City seeks to remove minister from home
City expected to argue Aug. 1 for possession of Broadway building
BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer

LONG BRANCH - The city is expected to go to court next month to seek an order to take possession of the Rev. Kevin Brown's Broadway building.

The city is scheduled to appear before state Superior Court Judge Lawrence M. Lawson on Aug. 1 to argue for possession of 162 Broadway and seek the right to remove Brown from the building he has called home for the past decade.

"The city has title of the building," City Attorney James Aaron said. "It owns the building and it has sent [Brown] the proper notifications.

"Now it is asking the judge to issue an order that allows the city to remove Rev. Brown," he said, adding, "He has no certificate of occupancy."

The Appellate Division recently ruled against Brown, denying him a stay of Lawson's decision that permitted the city to move forward with plans to condemn the Broadway building.

Brown said that the stay was denied at the appellate level because his attorney at the time, Michael S. Kasanoff, erred in filing the motion. Kasonoff had filed the appeal in the Appellate Division, but Brown said the appeal should have been filed directly with Lawson.

"They denied it because Kasanoff should have approached Lawson first, as I did," Brown said. "Even though the city is proceeding as if my motion was denied … they are making the same mistakes as Kasanoff."

Brown has recently retained attorney Peter H. Wegener to represent him.

Wegener has written a letter dated July 17 to Lawson seeking an adjournment of the city's motion for possession of the property set for Aug. 1.

Wegener sent the letter before leaving for a preplanned vacation to Europe and is not expected to return until July 28, one week prior to the court date scheduled for the possession order.

"This is to request an adjournment of that motion in order to prepare responsive papers," Wegener wrote in the letter.

Wegener also advised in the letter that he plans to file a cross motion for a stay.

"We understand that an earlier application to the Appellate Division was denied on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction because the Appellate Division had no knowledge of any application for a stay before Your Honor," he wrote. "We intend to file a cross motion for a stay."

Brown has been battling the city for more than 10 years in an attempt to establish a place of worship, the Lighthouse Mission, at the Broadway building. The Lighthouse Mission currently owns the building.

"Over the last decade, I have learned firsthand that by eminent domain alone, there is no right or wrong," Brown said. "There is no truth. There is no righteous justice.

"One sixty-two Broadway is the House of the Lord, and I do not think [the city] is in the position to evict God from his House," he said adding, "Evicting me is small potatoes. I want to see them evict the Holy Spirit."

Brown said he has no plans to give up his cause and pack up his belongings and leave.

"The church is fighting to overturn Lawson's judgment to grant title to Long Branch," Brown said. "The church is fighting to keep the building and redevelop it on its own.

"Our plan is to win," he said, "remain on lower Broadway, finish our plan of revitalization, which we began in 1994, and open 162 Broadway for worship and praise and ministry to the Long Branch community."

The city of Long Branch had filed on May 9 an affidavit of taking for Brown's property, which required that the appraised amount for the building of $450,000 be deposited with the court.

"The $450,000 is the last thing on our minds right now," Brown said. "The money the city discriminately determined to pay us could buy a third of what we have now.

"More importantly, we are not voluntary sellers," he said, adding, "The building is not for sale for any price."

Brown's property, along with Gopal and Kavita Panday's property on Broadway, Rainbow Liquors, were the last two pieces to the Broadway redevelopment puzzle, according to Aaron.

The city is expected to move forward with taking the Pandays' property this month, unless a settlement between the property owners and the city is reached before the time, Aaron said.

The city was granted approval in April by the Superior Court to proceed with the condemnation of the Panday and Brown properties.

The decision permitted the city to use eminent domain to obtain the two properties in the Broadway zone to make way for the Broadway Arts Center (BAC) mixeduse redevelopment project.

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.