NJ News & Views

LAKEWOOD - A two-year-old border dispute involving a Lakewood residential development and the Jackson School District has been settled without litigation.

Lakewood Mayor Meir Lichtenstein, who represented the concerns of Westgate residents during two years of talks, discussed the settlement with NJ News & Views on April 4. He said that Westgate developer Forest Haven LLC, which is owned by Daniel Rottenberg, made an agreement with the district to split the cost of privacy fencing for Orthodox Jewish residents of the development rather than sue.

The fencing will be installed at Jackson Liberty High School, which is located on South Hope Chapel Road and is scheduled to open in September. A practice field constructed near the Westgate development was the source of residents' concern, according to comments made at a 2004 Lakewood Township Committee meeting.

Lichtenstein declined to provide details of the agreement or the threatened lawsuit. No contact number was available to reach Rottenberg for comment.

In 1998 amendment granted by the Lakewood Zoning Board of Adjustment to the Westgate site plan stated that the development was comprised of 993 residential units that included 124 single family townhouses, 302 two-family townhouses, 121 single family townhouses with garages, 100 senior citizen condominiums, 256 multiplex residential suites, 14 duplex units, 72 patio homes, 4 residential lots, a community center building and 55,000 square feet of retail/office space in a commercial center.

The development is located in the southwest area of Lakewood on 115 acres of land zoned R-15, which permits construction of one home on each 15,000-square-foot plot. It is bordered on the west of Jackson, on the south by Whitesville-Lakewood-New Egypt Road, on the north by New Central Avenue, and on the east by Gudz Road.

The property had been used for excavation of sand in the late 1970s and was later closed as a mining site. Because the land was level, the Claytons decided to sell it for residential development, according to Clayton attorney Peter H. Wegener in a 2004 interview. More than one-half the site - 196 acres - was located in Jackson Township.

In January 1996, the zoning board granted Ralph Clayton and Sons of Lakewood several use and height variances, as well as variances pertaining to the development's layout and design.

In the late 1990s, Wegener said, Clayton entered into a contract to sell the Lakewood tract for construction of what would become the Westgate development.

On October 6, 2000, an engineering firm prepared a site evaluation report for the district that recommended the Jackson portion of the site for construction of what would become Jackson Liberty High School, as well as the future site of an elementary school. Two months later, the district began negotiations to buy the property.

Linda Lackay, current president of the Jackson Board of Education, said in a February 2006 interview that the site was chosen because of its size and hook-up to water and sewer.

On August 13, 2001, the Jackson Township Committee passed an ordinance that rezoned the municipality in order to reduce residential development density, according to online meeting minutes. The ordinance was based on recommendations made by the Jackson Planning Board.

In January 2002, voters approved the referendum to build a new high school on the property. A $130 million bond issue included the cost of land acquisition and construction of the facility.

Later that year, the Jackson Committee adopted an amendment to the 2001 ordinance that rezoned the area around the site to R-3, but did not rezone the site itself because it was scheduled for construction of a high school, Wegener said.

"The Master Plan adopted by the Jackson Planning Board for 1999 showed a proposed rezoning of the Jackson Clayton...tract to PRC (Planned Retirement Community)," Wegener said in 2004. "About 144 acres were originally zoned R-1 and the rest was zoned highway commercial and industrial."

In the meantime, Clayton had rebuffed the board's offer of $6.7 million for the land, which was less than the $10 million contract he had signed with U.S. Homes to develop the site. Unaware that the site had not been rezoned to R-3 with the rest of the surrounding area, the district condemned the land and offered Clayton $4.7 million for it, according to Wegener. However, since the site was still zoned R-1, Wegener said its value had instead appreciated as a result.

According to court documents, the Jackson Board of Education, through its attorney at the time, threatened legal action against the Jackson Township Committee if the site's zoning was not changed to R-3 as well. The Jackson committee adopted an amendment in September 2002 that rezoned the site of the new high school from R-1 to R-3, but the Clayton family sued for the value of the land at the time it was condemned.

