Spoiling for a fight
The next chapter of the Holuba Soap Factory saga is about to be written. Back in January, the property's owners seemed to have lost a key supporter when Council member Elnatan Rudolph bent to public pressure and released a statement declaring his opposition to the proposed residential development adjacent to Herrick Park. In the text of his statement, Rudolph suggested that "the owners of the property go back to the drawing board." Well, that they did, and neither residents nor local officials are going to like what they came up with. Former Teaneck public information officer Stan Steinreich, who ended his working relationship with the town late last year somewhat acrimoniously, introduced the owners' latest idea for the property in his role as their public spokesman. Rather than a somewhat dense condominium development that would have required rezoning of their land, the owners plan a major industrial expansion on the site.
If you did not like our last idea, wait until you see what we're going to put in your backyard as an alternative, the Holubas seem to be saying. You think a few apartments and a bit of passenger car traffic would ruin the quality of life in your quiet suburb? How would you like to live and play beside a large chemical plant and a constant stream of tractor-trailers carrying hazardous materials coming and going all day?
Prediction: this rather transparent bullying attempt, a high stakes bluff if I have ever seen one, will backfire. The endgame in this ongoing public battle over the property was always going to be a face-saving compromise in which the owners would be able to build a slightly less profitable project than they had originally envisioned. The segment of the population (and municipal government) that is friendly to development was quietly supportive of the rights of the owners to build a reasonable development that would permit them to extract a good portion of the value from their property. Once the initial furor of the vocal neighborhood protest died down, the issue would have been quietly resolved in a mutually agreeable way that would be framed as a 'win-win' by Mayor Katz.
Now that the owners have forced the issue by resorting to threats, this outcome is far less certain. Telling the residents of an environmentally conscious, prosperous suburb with a lot of young families that you intend to place a large "chemical-industrial site" in their midst if you do not get your way is a good way to forfeit all of your public support, property rights be damned. The town will now face even greater pressure from residents to pull out all the stops in contesting the plans for the site. The Holubas appear to have guaranteed themselves a lengthy and expensive court battle by choosing the path of confrontation. Perhaps they should head "back to the drawing board" again.
posted by Teaneck Blog @ 1:04 PM
26 Comments:
Do they need any approvals from the township or are they empowered by the current zoning to do what they propose?
They claim it's all within the bounds of permitted use but it is unlikely that they could truly undertake such a large project without requiring any cooperation from local government (if you really believe they intend to do so).
Teaneck Blog - I think you are dead on. This was a foolish move on their part. If they had played the game, they would've ended up with a decently profitable project. Now, who knows when and how they will be permitted to develop the site.
I'm no expert, but it would seem to me that the use that they are proposing involving the transportation of caustic chemicals while permittable under current zoning but may violate enviornmental standards.
Having attended a number of the Planning Board meetings on the Master Plan in which the Holuba residential proposal was addressed, the rather clear conclusion I came to was that the sites zoning was grandfathered for use in light industrial purposes. As such, the property could be used as a factory, but that there could be no expansion whatsoever above and beyond the existing footprint of the current structure.
I find the usual Planning Board / Board of Adjustment game -- ask for much more than you'd ever expect to get, and by "giving up" and "compromising" ending up with more than you're probably entitled to -- to be inappropriate and distasteful.
Holuba could have played that game and received approval for a compromise that would have allowed for a mix of single family and townhouse development, providing them with an adequate rate of return.
Despite the fact that decontamination costs were cited as the justification for a massively intensive scale of development, Holuba refused to provide any information on the nature and scope of the pollution on the site or any estimate of the projected costs. The Planning Board justifiably refused to yield to a plea out of the "I just killed my parents, have mercy on a poor orphan" approach to negotiations.
Rather than trying to step back from the precipice and try to find an acceptable compromise, Holuba has now tried to push all in, betting all of its chips that an industrial proposal, emphasizing the noxious chemicals to be used, the expansion of the building and the tractor-trailers coming in and out of the site to all of the area's highways will have the Planning Board folding their hand.
It won't work; this bluff should be called. Again, my understanding is that the site CANNOT be expanded for an industrial use. Modern standards and regulations at the state and federal level will almost certainly place severe restrictions on the types of products that could be manufactured on the site. The industrial proposal just announced is dead on arrival.
It's time that Holuba moved away from the no-limit Texas Hold' Em table they've seated themselves at and started playing a game they might have a chance of winning. Perhaps "Fish".
Alan Sohn
Alan -
Under the current zoning, they can expand. If the council voted to rezone the site to residential as recommended in the Master Plan, the existing use would be grandfathered, and they could expand only by obtaining a variance from the Board of Adjustment.
While I believe that this is just a negotiating tactic, one issue the council needs to address is the contamination of the site. If they do expand, there is the potential for that contamination (whatever it may be) to spread. The town can ask the state to step in and request an investigation of the contamination, and it should certainly do so. This is exactly why Chuck Powers tried to introduce language requiring this into the Master Plan.
Lets thank the TCCP and their members for a job well done.
Now Alan is Brett (or maybe his brother Bart) Maverick playing poker based on his reading of the cards and assuring us all that this is a bluff. I seem to recall the Mavericks always hightailing it out of town when the game didn't work out (which was every episode).
I'm not a participant in this game. By walking around the table and looking at the player's hands, I can very clearly see that Holuba has nothing. It's their choice whether to try to make a deal or just fold their hand.
Alan Sohn
Bravo Alan
Bring back the old bowling alley...
Holuba is another bottom feeding developer who's actions prove the opposition was correct: he has little regard for Teaneck or the surrounding communities.
The grandstand presentation to the planning board suggesting his condo and townhouses would be "green" and "sustainable" was crap. His offerings to update Herrick Park was equally lame and insincere.
