By
Kevin Coughlin
-
1
Will a luxury apartment building displace working-class tenants from a 19th-century tenement?
Morristown officials tried to reassure them Tuesday, at a meeting where the council unanimously approved redevelopment plans for a portion of Spring Street. The vote paved the way for the 150-unit “M Lofts” project near the new M Station office complex.
The approval came despite objections from residents who petitioned to preserve a vacant brick building for its aesthetic appeal. Anxious tenants of a nearby tenement, meanwhile, heard pledges from the mayor and council to spare their building from demolition as the project unfolds.
The council also approved a street sign honoring former councilman and longtime youth sports advocate William “Butchie” Barber Jr. — but not at the location favored by Barber’s wife and other community supporters of the honor.
Morristown police were praised for a glowing report card from the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, which renewed the police bureau’s accreditation after reviewing its procedures in more than 100 categories.
The council also established annual fees for use of town pickleball courts — $25 for residents, $175 for non-residents — and introduced a $2.5 million capital bond ordinance to fund road repairs; improvements at town hall, the Burnham pool and Foote’s Pond; and new vehicles for the police and public works department.
Without disclosing dollar amounts or any other details, the council introduced a resolution to approve the Morristown Partnership budget. The nonprofit runs a Farmers Market, and fall and Christmas festivals on the Morristown Green, and collects fees from businesses to administer the downtown Special Improvement District.
Citing pollution and allergies, residents of Overlook Road asked the council to ban backyard fire pits. They also asked the town to allow parking on a vacant lot near the Foote’s Pond trailhead, so hikers won’t park in front of their homes.
And Mayor Tim Dougherty issued a proclamation recognizing the ninth annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, coming on June 7, 2024. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children in the United States, according to Diane Drysdale of Moms Demand Action.
“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” Drysdale said.
SPRING STREET
In Spanish and English, tenants from an eight-unit tenement– a wooden building they believe dates to the late 19th century, near the new Spring/Morris roundabout –told the council they fear Scotto Properties will raze the place as part of the M Lofts project, leaving them unable to find affordable apartments in Morristown.
“They haven’t told me anything,” said Nancy Nazario Ventura, a social worker with a disabled child who has resided there for 29 years.
The council voted to amend a Spring Street redevelopment plan dating to the early 2000s. Scotto Properties and SJP Properties, partners in the M Station office project at Spring and Morris streets, are proposing a five-story building with 150 apartments, dubbed M Lofts.
Thirty of the units will be designated as affordable. The package includes a small park along the Whippany River; another park across Spring Street, commemorating the site of one of New Jersey’s first publicly funded Black schoolhouses; and rehabilitation of the tenement at the corner of Spring and Morris streets.
The mayor, who also serves on the planning board, said he was unaware of any plans to demolish the tenement. He vowed to oppose demolition when his administration hammers out a redevelopment agreement with Scotto and SJP.
“We will hold the developers’ feet to the fire on preservation of that property…clear, unequivocal, non-negotiable,” Dougherty said.
Councilman David Silva, who translated some of Dougherty’s statements for the tenants, asserted he would push to require the redevelopers to return them to their apartments with no rent increases after renovations.
But good intentions can fall short. Years ago as a councilman, Dougherty recounted, he tried to save a Maple Avenue structure that pre-dated the Civil War.
“I fought like heck to preserve that building, and before I had a chance to even take another step forward, they demolished it,” the four-term mayor said.
Demolition appears all but certain for a vacant electrical supply building on the M Lofts site.
Some 277 people signed an online petition extolling its industrial design as one of the last vestiges of the old Morristown, and the small-town charm being supplanted by monolithic “big box” developments.
The town planner has said the project’s benefits outweigh the loss of this building. Morristown’s Historic Preservation Commission has not advocated saving it, either, town Administrator Jillian Barrick added on Tuesday.
“The truth is, the building is being sacrificed to corporate greed, and preservation is not a priority,” countered Deb Ryysylainen, the resident spearheading the petition drive.
“We understand Morristown isn’t Paris or Toronto, and the town has to generate revenue. But we wonder where the point is where we start to kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” Ryysylainen said.
The town is being overloaded with apartments, traffic and unfilled retail spaces, while the Second Ward community is being blocked off behind M Station, “the Great Wall of Morristown.”
“We are losing so much of what makes Morristown attractive, which includes a diverse and compassionate population” and the charm and beauty that officials promote to visitors, Ryysylainen said.
At a minimum, she had hoped M Lofts would incorporate the supply building’s façade into its design.
WILLIAM “BUTCHIE’ BARBER WAY
For years, friends and fans of Butch Barber have lobbied for a street sign to honor him–while he is alive to appreciate it.
Such honors usually are bestowed posthumously. Waiving that requirement, the council on Tuesday introduced an ordinance to create William “Butchie” Barber Way at Flagler Street and Clyde Potts Drive.
The thing is, Barber’s advocates want the sign at Flagler and Martin Luther King Avenue.
That’s the gateway to the Cauldwell Playground, where “Mr. Barber provided entertainment and recreation to the entire community,” Barber’s wife Anita said in a statement read to the council.
A councilman for 24 years, Butch Barber is revered as a founder of youth football leagues, an urban 4H group, and a “Gentlemen’s Club” for fatherless boys, among numerous other civic activities cited in the ordinance.
The council previously voiced concerns about the street sign withstanding frequent floods at the Flagler/MLK intersection. But Anita noted other town-funded improvements at that location, and suggested the spot was appropriate because her husband’s causes paralleled Martin Luther King’s. She indicated the community is eager to schedule a celebration.
Councilmen Robert Iannaccone and Steve Pylypchuk inquired if the location could be amended when the measure comes back for a final vote next month. The council would need to start over, with a new ordinance, advised town Attorney David Minchello.
The Barber and Spring Street ordinances prompted Iannaccone to question town procedures for soliciting public input. Specifically, whether the sequence is backward.
Now, the public only can question town officials and experts directly about agenda items when measures are introduced.
At the subsequent second hearing where measures are voted into law — known as the “public hearing” — residents may express their opinions. But if they have specific questions for town planners or other experts, it’s up to council members to relay them, if they so choose, prior to voting, according to Minchello.
‘WITHOUT A BLEMISH’
Morristown’s police bureau met or exceeded “without a blemish” 112 state and national standards, to earn re-accreditation by the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, the association’s accreditation director, Harry Delgado, told the council.
The bureau’s initial certification came in 2021. Only one-third of New Jersey’s accredited police forces achieve this distinction a second time, Delgado said.
He praised Police Chief Darnell Richardson, Public Safety Director Michael Corcoran Jr., Capt. Keith Cregan, and Morristown police officers for initiatives in community policing, trust-building, crime prevention, mental health- and crisis response, and combating the drug epidemic.
“We’re just beginning,” Corcoran responded. “And it’s only going to get better from here.”
