By John Burton
OCEANPORT – What will happen with the Mazza property on Port Au Peck Avenue remains undetermined for now.
Attorney Robert Inglima Jr., representing 275 Port Au Peck Associates, LLC this week submitted a letter to the borough planning/zoning board, withdrawing his client’s application for the property which the board began hearing last month.
In his brief letter, Inglima asked that the board to dismiss the application without prejudice at this time, in expectation that the applicant’s principal, James Mazza, may be “refiling of same or a substantially similar application in the future.”
Mazza was seeking a use variance to eventually use the property to construct two single family homes on the front portion of the site, and establish what he called an equestrian center, with plans to build a 20,000-square-foot, 10-stall barn with an exercise area to board horses with more than 4 acres of the property.
The board on Tuesday evening voted to allow the applicant to withdraw the application without prejudice. According to board attorney Rick DeNoia, it is the applicant’s right to receive it and “should they want to come back to the board at another time there is no impediment,” given the board’s without prejudice designation.
But Board Chairman Christopher Widdis pointed out at Tuesday’s meeting that should the application return, “It would be treated as a new application,” starting from the beginning.
Inglima’s letter did not offer a reason for the withdrawal. But some who are familiar with the situation offered some insight, sensing Mazza felt the April 12th hearing, where the applicant’s environmental expert testified as to the contamination and proposed remediation of the nearly 6 ½-acre property didn’t go as well as Mazza had hoped; and Mazza is maybe looking for additional time to address the contamination and the requirements for the site put in place by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
Inglima, who was not in attendance at Tuesday’s hearing, did not immediately return a phone call to his Ho-Ho-Kus office on Wednesday.
Karen Long, a residential neighbor who is opposed to the proposal, suspected the application’s withdrawal concerns the extent of the work to clean up the contamination.
Long’s opposition’s is that the proposed use is too expansive for the location. “It’s just overkill,” she said. She had concerns what disturbing the location to remediate and develop the site would mean in the way of releasing contaminates into the area environment.
The property has long been vacant and has over the decades been used for discarded construction debris, including shingles containing asbestos, a prohibited carcinogenic.
This article was originally published in the May 12-19 edition of the Two River Times newspaper.