Another money hungry slut giving development a bad name.
The Holuba's are dead on correct. In a free society reliance on the law is the best defense against a foolish neighborhood's resistance to reasonable change. The Holuba site is zoned for industrial uses and that is what the neighbors will get. That is also what they deserve to get since they were so blinded by the proposed 28 unit per acre project that they persuaded our feckless leaders to kill it. The truth is simple; the NIMBY group wants Holuba to take less for his property than it is really worth. Why should he accept this deal? The answer is he should not. He should do exactly what he is doing and in the end Teaneck as a whole will be the beneficiary of his actions. Remember folks, where real property is concerned value is created by building not by stopping building.
As I recall, the community did not stop Holuba from building. The master plan recommends rezoning the site to low-density residential. Consideration of an owner's profit plays no part in zoning decisions; Holuba's attempt to recoup whatever the mystery cost of cleanup through higher density was not a valid reason for the Planning Board to accept that density. Holuba can still build residential, and Holuba can still make money on the site. The claim that Holuba is stopped from building is simply false.
As for the neighborhood "getting what they deserve," it's nice to know that Teaneck is one big community in which people care about nieghborhoods other than their own more than some "right" for Holuba to make as much money as possible.
When the Holubas presented their plan at the original public meeting, several of the neighbors publicly stated that instead of a residential development they would rather just have an industrial site, as zoned. In addition, one of the neighbors who lives within a block of the site, recently stated that they are "wary of any development in a residential area".
I guess that spells it out for the property owner.
That resident was me, and I was, in fact, misquoted or misunderstood. What I said, and certainly what I meant, was that I would be wary of any new INDUSTRIAL development in a residential area. Glad to know that you are reading "The County Seat" from cover to cover.
As for neighborhood residents and the desire for residential or industrial, what I would like is something that can reasonably co-exist with the surrounding neighborhood and its existing infrastructure. That might mean a low-intensity industrial use (self storage, perhaps, or medical records) or a lower-density residential use that would not by law require 395 parking spaces.
Dara said...
Glad to know that you are reading "The County Seat" from cover to cover.
Glad to know that you are speaking clearly to "The County Seat" and making sure they understand what you are saying.
It's a shame the opposition to Holuba was so inarticulate. They never really had a valid argument against development other than saying it was to dense and not in my neighborhood. The argument was flawed and exclusionary.
It's exclusionary because it won't allow a new spot zone to be created? What else do you think is exclusionary in Teaneck?
It's exclusionary because it won't allow a new spot zone to be created? What else do you think is exclusionary in Teaneck?
The opposition objected because it does not want new residents in Teaneck to have different housing options other than outdated inefficient single family homes. That's exclutionary and elitist.
Multi-family housing - fine; multi-family housing shoehorned into a trackside property without adequate emergency access, egress, setbacks -- not fine.
Multi-family housing - fine; multi-family housing shoehorned into a trackside property without adequate emergency access, egress, setbacks -- not fine.
There was never discussion concerning emergency access, egress or setbacks. The project was only an idea--a concept. To say that the project would not meet safety standards and township code is just untruthful.
The opposition to this project was against and idea. So much for an open minded community.
Let's see - the residents who were opposed to Holuba's "concept" were not open-minded because they were opposed to an "idea." Of course, this particular "idea" included a request to the Planning Board to rezone a 7-acre property to multi-family residential at 28 units/acre. The building plans and elevations as presented might have been a "concept" in that it might not have been submitted to the Board of Adjustment in that exact fashion (although it had been), but the zoning request before the Planning Board was not an "idea." If it had been approved and recommended to the Council for an ordinance change, it would have been much more than an "idea." And that is what people were opposed to - a zoning change which would have drastically changed the character of the neighborhood.
Oh - and by the way, there certainly was discussion of emergency access and egress - by the police and fire departments when they reviewed the "concept." Their reports were available in the buildings department, and their representatives spoke at the hearings in 2006.
And that is what people were opposed to - a zoning change which would have drastically changed the character of the neighborhood.
The idea may have been poorly presented but "drastically changed the character of the neighborhood" is really open for discussion.
Does that mean that the new structures will not have aluminum siding and vinyl siding? Or, the age and race of the new residents would not be in "character"?
All in all the opposition did a slight job at defining it's character.
BEWARE:
character is nimby code word for race.
Very nice try at inserting race as a point of discussion, but inflammatory and completely inappropriate. "Inarticulate Holuba Opponent" summarized concerns raised at the various hearings well. Any opposition to the so-called concept was raising valid questions about a project vastly more dense than almost other residential development in town except age-restricted senior housing.
Please explain why we should rubber-stamp a project that requested entirely new zoning and has a proposed density of 28 units per acre, when the density of the neighborhood surrounding it has 8 units per acre. And before you tell me it's going to lower my taxes, or your taxes, I'd like to offer you a bridge I have for sale.
BTW, a 5-story building that's about 200' long with vinyl siding doesn't really look or feel a lot like the houses on Herrick or Palmer or Griggs or Johnson or Van Buren or Pine or any of the other nearby streets.
I wrote as "inarticulate holuba opponent." I have been called many things during the course of my involvement with the Holuba application and my opposition to their proposal to build high-density multifamily housing adjacent to Herrick Park. I have been called a greenie and a tree hugger, anti-development and anti-"anything being built there." But I have never been called a racist before.
I have stood before the Town Council at a workshop meeting, given my name and address, and expressed my concern about the racist anonymous comments expressed on this blog and on Teanecktalk, and how they damage the public discourse in this town. I have asked the Council to condemn this, because I believe that by not speaking out about discourse such as this, one condones it.
I ask the anonymous poster who accused me of being a racist to identify him or herself and accuse me to my face.
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