By Allison Perrine
FAIR HAVEN – A controversial plan to purchase property at 623 River Road for municipal use was nixed last week, as the borough council unanimously voted to drop the proposed ordinance.
Put forth at the July 13 meeting, council members voted to withdraw ordinance No. 2020-02 to purchase the property. The decision to do so was born out of the borough’s facilities committee, according to Mayor Ben Lucarelli.
“That whole concept plan was viewed through a lens that was certainly different or shattered by COVID,” Lucarelli told The Two River Times. “It won’t be what we could have had or what might have been, but we’ll make it work.”
The plan was to relocate the police station, borough hall and council chambers to the property, a 13,484-square-foot brick building on a 1.44-acre parcel. It is owned by Reiss Manufacturing, Inc. and has an assessed valuation of $2,788,500. It is occupied by several businesses, including Synergy Hot Yoga, Steve Scanlon Photography, Live Well Physical Therapy, Rosenberg and Fecci and more. The existing borough hall would then be converted into a library and community center.
But residents publicly took issue with the idea at multiple meetings about the plans. At a March 5 Q&A session presented by borough administrator Theresa Casagrande, nearly 100 residents turned out and argued that the estimated $20 million project was too expensive and said the council was not transparent about its intentions.
“There’s many, many options other than taking a good person’s building and displacing several businesses. The neighbors next door don’t like it, the businesses don’t like it,” said resident Diane Mevorach at the session. “It’s just a minute down the street. We’re only 1.6 square miles. We don’t need 13,000 square feet.”
At a Feb. 24 council meeting, Jen Portman, owner of Synergy Hot Yoga, explained that her business and others in the building at 623 River Road have been committed to the town and were “outraged” when they learned of the plans, according to borough minutes. She said that businesses are being “forced out” of the building and likely out of town. Noting that Synergy has members who used the space, she said she hoped the borough would reconsider the plans.
Despite not moving forward with the purchase of 623 River Road, Lucarelli said work is still needed for the police station and community center. Necessary upgrades have been discussed by the council for the past two years; other sites have been considered, like the former Sunoco station, but were not deemed suitable.
That’s why the borough is now looking at building new structures in the Fisk Street parking lot, which the borough already owns, he said. Fisk Street is already home to the borough police department building, which is deteriorating in certain parts, has mold issues and is not ADA-compliant.
“We looked at renovating it and that was a large number, and you still had an old building that really didn’t work – the same old wiring, the same plumbing,” said Lucarelli. The borough is now doing design studies to judge the square footage and see if everything will fit, he added.
The article originally appeared in the July 23 – 29, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
