"Suburban sprawl" a "cancer" in shore towns: blog

[fuzzyscorpio]

From the SaveArdmoreCoalition's blog...

With summer upon us, Main Liners are doing what they've done for generations - heading to the beaches.

For those revisiting the Jersey Shore, however, the re-entry may be startling. In the Wildwoods, developers have done more demolishing than a nor'easter, swept up in the frenzy of buying up, then bulldozing down, homes and motels whose only value is the land they sit on.

Like sharks chomping on chum, greed-driven investors have performed vinyl surgery on entire neighborhoods, sucking out the local flavor and leaving in their wake cookie-cutter, multi-unit condos and massive single family homes that straddle entire lots and throw adjacent homes into shadow.

In Avalon, concerned citizens are protesting the loss of a massive chunk of that town's high dunes. Erosion isn't to blame this time. No, the site will become the future San Simeon of the East - a 40-room "vacation cottage" to be built for the pleasure of just one family.

So the story goes, from Cape May to Sandy Hook, as existing homeowners sell to the highest bidders and flee for more affordable locales. Greed and poor planning breed incongruous architecture - like a marble home on the beach in Avalon or a house of glass and steel on a dune in Loveladies --- and enables suburban sprawl, complete with the prerequisite Walmart and Starbucks, to spread through these shore towns like a cancer...

www.phillyfuture.org/blog/151?from=10

[thelastresort]

As some of us have been saying all along, it's all about the $$$$$$$$$$$.

To quote Roger Maris when asked about why he played baseball, he said something like "If I could make this much money mining zinc, I'd be mining zinc". A sad reality, unfortunately.

But I suppose we can't blame them, if someone offered us 5 times what our house was worth, who wouldn't sell?

[fuzzyscorpio]

thelastresort said:

As some of us have been saying all along, it's all about the $$$$$$$$$$$.

To quote Roger Maris when asked about why he played baseball, he said something like "If I could make this much money mining zinc, I'd be mining zinc". A sad reality, unfortunately.

But I suppose we can't blame them, if someone offered us 5 times what our house was worth, who wouldn't sell?

Oh yes. "Follow the money" is always good advice when you're looking at a wide-ranging phenomenon and trying to figure out what's driving it. And the bottom line in this whole mess is motel owner/operators who have grabbed the money and run. I have varying degrees of empathy for that decision depending on the owner's age and other circumstances. Even where there were extenuating circumstances, though, I wonder whether some of the owners really had no other choice but to sell to the first slimeball who came along with a fat wad, rather than attempting to exert some control over the future of the property via the terms of sale.

[thelastresort]

yeah, I hear ya, Fuzzy.

And I don't live there, only visit a few times a year (but for nearly 40 years), so I have limited standing to comment. But I suppose my biggest complaint is with owners who would refuse to invest in repairs (even paint!) and allow their places to fall further and further into disrepair, just waiting for the big demo sale. Many if not most owners were not like this, but enough were (and still are) to create enough eyesores on the island, such that those places get beyond the point of no return and their fates become an inevitability -- they have to tear them down. Very very sad indeed.

Thankfully, do to the huge inventory, I think this practice has dropped off, since owners are having trouble selling, or those who bought recently with the intent of flipping a place instead of running it ended up stuck with it.

[Rob Ascough]

That is why I think some part of the government needs to set up a program for motel owners to be able to get low/no interest loans for improvement. I know of an area of Route 46 in between my house and my office that recently received some major road improvements. In an effort to improve the general area that consisted of a bunch of businesses in old buildings located close to the road, the government offered good loans to the landlords if they were willing to either knock down the buildings and build new ones farther from the road or make significant modifications to the existing ones. Response was initially slow but now there is some activity in the area in the form of new buildings and new looks for the old ones.

Why not offer motel owners something to help them make their properties more modern? With a decent loan, the average motel owner could upgrade the rooms with nicer televisions, updated bathroom fixtures, modern phones with voicemail and high speed internet access- all things that the majority of people look for nowadays. Perhaps some money could be spent on painting and new signage, or maybe a new pool or a new roof if that's what's necessary.

