Published in the Star-Ledger, Thursday, December 27, 2007
East Orange orders action to fix Connolly building
BY GUY STERLING
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
Citing continuing code violations and safety concerns at 150 S. Harrison St. in East Orange, city officials ordered the owners of the residential building to take immediate corrective action yesterday.
A team of inspectors from the city fire department, office of emergency management and division of property maintenance visited the building several times yesterday and gave its owners until 4 p.m. to take care of problems, said Regina Perry, city spokeswoman.
By the time the deadline approached, the officials found that some of the remedial work had started, she said. They intend to return today to see if anything else needs to be done.
"The inspectors are actively working with management" to resolve the difficulties, Perry said.
Raw sewage that backed up into the building caused some tenants to be evacuated from the building on Christmas, as well as water to be turned off. Inspectors also found the fire alarm wasn't working.
Water service was restored yesterday, allowing for the return of the tenants, city officials said.
According to East Orange, the owner of the building is Mayfair Hall LLC - D. Connolly of Plainfield. The company's phone number was not working yesterday.
Tenants said about half of the apartments in the 47-unit, five-story building are occupied. Perry said the city has taken the owners to court on numerous occasions over poor living conditions at the building and that the company had been fined for violations.
"It hasn't gotten to the point of evacuation, but we're going to monitor things and see what happens," Perry added.
This story not posted online; transcribed by DD.
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Published in the Star-Ledger, Wednesday, November 7, 2007
ESSEX BRIEFS
Bank blamed for delay in relocating business
EAST ORANGE: Nearly 1 1/2 years after a ceremonial ground- breaking was held at a city redevelopment site, developer Oliver Brown says he is still waiting for a new home for his business, Oveter's Construction Inc., to materialize.
About two dozen pieces of construction equipment -- mainly trucks, excavators and bulldozers -- dot the 5-acre site off Glenwood Avenue and Glenwood Place, but only an off-white trailer with a blue trim is housed on the site.
Bank financing is still needed to ensure the new home for the excavation, paving, demolition, site work, concrete and masonry firm business, Brown said yesterday.
"I'm waiting on the bank (financing), Brown said.
Brown said he was hopeful that financing would be in place within the next couple of months.
Brown's long-delayed dream -- outlined during an August 2006 ceremonial groundbreaking at the site -- calls for constructing a 9,000-square-foot, two-story office building, a 4,000-square-foot garage with four bays, and a concrete mixing plant.
Back in 2006, Brown predicted he would be able to relocate his existing businesses from Springdale Avenue in East Orange and Monroe Avenue in Plainfield to the new location by the end of last year.
The site originally was the business home of the N.J. Cement Stone Co., from 1911 to 1951; and then the Multiplex Concrete Co. Inc., from 1951 until the 1990s.
When the former owners stopped paying taxes and liens reached $2.3 million, the city foreclosed on the property.
It eventually turned into an illegal dumping site with hundreds of rubber tires and assorted debris before Brown took over and began cleaning it up.
Online story here.
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Published in the Star-Ledger, July 24, 2007
Question: What is green dry cleaning?
By VINNEE TONG
The Associated Press
(AP) — Q. What is green dry cleaning and how can I find a cleaner near me that does it?
A. Dry cleaners looking for a chemical-free method have learned something from the domestic goddesses who run for the club soda to prevent a stain from setting. Simply put, carbonated water is related to what many are calling the most environmentally friendly way to get your clothes dry cleaned.
Dry cleaning involves washing clothes in liquids other than water. As it's done at 90 percent of cleaners in the U.S., it uses a liquid form of perchloroethylene (PERC), a chemical believed to cause cancer. As it evaporates, PERC can contaminate nearby air and groundwater, and reportedly can be absorbed through the skin from soil or from dry-cleaned clothes. California is phasing out its use by 2011.
A far less common technology, CO2 cleaning, uses liquid carbon dioxide to clean clothes instead of PERC. A handful of entrepreneurs have found a way to profitably operate dry cleaners using CO2, but the higher cost for the machines has prevented any wider adoption of it. (A CO2 machine costs about $100,000, roughly twice as much as a PERC machine, which can cost $45,000 to $50,000.)
Supporters of CO2 cleaning see strong growth as soon as consumers are made more aware of its benefits.
"I think it really is ready to explode," said Howard Guy, President of Linde Cleaning U.S. LLC. The company has the rights to franchise and license the Hangers brand name, which is used by 15 of the roughly 45 CO2 cleaners operating in the U.S. today. Linde Cleaning is owned by the German conglomerate Linde AG, which also operates CO2 cleaners in Europe under the Fred Butler brand.
