Middletown Mayor Demands Resignation of Monmouth Conservation Foundation Director

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The Middletown property in dispute is a 3-acre, undeveloped, wooded area along Route 36 and Thompson Avenue.

By Sunayana Prabhu

MIDDLETOWN – A dispute over undeveloped land in Middletown Township has become a back-and-forth between the mayor and the director of a foundation tasked with preserving open space in the county.

Mayor Tony Perry sent a letter dated July 26 to Monmouth County Commissioner Director Thomas A. Arnone and the Monmouth Conservation Foundation (MCF) Board of Trustees demanding the immediate resignation of William Kastning, the organization’s executive director, citing “irresponsibility” and “failure” in conserving an open piece of land along Route 36 in Middletown. 

Perry said in an interview with The Two River Times Wednesday, Aug. 3, that “the Monmouth Conservation Foundation’s purpose as a nonprofit is to preserve land and they have become a developer – a quasi-developer – when you take a piece of property like this, that was donated to you, and you turn it into a concrete structure.”

The property in question is a nearly 3-acre wooded lot on Thompson Avenue that is bordered by Route 36 on its east – next to the Polar Bear Ice Cream shop. The parcel was donated to the Monmouth Conservation Foundation Sept. 28, 2020, from the estate of Joan K. Saunders. Perry said a “buyer for the property reached out to the township” and that the MCF was going to sell it to a developer to build a self-storage facility.

The property falls in the center of the 5-mile stretch of Middletown’s Route 36 from Palmer Avenue to Leonardville Road that has long been on the township’s revitalization agenda.

According to an article published in the June 19, 2019 edition of The Two River Times, the township’s planning board was investigating zoning and design ideas to create architectural continuity and economic vitality along the Route 36 corridor.

The land in question, however, is undeveloped, and Perry said the township would have to grant “a massive amount of variances” to permit the building of a self-storage facility. According to Perry there are wetlands situated on the parcel as well.

Denouncing MCF’s decision to sell the property, Perry said, “Why would anyone donate to the Monmouth Conservation Foundation when you are in essence defying and going directly against your mission?” 

“The Monmouth Conservation Foundation was founded in part by a great Middletown resident and philanthropist Judith Stanley Coleman, and I am extremely confident this was not her vision when she helped form it in 1977,” Perry said in his letter. “I have zero confidence in Executive Director, Bill Kastning.”

Kastning has not stayed silent on the matter, responding with his own letter to Arnone in which he highlights the “thousands of acres in Monmouth County, including many significant tracts of land in Middletown, that have been preserved” by the MCF. 

Some of the properties MCF has conserved, expanded or created in the Two River area include Hartshorne Woods Park in Highlands, Shrewsbury Riverfront Park in Sea Bright and Swimming River Park in Middletown, among many others. “During my 10-plus-year tenure, MCF participated in its largest preservation project ever – the preservation of over 1,200 acres formerly known as Princeton Nurseries (Upper Freehold),” Kastning said. “I firmly believe that, under my leadership MCF has remained true to its mission.”

Larry Fink, president of MCF, also commented on the growing dispute.

“When this property on State Highway 36 was brought to our attention a few years ago, there was no interest expressed to us from Middletown Township or Monmouth County to acquire this parcel as municipal or county parkland or as farmland,” Fink said in an email.

According to Perry, the land doesn’t qualify for a redevelopment plan. “The township has zero plans to redevelop that site,” he said. “What the township did do, was the township engaged in brief conversations with the Monmouth Conservation Foundation to have Monmouth Conservation Foundation donate that property to the township. The Monmouth Conservation Foundation decided that they could not do anything with that parcel, and they came to the township and the township offered that they would happily take it as a donation. And the Monmouth Conservation Foundation said ‘no.’ ”

Kastning mentioned that Middletown had an opportunity to pursue purchasing the property itself, but chose not to. “MCF did have informal discussions with representatives of Middletown Township about purchasing the property as open space. Those discussions did not culminate in the Township pursuing the preservation of this property.”

He added that the township also had an opportunity to preserve this property before MCF accepted it as a trade land donation, as the property had been listed for sale for development by the owners prior to their donation.

Fink said the MCF chose to apply a trade lands policy as a “next best option,” acquiring the land through donation, then using the proceeds from the sale of the property to fund new preservation projects.

Fink called trade lands “another tool in our land preservation toolkit.”

Kastning said revenue from the property’s sale will be used to preserve other natural resources in Monmouth County in accordance with the MCF’s Donated Land Policy and Guidelines for the Acceptance of Real Property and Disposition of Trade Land.

Trade lands is one of the many components of MCF’s work, which enables its mission. Used by many land trusts throughout the country, trade lands involve the donation of property to a land trust specifically to be sold with the proceeds going to the land trust, solely to support the mission to preserve open space.

“MCF’s trade lands policies are patterned after and in full accord with the national Land Trust’s Alliance’s guidelines,” Kastning said in his letter. “We understand there is value in green space and in a perfect world, we would preserve all of it, but MCF simply does not have the funds to do so, nor does it have the funds to cover the costs of land ownership, taxes, maintenance, insurance, and so forth.” 

Through the funds acquired from the sale of the property, Kastning said, “MCF can realize funds that will assist it in continuing its mission to preserve open space throughout Monmouth County.”

The article originally appeared in the August 4 – 10, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.