Instead of making it so motel owners feel they have no other option but to make like Billy Joe and Bobby Sue (take the money and run), they would have an incentive to do what it takes to remain competitive.

[thelastresort]

robascough said:

Billy Joe and Bobby Sue (take the money and run)

Ah, a Steve Miller fan!

[Rob Ascough]

Among many others from that era, and other eras as well.

[thelastresort]

Cool, I though I was one of the only ones left, I have "book of dreams" (on vinyl, of course)

[Rob Ascough]

One of these days I have to catalog all the stuff I have on vinyl. Not nearly as much as I have on CD, although I'm sure I have a lot more than I remember.

[Robert]

Probably the problem is that many of the motels were stuck in the past, they didn't upgrade. They were stuck in a hippie era time warp in the 1980's, and today you have all these modern hotels like Hamptons, Hiltons and Marriotts that have all the modern conveniences that today's travelers want such as internet, complimentary breakfast, clean rooms, TV's that work, indoor pools and room service. Somehow those musty motels managed to stay off the redevelopment radar for 40 years, then all of a sudden the real estate boom took off. My mom even said that some of the motels looked junky and dirty. If they really wanted to preserve them, the owners would have fixed them up, painted, and charged reasonable rates. Hopefully the worst is over. Maybe the market will slow enough to deter new demos.

[fuzzyscorpio]

robascough said:

That is why I think some part of the government needs to set up a program for motel owners to be able to get low/no interest loans for improvement.

And if that isn't enough I'd like to see them go to either major tax breaks or flat-out grants if that's legally possible. Whatever it takes to keep things in balance...

I know of an area of Route 46 in between my house and my office that recently received some major road improvements. In an effort to improve the general area that consisted of a bunch of businesses in old buildings located close to the road, the government offered good loans to the landlords if they were willing to either knock down the buildings and build new ones farther from the road or make significant modifications to the existing ones. Response was initially slow but now there is some activity in the area in the form of new buildings and new looks for the old ones.

This is good to hear, Rob, seeing as how Route 46 needs all the help it can get

(I grew up in Wayne, and nowadays I reverse commute between NYC and Morris County, so Route 46 is an old friend I've earned the right to make fun of )

[Rob Ascough]

Just curious (and you can message me if you want)... where do you work in Morris County?

The government should be doing what it takes to make things easy for the motel owners. Tax breaks and even grants would be a good idea considering the severity of the situation. Instead of wooing developers to build towers, the city should be fighting to keep the rooms they already have.

Some sections of Route 46 are getting better- the part in Parsippany is one of them. Others still have a LONG way to go!

[MMM]

fuzzyscorpio said:

My jury is out on NWW.

Have you seen the southern end of Surf Avenue yet this year, Kathi?

[fuzzyscorpio]

mmm said:

fuzzyscorpio said:

My jury is out on NWW.

Have you seen the southern end of Surf Avenue yet this year, Kathi?

No, Martin, I haven't, and I'm not looking forward to it. I know from reading some of the threads from late spring/early summer that it has been devastated. I am so sorry I never got the chance to know any of the lost places like 24th St Motel, the Lurae, the Sans Souci, and the others destroyed earlier like the Packard. Thing is, I hardly know North Wildwood. Family tradition was to stay pretty far down in the Crest, and about all I knew of NWW was the pork store. For most of my 50+ years of visits down there I actually thought of NWW as more of a private, residential community (partly because it lacked the grand expanse of beach that was so central to the appeal of WW and WC).

Only in the years after we started to extend our morning bike rides beyond the north end of the boards did I become a little familiar with some of the NWW motels--and only much more recently, on my own, did I start to drive around Surf Ave a little bit and realize that NWW's beachfront properties were not, by far, its most interesting ones. I guess you could say as far as NWW is concerned, I fell asleep when the house lights went down and woke up in the middle of the grand finale .

So that's why I say my jury is still out--I know so little about the town. But it sounds, from what I read here, as though the changes taking place in NWW are similar to what has been happening in the Crest, and as I learn more, I will probably end up filing NWW under "no vision" as well

[MMM]

I'm a Crest person too, but that particular section of North Wildwood was hit pretty hard, and not in a good way. I doubt if you're going to like it...