Josh Dorfman, author of "The Lazy Environmentalist" and host of his own radio show, said CO2 dry cleaning leaves clothes cleaner and without the smell that sometimes comes on chemically-cleaned clothes. The rising consumer demand for more environmentally friendly practices makes potential growth of CO2 cleaning a more viable near-term prospect, Dorfman said.
"People actually go out of their way once they realize there's an option," said David Kistner, co-founder of Green Apple Cleaners in New York. "We have grown tremendously in a very short period of time and it's all been organic and word of mouth."
Kistner started his business six years ago after reading about the potential health risks of PERC while his wife was pregnant with twins. The Lodi, N.J.-based business — which delivers clothes to doorman buildings and corporate clients in Manhattan — has a waiting list 500 long.
Independent green dry cleaners including those who license the Hangers name can be found in pockets around the country. Many are listed on the Web site http://www.findco2.com/.
Another method touted as more environmentally friendly than PERC is a silicone-based solvent called Green Earth. However, Green Earth also has come under scrutiny as a possible carcinogen, a claim that could harm its prospects among consumers concerned about their health.
Another common but less prevalent method, hydrocarbon, is the modern-day version of dry cleaning as it was discovered in the 1880's, when someone in France accidentally spilled turpentine on a stained tablecloth.
Hydrocarbon uses petroleum-based solvents and is sometimes marketed as being "organic." That segment holds about 7 percent of the U.S. dry cleaning market, Guy said.
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On the Net:
CO2 dry cleaners in the U.S.: http://www.findco2.com/
Green Earth cleaners: http://www.greenearthcleaning.com/consumer/rostersearch.asp
The Lazy Environmentalist: http://www.lazyenvironmentalist.com/
Link to online story. Archived here.
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Published in the [Paterson] Herald News, Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Court balks at restaurant rule
By HEATHER HADDON and JOHN PETRICK
HERALD NEWS
PATERSON -- Grace Kuz sympathizes with the late-night eatery owners who helped successfully overturn a city ordinance requiring they close after midnight. But the Superior Court's decision on Monday does not make her feel safe.
"I really think it's a big slap in the face of the city of Paterson," said Kuz, 50. "The judge himself should read in the paper and see all we are going through."
Three fatal shootings took place near late-night chicken joints in Paterson this year, including two deaths this past weekend and the murder of off-duty police officer Tyron D. Franklin in January. After Franklin's death, the City Council adopted an ordinance requiring that restaurants with fewer than 10 tables close at 12:01 a.m. and not open again until 5 a.m. Six Paterson storeowners sued the city, arguing that it took away prime business hours.
Superior Court Assignment Judge Robert Passero acknowledged the restaurants' link to the recent killings, which both took place on Rosa Parks Boulevard between Godwin and Hamilton avenues where a New York Fried Chicken is located. But the ordinance as written was vague, unenforceable and "irrational," Passero stated.
"Judicial decisions must be premised on sound legal principles, not an emotional response to a tragedy," he said in his ruling.
Mayor Jose "Joey" Torres said he will work with the council to draft a clearer statute. The new law will establish size guidelines based on a restaurant's square footage, not tables.
Figuring out which establishments were primarily takeout joints presented much of the confusion in the overturned ordinance, police said during the three-day trial last week.
"It's a learning curve for us," said Torres, who hopes the city will pass new legislation in about a month.
In the meantime, Torres promised to beef up police presence around hangout hotspots. Michele Tobias, a cousin of James Felton, 30, who was slain on Saturday morning, said that the 4th Ward needs a 24-hour foot patrol.
"I pray that no more of our children will be shot," Tobias said.
The midnight shuttering yielded about a dozen tickets -- quite a few, considering Paterson is home to fewer than 10 late-night small eateries, according to Council President Ken Morris Jr. The city stopped enforcing the rule in March after the storeowners filed suit.
One of the storeowners received a fine of up to $1,000 and a possible 90 days in jail for disobeying the ordinance, according to Richard Blender, a Paterson lawyer who represented the storeowners.
"Many of them would have to close," said Blender on Monday afternoon. "The fact that the city wanted to deprive its citizens and dictate when they could eat was wrong."
Paterson's ordinance copied one in Passaic. Since it began in 2003, Abdul Ghani, owner of Monroe Fried Chicken, said his business fell by 40 percent. He had to cut the staff by half.
"We lost a lot of money from it," said Ghani, 35. "Everybody complained. They knocked on the door saying that they were hungry."
Passaic amended its law after it was adopted, and Torres said that Paterson will examine those additions. But striking the law entirely is not an option, according to Morris. "The ordinance is not going away," he said.
Kuz said she hopes not. Her family lost a lot of sleep over the rowdiness coming from those who congregated outside New York Fried Chicken, which is next to where she lived. Loiterers broke her new $250 air conditioner by tossing objects at her windows, she said. In 2004, she ended up abandoning her home of five years and moving elsewhere.
