One Year After Horrific Boardwalk Fire, Seaside Mayors Looking For Fresh Start
When Robert Matthies of Seaside Park and William Akers of Seaside Heights look toward the southern end of the boardwalk that straddles their towns, the two mayors see a blank canvas.
In the year since a fire destroyed nearly 60 buildings and an amusement pier along a three-block stretch of boardwalk, few businesses have returned. But rather than lament what was, the mayors and several business owners are embracing what they say is a rare chance to build anew on old memories.
“For me, it’s a sense of excitement, newness,” Akers said. “You don’t get these kinds of opportunities. These are life-changing opportunities.”
The boardwalk, a hodgepodge of decades of kitsch, is going through a complete overhaul. After Hurricane Sandy destroyed most of the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, the town had a new wooden promenade by last summer.
Akers said the community took advantage of the need to rebuild to install more attractive light poles and other fixtures and upgrade the façade of the time-worn lifeguard headquarters.
Months later, after the repairs were completed, part of the boardwalk was destroyed again, this time by a fast-moving blaze on Sept. 12 that investigators concluded was caused by faulty electrical wiring.
The blaze, fueled by 30-mile-an-hour winds and an abundance of flammable material, turned into a three-block-long inferno that destroyed nearly everything in its path.
Akers and Matthies remember Gov. Chris Christie touring the ruins the night of the fire. “He was telling us what was going to happen and the time frame it was going to happen in,” Akers said.
Within a week, Christie announced he was making $15 million in federal Sandy aid available to the boardwalk businesses, a move that angered some homeowners and housing advocates who said the money should not have been diverted. The state also pledged to shoulder the cost of demolition and debris removal after the fire.
Approaching the anniversary of the blaze, Christie defended his decision and said he would not have done things differently. He said home values would have plummeted if the boardwalk businesses had disappeared.
“The overwhelming amount of money went to homeowners — I mean by a 3- or 4-to-1 margin,” he said. “So I have absolutely no second thoughts about doing that, and I know that we wouldn’t have the recovery going on as quickly as we have it without it.”
Virginia Pellerin, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, which administers the Sandy business grants and loans, said that so far four businesses in Seaside Park that had been whiplashed by the storm and then the fire have been approved to receive a total of $445,000.
The towns awarded an emergency cleanup contract to Eagle Paving, owned by Bill Major, for $4.7 million. Of the $5 million in federal disaster recovery funds the state set aside for cleanup after the fire, it used $2.8 million after the towns met their insurance obligations, Pellerin said. Mike Loundy, director of community improvements for Seaside Heights, said the town knew it had to overcome the perception that it wasn’t open for business after the one-two punch of Sandy and the fire.
He said that because rentals were slow, local officials decided to target day-trippers in the town’s ad campaigns.
“The fire was a punch in our gut that absolutely nobody saw coming,” he said. “It was difficult enough to have people understand we were rebuilt after Sandy.”
Both Akers and Matthies said their beach revenue actually increased this summer over 2012, the year Sandy struck, leavings billions of dollars in damages in its wake.
The fire consumed only one block of the boardwalk in Seaside Heights but ash was sent flying as far as six blocks north, igniting several more blocks of buildings.
A first attempt at a firebreak did nothing because the gap wasn’t wide enough to halt the fire’s progress, Akers said. It took a second, wider firebreak, cut into the boardwalk at Dupont Avenue, to stop the flames from igniting more of the wooden promenade.
Akers said he watched the fire creep toward him as he stood on the boardwalk a block north of Dupont.
“You’re looking at all that beautiful boardwalk that you just built being crushed right in front of you and you were never so grateful to see it happen,” Akers said.
For its part, Seaside Heights permitted a row of businesses, situated in a strip of plywood booths between Dupont and Lincoln avenues, to operate for a year while owners develop plans for more permanent structures and to recoup some of their financial losses.
“We figured it was better to have something rather than nothing,” Akers said. “We knew people were going to come down here and were going to expect some things, see progress, see movement, and we thought temporary was the best way to do it at this point.”
In all, nearly 60 businesses in those three blocks — two in Seaside Park and one in Seaside Heights — were destroyed. The only oceanfront buildings left standing were in Seaside Park, the Saw Mill Café and an adjacent arcade.
Matthies, the Seaside Park mayor, said those two buildings were saved by the Saw Mill’s exterior sprinkler system.
