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| Casino Avenue/Irene 2011 |
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| Casino Avenue/Irene 2011 |
CRANFORD—As so many did a year
ago, Joe LoGiudice watched as the rain fell and the water rose, turning his
property and others near it into one continuous lake.
“The water kept coming closer and
closer to my house,” the Cranford resident recalled one recent afternoon as he
stood in his backyard, staring into the swampy woods behind it. “Had the rain not stopped, it would have come
into all these houses.”
Cranford was the Union County
town hit hardest by Tropical Storm Irene, which blew through the Garden State
Aug. 27 and 28. Hundreds of homes and business
were underwater. Government buildings
flooded. It was a devastating
experience, even for a town nicknamed “Venice.”
LoGiudice is among the lucky
members of his community; the water rose to within a stone’s throw of his
Wadsworth Terrace house, then it receded.
But the 51-year-old doesn’t feel
any sense of relief, nor do his neighbors who survived the storm with little to
no damage to their homes. They’re
worried the worst is yet to come and think a high-density housing development—one
planned for a lot a block away from LoGiudice’s home—will be the reason.
The project, a 360-unit complex
that would be constructed on a 16-acre site in Cranford’s north side, is
derided by local officials and residents alike.
They all worry it will make the flooding worse, upsetting a delicate
balance between wetlands and dry land.
The developer and its experts say the building won’t cause any new
flooding and will actually improve drainage in some areas. But those assertions have been little comfort
to residents and township officials.
The fight to stop the development
on Birchwood Avenue—now closer than ever to becoming a reality—has been going
on for years, but it was Irene that electrified opponents. Their fears embody just how bad the flooding
was after the storm.
There was flooding in Rahway,
Elizabeth, Springfield, Union, Mountainside and other towns. Communities were bisected by
floodwaters. There was tens of millions
of dollars in damage. One early estimate
put together by the county’s Office of Emergency Management figured the damage
surpassed $100 million. The federal
government has pledged or paid more than $50 million in grants and loans to
residents, business owners and governments in Union County.
Cranford was, without a doubt,
left in the worst shape. Residents
canoed through the township’s downtown, flooding stretching for blocks. The municipal complex and police department
were underwater. Nearly 1,300 residences—or
more than 15 percent of the township’s houses—had significant damage, officials
said as the waters began to recede. Some
200 houses had flooding up to the first floor.
Brookside Place School, which had
2 feet of water inside it, was closed for months—displacing students and
teachers. The damage there cost more
than $1 million to repair, much of it reimbursed by the federal
government. The first floor of the
municipal building is still closed, the damage totaling some $3 million,
officials say.
But as bad as it was, they all
say the Birchwood development would make it worse.
“I think it’s going to be
devastating,” Mayor David Robinson said.
“Absolutely devastating.”
The site, about 16 acres in size,
is in a quiet neighborhood thick with trees.
There’s vacant office space on the property, which is next to an
assisted-living facility. Across the
street is the township’s recycling center.
And behind the property are woods—very wet woods, some considered
wetlands—that stretch back to houses on Wadsworth Terrace, where LoGiudice
lives.
After Irene, much of the property
was underwater. So was Birchwood
Avenue. That’s why local officials
object to the housing project.
“The bottom line is: It’s bad environmental practice. It really is,” said Kevin Campbell, a
township commissioner. “You don’t want
to put a 360-unit development in a swamp, near wetlands, near everything
else. It’s insane.”
But there are several acres of
dry land there, and that’s where the developer would like to put the four-story
residential buildings. The company,
Cranford Development Associates, is a subsidiary of the Paramus-based S.
Hekemian Group. The company successfully
sued the township through a “builder’s remedy” case, arguing Cranford has a
legal obligation to allow the high-density housing so long as at least 15
percent of the units are sold at affordable rates.
Superior Court Judge Lisa
Chrystal ordered the township to change its master plan and zoning ordinance to
allow for the development, and she took away the authority of the local
planning board—handing it over to a special hearing officer who reports to her. Site plan hearings have been going on for
weeks, held in Superior Court in Elizabeth.
No one from the developer’s
office could be reached to discuss the project.
Peter S. Hekemian, the parent company’s vice president for development,
did not return two messages left at his office.
The company’s general counsel has been away on vacation. But the group’s plans are made clear in court
filings and through testimony during the ongoing site plan hearings in
Elizabeth.
To avoid issues with storm water
flooding, the project will include a large underground storage system, said
Michael Dipple, an engineer hired to work on the project. It’s a series of concrete vaults called the
“storm trap.”
“Flow from the development will
first go into the underground system. It
will be held for a period of time, and it will be released at a rate which then
complies with” state standards, Dipple testified this month at the site-plan
hearing.
That system and other steps the
developer plans to take to avoid flooding issues miss a broader point, says
Richard Marsden, the township engineer.
The site where the housing would be built is part of a much larger flooding
plain—one that stretches across Cranford and into Kenilworth, he said. It’s shaped like an hourglass, and filling in
the ground on Birchwood could create flooding elsewhere, in areas that stay dry
now, Marsden said.
“My argument is, by filling it in
here, you’re going to restrict it—it’s going to back up,” he said.
It’s that prospect—and the
memories of Irene, along with other storms of years past—that have so many
people in the community up in arms over the development. Some formed a group, Concerned Citizens of
Cranford, and have hired an attorney to raise objections through the state
Department of Environmental Protection.
So many people were interested in attending the site planning hearings
that the township had a bus to drive residents to Elizabeth. Even Gov. Chirs Christie, who lived in
Cranford two decades ago, has weighed in.
“I’m concerned about this. I’m concerned about it from a flooding
perspective, in particular. More building
in Cranford, especially in that area, it doesn’t seem to me like it’s pretty
wise,” Christie said earlier this year on his weekly radio program, “Ask The
Governor,” on New Jersey 101.5. He later
added: “If this thing is built, it’s
going to make things significantly worse.”
That’s Liz Sweeney’s
nightmare. She lives on Wadsworth
Terrace, on the opposite side from LoGiudice.
Sweeney, a member of the Concerned Citizens group, never had to worry
about the flooding. She will worry if
the development is built, though.
“I fear that the project is going
to alter Cranford forever. I fear that
it is going to flood everywhere,” she said.
“I fear I’ll have to move.”