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VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD VILLAGE COUNCIL REGULAR PUBLIC MEETING AUGUST 11, 2021  8:00 P.M.

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20210811 – Village Council Regular Public Meeting Agenda

VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD
VILLAGE COUNCIL
REGULAR PUBLIC MEETING
AUGUST 11, 2021
8:00 P.M
.

Continue reading VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD VILLAGE COUNCIL REGULAR PUBLIC MEETING AUGUST 11, 2021  8:00 P.M.

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Village of Ridgewood seeks to acquire Town Garage Property via Eminent Domain Process

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by the staff of The Ridgewood Blog
The Village Council announced during its Wednesday night Public Work Session a proposal to acquire via an eminent domain/condemnation process the former Town Garage property on Franklin Avenue near South Walnut Street.  The Village’s intent is to turn the property into a pocket park (park, not parking).

Continue reading Village of Ridgewood seeks to acquire Town Garage Property via Eminent Domain Process

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Former Owner of the Town Garage in Ridgewood has Passed Away

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the staff of the Ridgewood blog

STERLING FOREST NJ,  according to a recent obituary Richard “Rick” M. Agnello, Jr. passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on 11/6/2018. Born in Paterson and raised in Glen Rock, Rick is a graduate of Glen Rock HS. Upon graduating, he served in the National Guard. Rick owned and operated Town Garage in Ridgewood with his father and brother. Rick had an immense passion for spending time with family/friends, music, cars, motorcycles, boats and spending time at Cape Cod and Greenwood Lake. Rick is survived by his loving children, Keri (Brendan), Eric (Angela), and Craig (Judi). He adored his two grandsons,Ash and Liam.

Continue reading Former Owner of the Town Garage in Ridgewood has Passed Away

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Reader says The Franklin Street “Village Garage” lot was publicly targeted by the Village Council for condemnation as “blighted” as part of a redevelopment plan

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The Franklin Street “Village Garage” lot was publicly targeted by the Village Council for condemnation as “blighted” as part of a redevelopment plan. The Village would rely on the decision in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), a case decided by the U. S. Supreme Court involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development. Construction of a municipal parking garage would then follow. $15 million in bond money was raised for that purpose, but when Village residents objected to the heavy-handed use of the eminent domain power, the plan was dropped and the money spent on other priorities. The current owners bought the property at that time at a relatively low price expecting to make a tidy profit in the near future. Obviously that didn’t exactly pan out for them.

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Reader says Town Garage has become the Haunted House of retail services within the Village of Ridgewood

addams family

Drove past the Town Garage with more boarded up broken windows.; realized it’s a sign of a town in decline , Put a Witch and a Ghost placard on it and it’s ready for Halloween fifty two weeks a year,

We care and are all concerned about the focus on Valet and other Parking issues while the roads and abandoned structures  continue to go to Seed.

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Reader says time to Fine the owners of the Town Garage for not keeping it properly maintained

Town Garage Ridgewood

Current owners have to pay for remediation – can’t stick the taxpayers with that tab! Why should the village pay for their speculation? Fine them for not keeping it properly maintained in the meantime! It is quite an eyesore.

Town Garage Ridgewood

Ridgewood Town Garage employee parking retaining wall hazard

 

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Reader says the Village could obtain the Town Garage at a depressed price by declaring the area “blighted” and invoking its power of eminent domain

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The Village would presumably be stuck with 100% of the remediation costs if it decided to obtain the property at a depressed price by formally declaring the area “blighted” and invoking its power of eminent domain. On the other hand, the Village could just make a free market offer with a lowball number that takes into account the anticipated costs of remediation. One wonders, however, if the current owners would be motivated to sell in that circumstance. More likely, they would take such an offer as an invitation to negotiate. In that event the Village would need to have a (closely guarded secret) topmost number in mind and be ready to threaten to walk, and then actually walk away from the deal, Trump-style, if (when) the current owners get too greedy.