The most glaring evidence of the fire is the empty stretch of beach in Seaside Park where the Fun Town Pier — damaged extensively by Sandy — stood.
Major, who also owns the pier, had applied to the state Department of Environmental Protection for a permit to extend the pier 300 feet east. But his grandson, Greg McLaughlin, said the family was considering several options, including selling, after the second disaster.
“It’s bittersweet because we obviously want to be back in business and do what we love to do,” McLaughlin said.
He said there have been suggestions to rebuild the amusement pier, build a beach bar, or turn it into a water park or concert hall.
Matthies said he doesn’t know what the boardwalk will look like by next Memorial Day,
“When you look out, we’re missing a pier,” he said. “We’re missing an amusement area, we’re missing a number of different ... concessions, eateries, games of chance, retail stores, Exactly how they’re going to be put back together and in what configuration is uncertain.” -NJ
7 Critical Cases The N.J. Supreme Court Will Decide This Year
Medicaid benefits for immigrants. Whether leaving a toddler unattended in a car for 10 minutes is child abuse. Who should pay if you slip on grease at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
These topics are among the dozens of cases the New Jersey Supreme Court is likely to hear in the coming months after beginning a new one-year term last week.
It comes as an ongoing feud over the makeup of the court begins to settle. After years of warring with Democratic lawmakers over court appointments, Republican Gov. Chris Christie and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) struck a deal giving tenure for the next 16 years to Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. As part of the agreement, Justice Lee Solomon, a Republican judge, was elevated to one of the court's two vacancies.
The Supreme Court typically takes up about 80 to 100 cases a year. Here is a look at seven of the most critical ones:
1. Medicaid benefits for immigrants
In a case that could affect thousands of legal immigrants across New Jersey, the court is set to consider whether the state broke the law by making changes to a Medicaid program.
In 2011, a group of immigrants filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the state Legislature violated the state and federal constitutions by allowing the state Department of Human Services to alter requirements the NJ Family Care program — which provides Medicaid coverage to low-income residents — in a way that excluded legal immigrants who had been in the country for fewer than five years. The move denied coverage to about 8,000 immigrants. The state said the change was needed to cut costs as policymakers dealt with a budget crisis.
A state appeals court ruled last year that the state did not violate the law and that it had the authority to decide how to save money within the program.
2. Police in Camden
This case could throw a wrench into the recently established Camden County police force, which took over law enforcement in the crime-ridden city of Camden — a move championed by both Christie and Sweeney in their effort to revitalized the troubled city.
In 2012, a group of Camden residents submitted a petition to block the city from disbanding its police department to make way for the county force. It called for the city to put the move on the ballot so residents could vote.
Mayor Dana Redd, a Democrat, sued to stop the petition process later that year. In a ruling that June, Superior Court Judge Faustino Fernandez-Vina — now an associate justice on the Supreme Court — ruled that the petition "created an undue restraint" on future city governments. But a state appellate court sent the case back to the trial court level last year.
3. Whistleblower protection
The court will hear two cases about whistleblower protections for public and private employees — both of which could lead to far-reaching rulings.
In one, the court will consider whether a defendant can be indicted for theft and official misconduct for taking confidential documents from her public employer.
Ivonne Saavedra, a clerk for the North Bergen school board, is seeking to dismiss a 2012 indictment that charges her with stealing township documents. Saavedra claimed she was a victim of gender, ethnic, and sex discrimination and said she took the files to support her claims in a discrimination lawsuit she filed against the board in 2009.
Two courts have upheld her indictment.
In the other case, the court will consider whether "watchdog employees" — those who monitor whether an employer complies with laws and regulations — can seek whistleblower protection under state law.
Joel Lippman claims that he was fired from Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, in retaliation for raising concerns about the safety of their programs. A trial court ruled against him, but Lippman argued that the court's interpretation of state law was too narrow. A state appellate court sided with Lippman last year.
4. Abuse of children
The court will consider at least two questions related to child abuse: Is it abuse to leave a toddler unattended in a car for five to 10 minutes? And is it abuse when a newborn is harmed by a pregnant woman's use of methadone to fight addiction?
The first case involves a mother who left her 19-month-old child in her car at the Middlesex Mall in South Plainfield for five to 10 minutes while she shopped for party supplies in 2009. An appellate court found the behavior of the mother, identified in court papers by the pseudonym Eleanor, constituted "abuse or neglect."
