To designate a redeveloper for the Union Hotel area in Flemington without an agreement is to foreclose the possibility of anyone else coming forward.
By Lee Roth
I have just finished reading Mayor Phil Greiner's column in the Borough of Flemington newsletter, which asks, and then attempts to answer, "Do we need any redevelopment?"
Of course we do. But let us generate a full answer.
The column talks about property values, a poor business economy, and asks "does it look like things are OK?"
The column asks if things need to change. The answer is yes, they do. The real question facing all of us is what is the appropriate change? And how to go about making that change?
The column goes on to talk about a "current opportunity" and asks should we pass it up or not. What is the opportunity? If talking to a possible redeveloper is what the mayor has in mind, I say go for it. If the mayor means tying up a large area while discussions continue with a possible redeveloper, while excluding all others, I have a concern.
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Why -- because that forecloses all other possibilities during that time. To designate a redeveloper without an agreement is to foreclose the possibility of anyone else coming forward.
I suggest that the mayor and his committee work publicly and transparently on an agreement, without foreclosing the possibility of other developers coming forward.
Build into the agreement ideas and requirements that make sense from everyone -- businesses, citizens, voters, taxpayers, and developers. Then see who will meet the requirements and sign the agreement.
If that is not the case, we can assume our mayor considers seven-story buildings in the middle of town, overshadowing the rest of the town, and requiring the demolition of and removal of historic properties, to be our current opportunity. No alternative to that plan is mentioned. Will he also get rid of the Historic Preservation Committee, too?
What can be done?
It seems to me that there are several alternatives that, with a little imagination and common sense, could be at least considered, and should be addressed.
First, I ask, does the redevelopment area consisting of four or five buildings have to be redeveloped by a single developer as one project? If that's the case we need to find someone with huge resources, and we need to be sure that those resources are real and available now.
Although we may not like empty or deteriorating buildings, I doubt that we would prefer demolished, or partly demolished, buildings with a big hole planned as the home of underground parking that is never built.
We got where we are because of our current government's predecessors. First, I am told the prior owners of the Union Hotel wanted to do some upgrading and some work on the property, but found barriers in their way when the local government put up obstacles that they felt they could not overcome or afford.
Second, one of the buildings, the old Hunterdon County Bank building, was purchased with taxpayer money by our local government, and then left dormant because they had not done their due diligence so as to learn how costly it would be to renovate the building. Bond payments have been made. No income is collected.
And why did anyone think, that in the middle of what is now claimed as a downtown retail area, we needed another government building of government offices on Main Street. We already have three or four public buildings in the middle of town on the other side of the street.
What benefit do these county buildings today bring to our downtown retail and restaurant area? What benefit would putting the municipal office on Main Street bring?
Public buildings may have at one time been a benefit when they were full of county employees, people that bought lunch in town, shopped in town, and formed the basis of the daytime population that supported all of the downtown businesses.
Once these county employees were moved out of town by the county government, they generally did not feel it reasonable to drive back into the town, find a parking space, fight snow mounds in the street in winter, to do the things they had done when there was a different level of convenience for them -- everything within walking distance.
Alternatives
Let's talk about a couple of alternatives. The borough itself could buy the Union Hotel building and the property it sits on. Through its power of condemnation, that is eminent domain, it could acquire the property at its current run down value.
As the owner of the property it could negotiate with a private developer to fix up the property.
If owned by the government, a restaurant in the building could have a liquor license and the government could hire an operator to run the establishment, very much in the same way that the Flemington Fur Company did years ago, when it owned the property.
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If it needed parking, as I assume it would, it could additionally acquire the parking lot, again through eminent domain, that the local government allowed to be divided away from the hotel, property that was once part of and owned by the hotel owners, and added back into the property. At some point in the future it could even build a parking garage or parking facility on that property which it would already own.
The government could also look at each of the buildings as they exist today and determine what might be the best use of those buildings.
It could aggressively find people or organizations that could take over those properties, again with the help of the municipality through its power of eminent domain, and see that the properties were developed in a way most useful to the future of the commercial district in the center of town.
Ordinarily I would not suggest that an inexperienced government group itself serve as a kind of developer, but we are here talking about alternatives and possibilities and desperation. Certainly the government could hire someone to do what it could not do.
Costs and tax revenue
I regularly hear complaints from our government officials that they don't have enough tax revenue to reasonably pay the costs of managing our municipality.
They do not have the money to remove snow from Main Street, the money to buy the Hotel, the money to supply parking, or the money to pay their planning staff without high escrow fees charged to developers to discourage them from Flemington in the first place.
If you look across the street from the Union Hotel you see a string of government buildings in the middle of town.
Now they are already there, so common sense says that it would be unreasonable to suggest they be abandoned or moved or replaced with retail. I don't know any other municipality in our county, or the neighboring counties, that have government buildings filling the heart and center of town.
In Somerville, for example, the government buildings are at the end of town.
Not only do these buildings take up a considerable amount of space and prevent the possibility of a critical mass of retail or other shopping possibilities, they don't pay taxes.
Perhaps it would be reasonable for the mayor to go to the county and ask the county officials to contribute money to the municipality in lieu of taxes.
We all know that a municipality cannot require a county government to pay taxes, but I think that it could at least request that the county government pay its fair share of the costs associated with county property in the Borough.
A quick look at the tax records in Flemington tell us that the Flemington assessor calculates the value of the county property in Flemington as worth about $26 million.
That property, if it paid taxes, would contribute almost three quarters of $1 million in lieu of taxes to the borough on an annual basis. What could Flemington do with that additional money coming in?
I've heard the argument that the county cannot pay money to Flemington because it would have to then pay money to all of the other municipalities. But that's not a reasonable argument. None of the other municipalities provide the County with road maintenance, police protection, or any of the other services and benefits that the county realizes at the cost of the Flemington taxpayers.
Lee Roth is a Flemington-based attorney who has been active in the community for many years.