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Reader says I cannot believe that Ridgewood would buy the Town Garage without remediation by the present owners

Town Garage Ridgewood

I cannot believe that Ridgewood would buy that property without remediation by the present owners. They rushed in to buy it before Ridgewood could finalize their decision to buy. They knew they would make a large profit on it as they knew Ridgewood would eventually buy it from them. They knew massive amounts of remediation were necessary but bought it anyway. If we let them get by with that–and the names of the purchasers should show very familiar names–they have succeeded in proving that Ridgewood can be suckered as they originally believed. Wake up Council! Make them clean it up, or reduce the price by the cost of cleaning. That would probably leave them in the hole on the purchase. The buyers knew what they were doing. Does Ridgewood?

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Reader says Town Garage is like some intergalactic stepping off point for a Steven King adult Day Camp

Steven King IT

Town Garage is like some intergalactic stepping off point for a Steven King adult Day Camp..since the issues are hard..don’t ask don’t tell..lets it go to seed to be the whipping post instead of and for the bitching about how the whole town and its roads are a complete mess..
And the VC Still thinks fish needs a parking garage structure for good old times sake.,,another novel approach by the town leaders,

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Reader says Denial is not an action plan for the decrepit Town Garage in Ridgewood

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Town Leadership….Denial is not an action plan..The decrepit Town Garage as an Enviromental Hazard has got to be dealt with at some point..especially as those above ground structures fail and create a slum condition.as an abandoned industrial waste site there could easily be a fire or other collapse adjacent to the towns surface parking lot which at peak or event periods also has risks from that failing structure.what is the town doing to force a solution by the owners who possibly are an investment company,?

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Rockland lawyer involved with the Town Garage gets prison for lying to investigators

Town Garage Ridgewood

February 18,2017

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Reader pointed out that the owner, Ridgewood 120, LLC , the owner of the “Town Garage ” is either owned or represented by a Burton Dorfman, ESQ. Coincidentally, he was in the new four days ago.

Rockland lawyer Burton Dorfman gets prison for lying to investigators

Steve Lieberman , slieberm@lohud.comPublished 2:58 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2017 | Updated 5:04 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2017

Federal judge sentences Rockland attorney Burton Dorfman to six months in prison

A Rockland attorney was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for lying to federal Labor Department investigators looking into accusations he stole money from a profit-sharing plan at his former law firm.

Burton Dorfman, once a prominent development and investment lawyer, also must repay the fund $212.429, pay a $25,000 fine and $100 court fee under the sentence imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel at the White Plains federal courthouse.

https://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2017/02/13/burton-dorfman-lawyer-sentenced/97851046/

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Town Garage ,A History of Ownership Transactions

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February 17,2017

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, reader questions the ownership status of the “Town Garage” , “Last I heard an LLC or such owned it. Did they manage to pass it off to the town w/o cleaning it? The Village would be nuts to have bought it in an “as is” condition. The owner of the Town Garage property was bought out by the LLC (?) with little or no warning. I assume he sold “as is” because he really had not planned on selling it. I hope they didn’t make a tidy profit by selling it “as is” to the town. Or worse, the Village cleaning it up for the present owners with a deal to then buy it at a reasonable price.”

One of the more effective tools on the Ridgewood blog is the “timeline ” it continues to roll and record the ups and downs of the Village of Ridgewood. Will a little search we found comments from March 1st, 2007 discussing the ownership of the Town Garage.

The Town Garage, 120 Franklin Avenue; the eye of the storm . . .

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The current hot discussion topic among those who monitor Village Hall happenings is how an out of town firm was able purchase the Town Garage property from right out under the noses of Village Council members. Village ownership of the subject property (see posted photo) is seen as key to the successful construction of a municipal parking garage.

Reportedly, Village officials had offered previous owner Richard Agnello more than the $1.265 million sale price. However, it is being reported that Mr. Agnello refused to sell until the Village found a suitable location nearby for him to relocate his motor vehicle repair facility.

So the fly would like to know: 1) How was the Wells partnership able to buy the property for less than what Village officials had offered Mr. Agnello? 2) Will Mr. Agnello be closing up shop, or has the Wells partnership found a location for him to move his operation to? And, 3) What prompted the Wells partnership to purchase a piece of property destined for involvement in eminent domain proceedings?

https://theridgewoodblog.net/the-town-garage-120-franklin-avenue-the-eye-of-the-storm/

And in May of 2007 we asked if the Town Garage was for sale yet again.