The second case involves a woman, identified only as Y.N., who struggled with a dependency on opioid painkillers. When she found out she was pregnant, she said she followed doctor's orders by beginning methadone treatment. Her baby was found to have neonatal abstinence syndrome, a side effect of such treatment. The mother was charged with violating child abuse laws.
The case is similar to a ruling Rabner wrote in 2013 holding that a pregnant woman who used cocaine two days before giving birth was not guilty of neglect because the child turned out healthy and New Jersey's child-abuse law does not apply to unborn children.
5. A verdict and religious bias
In this case, the court will consider whether possible religious bias infected a verdict against a defendant of Hindu descent, who was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Dr. Abez Husain was sued in 2007 for allegedly making sexually inappropriate comments and gestures at work. A jury ruled against the doctor. But after the verdict, court papers said, the judge spoke with jurors off the record and without attorneys present, and a juror noted that Husain did not touch the bible when being sworn to testify. The judge then notified attorneys, the papers said.
Husain, who said he did not touch the bible for cultural reasons, appealed the ruling. A state appeals court admonished the judge but denied a new trial.
6. Slipping at Kentucky Fried Chicken
Is Kentucky Fried Chicken liable for a customer slipping and falling?
Janice Prioleau claimed she fell at the chain's Cherry Hill location amid a storm, slipping on a mix of grease and water and injuring her neck and back. A trial court awarded Prioleau a $138,000 reward, but an appeals court reversed the decision and remanded a new trial.
7. Where should courts hear allegations of sex assault on a class trip to Germany?
The court will weigh whether New Jersey has jurisdiction to try a pair of Bergen County teachers who accused of sexually assaulting students they were chaperoning on a school trip in Germany.
The case of Artur Sopel and Michael Sumulikoski, who deny any improper contact with the students, has been on hold for more than two years as the court considers whether state prosecutors can level charges based on events that allegedly occurred in a foreign country. The men supervised a group of students from Paramus Catholic High School on a study-abroad trip in 2011. They are accused of assaulting at least three students, all aged 17 at the time.
A trial judge and an appellate court have ruled that the case can move forward because there is enough of a link to New Jersey. –NJ
When Robert Matthies of Seaside Park and William Akers of Seaside Heights look toward the southern end of the boardwalk that straddles their towns, the two mayors see a blank canvas.
In the year since a fire destroyed nearly 60 buildings and an amusement pier along a three-block stretch of boardwalk, few businesses have returned. But rather than lament what was, the mayors and several business owners are embracing what they say is a rare chance to build anew on old memories.
“For me, it’s a sense of excitement, newness,” Akers said. “You don’t get these kinds of opportunities. These are life-changing opportunities.”
The boardwalk, a hodgepodge of decades of kitsch, is going through a complete overhaul. After Hurricane Sandy destroyed most of the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, the town had a new wooden promenade by last summer.
Akers said the community took advantage of the need to rebuild to install more attractive light poles and other fixtures and upgrade the façade of the time-worn lifeguard headquarters.
Months later, after the repairs were completed, part of the boardwalk was destroyed again, this time by a fast-moving blaze on Sept. 12 that investigators concluded was caused by faulty electrical wiring.
The blaze, fueled by 30-mile-an-hour winds and an abundance of flammable material, turned into a three-block-long inferno that destroyed nearly everything in its path.
Akers and Matthies remember Gov. Chris Christie touring the ruins the night of the fire. “He was telling us what was going to happen and the time frame it was going to happen in,” Akers said.
Within a week, Christie announced he was making $15 million in federal Sandy aid available to the boardwalk businesses, a move that angered some homeowners and housing advocates who said the money should not have been diverted. The state also pledged to shoulder the cost of demolition and debris removal after the fire.
Approaching the anniversary of the blaze, Christie defended his decision and said he would not have done things differently. He said home values would have plummeted if the boardwalk businesses had disappeared.
“The overwhelming amount of money went to homeowners — I mean by a 3- or 4-to-1 margin,” he said. “So I have absolutely no second thoughts about doing that, and I know that we wouldn’t have the recovery going on as quickly as we have it without it.”
Virginia Pellerin, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, which administers the Sandy business grants and loans, said that so far four businesses in Seaside Park that had been whiplashed by the storm and then the fire have been approved to receive a total of $445,000.
