City permitted to take properties on Broadway
Property owners plan to appeal decision that allows eminent domain
BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer

Kevin Brown

LONG BRANCH - The city has been granted approval by the state Superior Court to proceed with the condemnation of two properties in the Broadway Corridor redevelopment zone.

The decision permits the city to use eminent domain to obtain the two properties in the Broadway zone to make way for the Broadway Arts Center (BAC) mix-use redevelopment project, according to City Attorney James Aaron.

"Everything else in the zone has either been acquired by the city or there is a contract in place," Aaron said. "The city will be moving forward to vacate these last two properties within the next 30 to 45 days."

Superior Court Judge Lawrence M. Lawson issued a ruling last week that gave the city the go-ahead to use eminent domain to acquire Kevin Brown's and Gopal and Kavita Panday's properties on Broadway.

Lawson also ruled that he will appoint commissioners to fix the compensation required to be paid for the properties.

"The defendants challenged the city's condemnation authority by arguing that their properties are non-blighted and should not have been included in the city's redevelopment plan," Lawson wrote in the decision.

"They challenge that the city's designation of the Broadway corridor area as an area in need of redevelopment was arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.

"Condemnees have failed to proffer any evidence to rebut or contradict the city's well-documented" 1996 report in which the twoblock Broadway area was designated as a redevelopment zone, Lawson said.

AttorneyMichael S. Kasanoff, who is representing Brown and the Pandays, said he will file an appeal to the decision.

Additionally, Kasanoff plans to file a motion to stay any eminent domain procedures.

"The stay will prevent the city from moving forward with the takings while any appeals are going on," Kasanoff said.

"Judge Lawson's decision is just plain wrong," Kasanoff said. "He determined that the city has the right to take the property. They are not following the law.

"This is just a step in the process," he said, adding, "We have to bring it up to the higher courts."

Brown's and the Pandays' properties are the last two pieces to the Broadway redevelopment puzzle, according to Aaron.

The city has either acquired or is negotiating a contract to acquire all of the other properties in the two-block zone, according to Aaron.

Brown owns 162 Broadway, which is a two-story building. A retail store used to be located on the ground floor and is now vacant and Brown resides in the second-floor apartment.

The Pandays own Rainbow Liquors, and the property consists of two vacant lots and a third lot that includes a two-story building. The first floor contains the liquor store and the second floor is vacant.

Brown has been battling the city for more than 10 years to open the Lighthouse Mission Church at the Broadway location.

"It's OK," Brown said about the decision. "I anticipated this would be the way Judge Lawson was going to go.

"We have not lost anything yet. The setting of commissioners is just a formality," Brown said.

He said that his hope is to remain at the building he owns and that he will be permitted to participate in the renewal of Broadway.

"It is beyond reason that Judge Lawson would continue to allow property owners to suffer under Long Branch's evidence of 'area in need of redevelopment' as far back as 1996.

"Many of the very properties, now boarded up by Broadway Arts Center, had been rehabilitated post the city's findings of 1996."

He continued, "Once Broadway Arts was granted development rights, they began intimidating property owners to sell. Once they acquired, they ended the economic progress of the independent developers and property owners by evicting everyone and then boarding these properties up."

Plans for the downtown Broadway zone call for BAC to develop the Broadway corridor, which is the first 9 acres of the entire Broadway redevelopment zone. The corridor extends two blocks from Second Avenue to Memorial Avenue and from Union Avenue to the north and Belmont Avenue to the south.

Principals in BAC are the Katz and Siperstein families. Plans for the project call for the current properties to be razed and replaced with a mixed-use arts and theater district. The project will consist of commercial space, residential and live/work units, office space and parking garages.