"We're not asking for the stores to be closed," Kuz said. "We're just asking for shorter hours."
Kuz and Tobias plan to address the issue during a council meeting tonight. Additionally, 4th Ward residents will host a community forum on crime on Thursday.
Reach Heather Haddon at 973-569-7121 or haddon@northjersey.com
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Published in the [Paterson] Herald News, Monday, May 21, 2007
Residents demand that takeout chicken store close
By DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
HERALD NEWS
PATERSON -- Relatives of two of the victims shot in recent days in or near a takeout chicken restaurant on Rosa Parks Boulevard called on the city Sunday to close the store.
Carrying a white poster board on which she had scrawled "shut this chicken store down," Michele Tobias said the restaurant was a "hangout" that attracted the wrong crowd and made the neighborhood unsafe. Tobias' cousin James Felton, 30, was shot and killed inside New York Fried Chicken at 241 Rosa Parks Blvd. early Saturday morning.
"We want them closed. We don't want early shutdown," said Tobias referring to an early-closing ordinance targeting small takeout restaurants.
The protest came a day before Superior Court Assignment Judge Robert Passero is expected to rule on the legality of that ordinance, which requires restaurants with fewer than 10 tables to close at 12:01 a.m. The ordinance was prompted by the death of Officer Tyron D. Franklin in January. Franklin was shot and killed by an alleged robber as he waited for his food at a Broadway take-out restaurant."If the chicken stores weren't open, we wouldn't have all those killings going on," said Sherian Seegers, whose nephew Sherby Tyson, 24, was shot and killed near Rosa Parks Boulevard and Hamilton Avenue on May 18. "They wouldn't have anywhere to be running in and out of.
"Too many kids are dying in Paterson today," Seegers said. "Somebody has to stand up and take a stand. It's just too much."
Tobias and some of the 10 or so residents who showed up to urge patrons not to buy chicken from the restaurant, said on any given night one could find dozens of people loitering in front of the restaurant.
"It's noise, it's cussing, it's drinking, it's fighting, it's terrible," Tobias said, describing the scene. "Don't let the weather get to 80 or 90 degrees -- you'd think it's a pack of ants."
The owner of New York Fried Chicken could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Nancy Grier, who said she was a community activist, said the restaurant should have shut down the day after the shooting. "Out of respect for the family, I think they should close down today," Grier said.
Not everyone who attended the protest wanted the restaurant to close permanently. Midnight would be an appropriate time to shut the door, said Grace Kuz, a neighborhood resident.
"It's not that they killed him," Kuz said in reference to the owners of New York Fried Chicken. "But if they had no way to hang out, then it would be safer."
Lt. Don Giaquinto of the Paterson Police Department, said Sunday that no arrests have been made in the two cases, and the police do not have any suspects.
Reach Denisa R. Superville at 973-569-7135 or superville@northjersey.com
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Published in the Star-Ledger, Monday, July 9, 2007
Downtown Montclair's guardian angel earns his wings
Retail director strives to maintain 'funky but chic' image
BY PHILIP READ
Star-Ledger Staff
He has reigned over the "Montclair Mile," eyeballing retail vacancies and spiking rents. He has waved petitions before officials in defiance of customer-unfriendly parking meter rates and spearheaded a drive to blacklist such undesirables as drive-through banks.
He has watched the demise of such iconic stores as The Soda Pop Shop, where piped-in music of Herman's Hermits went hand-in-hand with the sundaes, and Over The Rainbow, where a Moses-like proprietor once served up an "All You Can Eat" crockpot buffet for $3.99 to those with scant resources.
Tom Lonergan, the tall guy with the ever-present smile and the July 8, 2002, start date, is five years into his role as overseer of Montclair's main retail drag, ranked as a "funky but chic" downtown and one of New Jersey's best.
"We have so much to be proud of yet so much to accomplish," said Lonergan, a 35-year-old who was raised in the Bronx and New York's Rockland County and ultimately picked up his master's degree in geography and urban studies at Temple University.
Here, along a busy stretch of Bloomfield Avenue also known as "restaurant row," Lonergan is the de facto mayor, the ambassador with a welcoming handshake, the guy who can pull a few crumbled-up ones and fives out of his blue jeans' pocket.
"Come in, Jon," he tells the staffer on his cell phone before offering an explanation about a street-cleaning vacuum. "The 'Green Machine' operator needs gas money."
His life as executive director of the Montclair Center Business Improvement District is evident in the refitted industrial space that is his office on North Willow Street with banners proclaiming "Montclair Center: You've Arrived," green bike racks to be installed this month and stacks of newly arrived thigh-deep planters.
