved, so I don’t see this as a “shake-hands deal of redevelopment zoning”, and the approvals went through the public hearing process, just as Lamring, where the public was heard. If there was strong public opposition I am sure that there would have been another outcome to the approvals – look at the old Interstate Glass site, the public came out against the 2-story project proposed and it wasn’t approved.