The towns awarded an emergency cleanup contract to Eagle Paving, owned by Bill Major, for $4.7 million. Of the $5 million in federal disaster recovery funds the state set aside for cleanup after the fire, it used $2.8 million after the towns met their insurance obligations, Pellerin said. Mike Loundy, director of community improvements for Seaside Heights, said the town knew it had to overcome the perception that it wasn’t open for business after the one-two punch of Sandy and the fire.
He said that because rentals were slow, local officials decided to target day-trippers in the town’s ad campaigns.
“The fire was a punch in our gut that absolutely nobody saw coming,” he said. “It was difficult enough to have people understand we were rebuilt after Sandy.”
Both Akers and Matthies said their beach revenue actually increased this summer over 2012, the year Sandy struck, leavings billions of dollars in damages in its wake.
The fire consumed only one block of the boardwalk in Seaside Heights but ash was sent flying as far as six blocks north, igniting several more blocks of buildings.
A first attempt at a firebreak did nothing because the gap wasn’t wide enough to halt the fire’s progress, Akers said. It took a second, wider firebreak, cut into the boardwalk at Dupont Avenue, to stop the flames from igniting more of the wooden promenade.
Akers said he watched the fire creep toward him as he stood on the boardwalk a block north of Dupont.
“You’re looking at all that beautiful boardwalk that you just built being crushed right in front of you and you were never so grateful to see it happen,” Akers said.
For its part, Seaside Heights permitted a row of businesses, situated in a strip of plywood booths between Dupont and Lincoln avenues, to operate for a year while owners develop plans for more permanent structures and to recoup some of their financial losses.
“We figured it was better to have something rather than nothing,” Akers said. “We knew people were going to come down here and were going to expect some things, see progress, see movement, and we thought temporary was the best way to do it at this point.”
In all, nearly 60 businesses in those three blocks — two in Seaside Park and one in Seaside Heights — were destroyed. The only oceanfront buildings left standing were in Seaside Park, the Saw Mill Café and an adjacent arcade.
Matthies, the Seaside Park mayor, said those two buildings were saved by the Saw Mill’s exterior sprinkler system.
The most glaring evidence of the fire is the empty stretch of beach in Seaside Park where the Fun Town Pier — damaged extensively by Sandy — stood.
Major, who also owns the pier, had applied to the state Department of Environmental Protection for a permit to extend the pier 300 feet east. But his grandson, Greg McLaughlin, said the family was considering several options, including selling, after the second disaster.
“It’s bittersweet because we obviously want to be back in business and do what we love to do,” McLaughlin said.
He said there have been suggestions to rebuild the amusement pier, build a beach bar, or turn it into a water park or concert hall.
Matthies said he doesn’t know what the boardwalk will look like by next Memorial Day,
“When you look out, we’re missing a pier,” he said. “We’re missing an amusement area, we’re missing a number of different ... concessions, eateries, games of chance, retail stores, Exactly how they’re going to be put back together and in what configuration is uncertain.” -NJ
7 Critical Cases The N.J. Supreme Court Will Decide This Year
Medicaid benefits for immigrants. Whether leaving a toddler unattended in a car for 10 minutes is child abuse. Who should pay if you slip on grease at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
These topics are among the dozens of cases the New Jersey Supreme Court is likely to hear in the coming months after beginning a new one-year term last week.
It comes as an ongoing feud over the makeup of the court begins to settle. After years of warring with Democratic lawmakers over court appointments, Republican Gov. Chris Christie and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) struck a deal giving tenure for the next 16 years to Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. As part of the agreement, Justice Lee Solomon, a Republican judge, was elevated to one of the court's two vacancies.
The Supreme Court typically takes up about 80 to 100 cases a year. Here is a look at seven of the most critical ones:
1. Medicaid benefits for immigrants
In a case that could affect thousands of legal immigrants across New Jersey, the court is set to consider whether the state broke the law by making changes to a Medicaid program.
In 2011, a group of immigrants filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the state Legislature violated the state and federal constitutions by allowing the state Department of Human Services to alter requirements the NJ Family Care program — which provides Medicaid coverage to low-income residents — in a way that excluded legal immigrants who had been in the country for fewer than five years. The move denied coverage to about 8,000 immigrants. The state said the change was needed to cut costs as policymakers dealt with a budget crisis.