Is the former Town Garage property for sale, again?

Village Council members met behind closed doors on Wednesday evening to
discuss possible options for acquiring 120 Franklin Avenue, formerly home of
the Town Garage. Acquisition of this property is key to the planned
construction of a municipal parking garage at the northwest corner of North
Walnut Street and Franklin Avenue.

It is now rumored that Ridgewood 120 LLC, the site’s current owners, have
offered the property for sale to Village officials at a price much higher
than the $1.265 million paid in November of 2006. Scuttlebutt is that
Ridgewood 120 LLC’s asking price is at least $1.865 million, and possibly as
high as $2.265 million. The current owners have made no improvements to the
property since purchasing it from the Agnello family late last year.

Council members must decide whether to: 1) pay the asking price, or 2) enact
the right of eminent domain, or 3) revise parking garage building plans to
eliminate the need for that parcel. Still unanswered is the question: “How
did Village Council members manage to get themselves in such an expensive
jam? In other words, how was a real estate investment group able to acquire
the Town Garage property from right under the Council’s noses?”

https://theridgewoodblog.net/is-the-former-town-garage-property-for-sale-again/

 

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Reader says Contamination at the Town Garage was well known to the purchasers who rushed to beat the Village in buying the land–hoping to make a substantial profit

Town Garage Ridgewood

Contamination at the Town Garage was well known to the purchasers who rushed to beat the Village in buying the land–hoping to make a substantial profit when they then sold it to the Village. They own it. It should be their responsibility for cleaning it up before selling it to the Village at a handsome profit. Is the Village going to subtract the cost of cleanup from the eventual purchase price? Or are we paying a premium to purchase the land and then must add cleanup costs to that? The lawyer groups were in such a rush to buy–why aren’t they being forced to do the cleanup? A homeowner with a leaking oil tank can’t just pass that cost on to the buyer, so why are we cleaning up land we don’t own?

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Employee parking lots near Town Garage extremely underutilized in Ridgewood

Employee parking lots near Town Garage

January 24,2017

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Monday 10.45 employee parking lots aside Town Garage extremely underutilized. These same spots held train pass holders who were moved into center crowded area of this same lot.

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Reader Gives the Story Behind the “Town Garage ” in Ridgewood

Town Garage Ridgewood

A decade or so ago, the Ridgewood village tried, via an arguably aggressive application of eminent domain principles, simply to take by forced sale the property upon which the “Ridgewood Garage” building stands. This was hot on the heels of the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision which, in order to find lawful the use by a Connecticut municipality of eminent domain to boot ordinary fee simple owners of residential properties in an “underperforming” (ahem!) neigborhood to make room for a proposed factory that mysteriously never got built, conveniently expanded the scope of the word “public” in the U.S. Constitution’s term “public use” to include a scheme that, at its heart, was nothing but a naked multistep attempt to eventually boost property tax revenue. The idea at the time was that the new U.S Supreme Court constitutional precedent rendered legitimate any property condemnation scheme that municipal powerbrokers could rig together that gave off the faintest whiff of a public benefit in the distant future, regardless of the immediately applicable common law rights of the owner of the targeted property or properties. One presumes the now battle-hardened owners of the Franklin Avenue parcel under discussion have been waiting to receive, at long last, a decent offer from the Village to purchase the lot that does not involve the coercion inherent in the use of the municipsl eminent domain power. Can it fairly be said that that particular lot, or, more broadly, that the “parking lottish” parts of the larger block defined by Ridgewood Avenue, Oak Street, Franklin Avenue and Walnut Street, is “blighted” to such a degree as to justify municipal action to use the eminent domain power to initiate a process by which it is redeveloped into a modern parking facility? The decision that was eventually taken years ago was that, despite the fact that the Village had already raised some $15 million via a corresponding municipal bond issuance to build a parking garage, the village would nevertheless relent, and not follow through on its threats to use its eminent domain power. We’ve since spent the proceeds of that bond issuance on other priorities. Unfortunately, we are still paying off the debt for a parking garage that, for good or ill, was never built.