City responds to Fuschia Triangle suit

City responds to Fuschia Triangle suit
Suit challenges blight designation, seeks damages
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer
The city of Long Branch has asked the Superior Court of New Jersey to dismiss a lawsuit charging the city with unconstitutionally labeling a Broadway Gateway property as a redevelopment zone.

City Attorney James Aaron, of Ansell, Zaro, Grimm & Aaron in Ocean Township, filed the response on May 13.

Aaron declined to comment last week on the specifics of the suit but did say that the allegations levied against the city were baseless.

"The allegations are false," Aaron said. "They don't truly reflect how the city acted.

"We will show that we worked with the property owner and allowed the property owner to move forward in the attempt to develop his land," Aaron said during an interview last week.

While Aaron did not comment on specifics in the city's response, he did say that if the suit goes to trial, it will not be in the immediate future.

"There will be between 180 days and 360 days to allow for discovery for both the city and the prosecution," Aaron said. "We are looking at two years before the suit goes to trial."

The 12-page response rebuts every claim made in the lawsuit, responding to most by "denying the allegations" or stating that the defendants "are without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations."

Princeton attorney R. William Potter, of Potter and Dickson, filed the suit on behalf of Long Branch business owner Kevin Fister and his wife Adele, Fuchsia Triangle Corp. and Coach Corp.

The suit filed in state Superior Court in Freehold on April 8 names the city of Long Branch and the City Council as defendants.

The suit seeks to overturn what it alleges is the city's "unconstitutional designation of private property as blighted" and asks for "damages and injunctive relief against the mayor and the council of the city of Long Branch."

Among the allegations in the complaint is the charge that the plaintiffs have been denied "their lawful right to own, use, enjoy, develop, redevelop or sell their property" in what amounts to the "loss of their property" due to the city's "de facto" condemnation of the commercial properties made up of five contiguous lots bounded by North and South Broadway, Long Branch Avenue and Ocean Boulevard.

"Their property remains 'frozen,' private in name but 'de facto' condemned for future use and without just, or indeed, any compensation," reads the complaint, which asks for a jury trial.

Potter said at the time of filing, "One, we are filing that the original designation of the property was unconstitutional. Two, we are arguing that the longstanding failure for the city to use eminent domain [resulted] in a significant to almost complete loss of value of the property," which "has remained frozen for more than a decade."

"They have been trying for years to develop the land in a manner [that] the city would embrace," he said. "We are hoping that this is a wake-up

call to the city. Not only do we want the city to lift the cloud of the blight designation, now they must compensate for the loss of value." According to the complaint, the city's unconstitutional actions date to the mid- 1980s with initial efforts to redevelop, leading to a preliminary investigation by the Long Branch Planning Board into whether large sections of the city, including the Fuschia Triangle, were blighted under the 1992 Local Redevelopment and Housing Law (LRHL).

The suit claims the city used the terms "area in need of redevelopment" and "redevelopment area" while actually applying standards of "blighted" property or area, which were rejected by the New Jersey Supreme Court in a 2007 case, Gallenthin Realty v. Borough of Paulsboro, which Potter successfully argued.

According to the complaint, the city designated the Fuschia Triangle as "in need of redevelopment," making the property and surrounding area subject to the LRHL, using the law to prevent the plaintiffs from developing their own property, to designate another redeveloper, and to acquire the property through eminent domain.

The complaint alleges that the unconstitutional process of designating the Fuschia Triangle a redevelopment area dates to August 1995, when the City Council directed the Planning Board to investigate whether the Broadway-Gateway area and other areas met the criteria for designation as redevelopment areas.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the blight designation of the Fuschia Triangle and asks for compensatory and punitive damages for the "taking" of the Fuschia Triangle property.

As an alternative, the suit asks the court to order the city to purchase the Fuschia Triangle property "and end the "legal limbo which has prevented the Fisters from making profitable use of their property for more than a decade."

Contact Kenny Walter at

kwalter@gmnews.com.


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