A state appeals court ruled last year that the state did not violate the law and that it had the authority to decide how to save money within the program.
2. Police in Camden
This case could throw a wrench into the recently established Camden County police force, which took over law enforcement in the crime-ridden city of Camden — a move championed by both Christie and Sweeney in their effort to revitalized the troubled city.
In 2012, a group of Camden residents submitted a petition to block the city from disbanding its police department to make way for the county force. It called for the city to put the move on the ballot so residents could vote.
Mayor Dana Redd, a Democrat, sued to stop the petition process later that year. In a ruling that June, Superior Court Judge Faustino Fernandez-Vina — now an associate justice on the Supreme Court — ruled that the petition "created an undue restraint" on future city governments. But a state appellate court sent the case back to the trial court level last year.
3. Whistleblower protection
The court will hear two cases about whistleblower protections for public and private employees — both of which could lead to far-reaching rulings.
In one, the court will consider whether a defendant can be indicted for theft and official misconduct for taking confidential documents from her public employer.
Ivonne Saavedra, a clerk for the North Bergen school board, is seeking to dismiss a 2012 indictment that charges her with stealing township documents. Saavedra claimed she was a victim of gender, ethnic, and sex discrimination and said she took the files to support her claims in a discrimination lawsuit she filed against the board in 2009.
Two courts have upheld her indictment.
In the other case, the court will consider whether "watchdog employees" — those who monitor whether an employer complies with laws and regulations — can seek whistleblower protection under state law.
Joel Lippman claims that he was fired from Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, in retaliation for raising concerns about the safety of their programs. A trial court ruled against him, but Lippman argued that the court's interpretation of state law was too narrow. A state appellate court sided with Lippman last year.
4. Abuse of children
The court will consider at least two questions related to child abuse: Is it abuse to leave a toddler unattended in a car for five to 10 minutes? And is it abuse when a newborn is harmed by a pregnant woman's use of methadone to fight addiction?
The first case involves a mother who left her 19-month-old child in her car at the Middlesex Mall in South Plainfield for five to 10 minutes while she shopped for party supplies in 2009. An appellate court found the behavior of the mother, identified in court papers by the pseudonym Eleanor, constituted "abuse or neglect."
The second case involves a woman, identified only as Y.N., who struggled with a dependency on opioid painkillers. When she found out she was pregnant, she said she followed doctor's orders by beginning methadone treatment. Her baby was found to have neonatal abstinence syndrome, a side effect of such treatment. The mother was charged with violating child abuse laws.
The case is similar to a ruling Rabner wrote in 2013 holding that a pregnant woman who used cocaine two days before giving birth was not guilty of neglect because the child turned out healthy and New Jersey's child-abuse law does not apply to unborn children.
5. A verdict and religious bias
In this case, the court will consider whether possible religious bias infected a verdict against a defendant of Hindu descent, who was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Dr. Abez Husain was sued in 2007 for allegedly making sexually inappropriate comments and gestures at work. A jury ruled against the doctor. But after the verdict, court papers said, the judge spoke with jurors off the record and without attorneys present, and a juror noted that Husain did not touch the bible when being sworn to testify. The judge then notified attorneys, the papers said.
Husain, who said he did not touch the bible for cultural reasons, appealed the ruling. A state appeals court admonished the judge but denied a new trial.
6. Slipping at Kentucky Fried Chicken
Is Kentucky Fried Chicken liable for a customer slipping and falling?
Janice Prioleau claimed she fell at the chain's Cherry Hill location amid a storm, slipping on a mix of grease and water and injuring her neck and back. A trial court awarded Prioleau a $138,000 reward, but an appeals court reversed the decision and remanded a new trial.
7. Where should courts hear allegations of sex assault on a class trip to Germany?
The court will weigh whether New Jersey has jurisdiction to try a pair of Bergen County teachers who accused of sexually assaulting students they were chaperoning on a school trip in Germany.
The case of Artur Sopel and Michael Sumulikoski, who deny any improper contact with the students, has been on hold for more than two years as the court considers whether state prosecutors can level charges based on events that allegedly occurred in a foreign country. The men supervised a group of students from Paramus Catholic High School on a study-abroad trip in 2011. They are accused of assaulting at least three students, all aged 17 at the time.
A trial judge and an appellate court have ruled that the case can move forward because there is enough of a link to New Jersey. –NJ
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