Even as the two Jackson governing bodies attempted to reduce taxpayers' financial obligation in order to acquire the site, Westgate developer Rottenberg was building residences that Orthodox homeowners had contracted to purchase, according to information provided by the Lakewood Tax Assessor's Office. Residents taking title of their new homes discovered that a public high school, not another residential development, was going to be built within eyesight of Westgate. They asked the Lakewood committee for its help in resolving the problem, which some committeemen said was the responsibility of the developer.

In March 2004, Lakewood Committeemen Raymond Coles, then mayor, and Lichtenstein, then deputy mayor, met with Jackson Superintendent of Schools Thomas Gialanella, Jackson Board of Education members Martin Spielman, Marvin Krakower and Gus Acevedo, district business administrator Greg Brennan, residents of Westgate and several other unidentified individuals, according to Spielman.

In August 2004, Lichtenstein told a reporter that one possible solution being discussed was a berm with landscaping. Half the berm would be built on each property's border, he said. Lichtenstein said the 50-foot berm would be constructed as a small rolling hill approximately 4-to-6-feet high.

The 1998 Westgate site plan amendment and map indicated a 50-foot buffer between the homes in the development and the border with Jackson. The amended site plan also stated that a significant number of parking spaces had been added to the site as compared with the Approved Preliminary Plan, but did not provide a specific number or their location in the development.

At the end of 2004, state Superior Court Judge Marlene Lynch Ford, sitting in Toms River, ruled in a pre-trial hearing that the zoning at the time of condemnation would be the basis for establishing the value of the land where Jackson Liberty High School was being constructed. That same December, a jury awarded Clayton $11.4 million - higher than the district's final offer of $10 million, but less than the $16 million the Claytons had sought. Neither party in the lawsuit appealed the ruling.

The cost of installing privacy fencing between Westgate and Jackson Liberty High School will be considerably less costly than the legal decision won by Clayton against the district.

District spokeswoman Allison Erwin said last week that $28,000 will be paid in compensation to Westgate for the condemnation of land used to install sewer work. She said that Westgate has agreed to reimburse the money back to the district for the installation of green slatted privacy fencing. The payment will be made from a total of $91,940 that was allocated from referendum funds for the installation of galvanized fencing in several locations around the new high school. Erwin did not provide the exact location of the privacy fencing.

The Jackson Board of Education voted to approve the expenditure at its' February 28 meeting. The board adopted a resolution memorializing the vote at the March 14 meeting.

Gialanella said after the March 14 meeting that the fence will be built to a height of 8 feet instead of the 12 feet that Westgate residents had requested.

On April 6, the Lakewood Township Committee adopted an ordinance that will enable residents to build privacy fences on their properties up to a height of 14 feet with permission of the zoning officer and owners of adjacent properties. Lakewood Township Clerk Bernadette Standowski said that Lichtenstein and Committeemen Robert Singer and Menashe Miller voted yes, Coles voted no, and Committeeman Charles Cunliffe abstained.

The Lakewood Planning Board declined to recommend the ordinance for adoption, according to Kevin Kielt, Lakewood Township Planning and Engineering Administrator. Kielt told a reporter on April 10 that planning board members supported construction of lower privacy fences closer to homeowners' swimming pools instead of higher ones at their property lines. Kielt said board members opposed construction of a fence as high as 14 feet because they thought it would not be aesthetically pleasing.

Despite the two townships' differing response to Orthodox requests for higher privacy fencing, the agreement paves the way for more amicable relations between all parties involved in the Westgate dispute, according to comments made at the March 14 Jackson Board of Education meeting.

"We're spending money to make another community happy," Gialanella said during the public forum in response to a question by Kevin Zelles.

Acevedo also commented on the agreement. He said the district had not paid any additional money for the fence and defended the decision to construct it.

"Whatever we did...we did to benefit us all," Acevedo said. "We're being good neighbors."