Outside, he waltzes up the avenue while eyeing colorful flowers.
"These planters are no joke," he said, "watching them like babies."
Outside the Diva Lounge, a night spot, he pauses ever so briefly to touch the blooms.
"Our most troublesome planter, because it sits next to you know where."
To be sure, Lonergan is diplomatic as the man-everybody-knows along the Montclair Mile, a catchy label that is itself a marketing coup for a one-time bland shopping corridor that is actually longer than a mile.
He earned his downtown stripes as director of Paterson's special-improvement district a decade ago and then a stint in Newark's Ironbound. Today, he oversees what by New Jersey standards is a mid-sized business-improvement district, or BID, with an annual budget of $370,000 and a staff -- besides himself -- of two full-timers and two part-timers largely occupied with landscaping and street maintenance.
"We really couldn't have a better BID director," said Erik Maran, who chairs the district's 21-member board and stepped out of his offices at Smith Maran Architects to see Lonergan. "He's very involved. He's on the street."
Lonergan has had his share of street battles.
For one, he led the charge on outlawing the sale by merchants of "loosies," or single cigarettes, largely because they were contributing to loitering by hordes of teenagers, he said.
Then, when a video store's racy window shelves included such adult games as "The Erogenous Zone," he championed a prohibition, made law by Montclair's council, to prohibit the provocative displays.
"Cleaning house before inviting the guests," he said of the strategy.
If the strip is going higher-end, Lonergan isn't.
Just last week, Lonergan -- wearing blue jeans, a jacket and sport shirt with sunglasses perched atop his head -- was toting a paper cup labeled "Lotta Java." It wasn't from the Starbucks up the street but the corner gas station.
"Shell," he says with a broad smile. "They have great coffee."
He was standing by a banner-draped stage in the plaza at Montclair's landmark "six corners," where six streets converge on the strip's epicenter.
On Sundays, the BID success story is the locale of free summer concerts sponsored this year by The Siena, a nearly complete luxury condo development whose banner proclaims, "We've put the world within walking distance."
In the span of an hour one weekday morning, Lonergan has taken calls on everything from a band wanting a shot at the new concert venue ("I need a CD," he tells the caller) to someone in vain pursuit of reaching the closed retro ice cream parlor.
"We're like the downtown clearinghouse," he says.
Lonergan, as the point man for the district, keeps his own retail version of an obituary page: "Copacabanas," "Toys in The Attic," as well as "The Soda Pop Shop" and "Over the Rainbow." All were homegrown shops.
Some, he said, departed because of lease rates that can reach as high as $50 a square foot. Have they eased? he is asked.
"A little bit," he said hesitantly. "A little bit."
When The Soda Pop Shop closed in February, proprietor Bobby Restaino was lamenting the avenue's transformation. His main beef had been what he characterized as aggressive enforcement of parking meters and the resulting heap of tickets.
"Very corporate. It's losing its charm. There's something wrong in Gotham as they say," said Restaino, invoking the fictional metropolis of Batman.
Lonergan is saddened but pragmatic.
"There were some losses along the way that we regret," he said, "but then again, there are so many reasons why these people left."
At the Church Street Cafè, owner Cheryl Spinelli said Lonergan has a difficult balancing act as the district's point man.
"It's almost a one-man show. He has to make a lot of things happen without a lot of volunteers," she said.
For now, he's focused on the BID's goals as spelled out in a streetscape initiative penned by Montclair native Andy Attinson at Street-Works LLC. Its 10 goals, he said, are the most important of his tenure.
"It's like our 10 commandments," he said.
One now on his radar is a makeover of South Park Street, home to a newer arrival in Urban Outfitters, the downtown's first national retailer in memory, as well as such standbys as Leone's Kitchen, known for its brick-oven pizza.
The bold, original vision calls for the creation of a pedestrian plaza along the street, which now has diagonal parking and sits directly in front of the towering Siena. It appeals to Lonergan. There's also an alternative plan that retains some on-street parking.
"The devil is in the details, and there's a lot left to work out," Lonergan said.
He's also pursuing an initiative to make what's called blade signs, which project from buildings on poles, and make retail banners permissible in the downtown, something he said Montclair's council might act on this summer.
"We think it gives our business mix the opportunity to market themselves in distinctive and stylish ways," he said.
His attention to detail extends to the arrival of three NJ Transit bus shelters with a design selected by the BID.
"Standard and simple but tasteful," he said. But during the installation -- now signed-off on -- there was a scare that something less desirable was in the offing for the shelters' rooftops.
"We actually think we saw the plastic bubble," he said.
Philip Read may be reached at pread@starledger.com or (973) 392-1851.
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