Monday, February 11, 2008

Kayaks

Avalon considers fee for seasonal storage of kayaks
By BRIAN IANIERI Staff Writer, 609-463-6713
Published: Saturday, February 9, 2008

AVALON - The borough is considering charging $25 to store kayaks through the summer near a public access spot to the bay near 57th Street.
Avalon is building storage racks for kayaks, as well as Sunfish and Sailfish boats.

Borough officials said previous storage of private kayaks there cluttered the area and could make them more susceptible to theft.

The area had been used for years for people to keep their kayaks for a season, sometimes chaining them to a nearby fence and leaving them there, said Council President Joe Tipping.

"People would chain these kayaks to the split-rail fence," Tipping said. 'But all you have to do with a split-rail fence is you can drop it away and take it. And those things are expensive," he said.

The area is a popular entranceway for recreational kayakers to the bay.
"It was getting a bit messy looking," said Borough Councilman Charles Covington. "It'll be a little more organized."

Covington said the fee applies only to those who will store kayaks at the site.

"The history of the thing is residents have been using that area for quite a number of years and just randomly putting their kayaks in there," Covington said.

Avalon will limit the permits for kayaks to 90 in the area and 20 for the Sunfish and Sailfish.

Permit holders must also sign a waiver and indemnification form for damage claims to the watercraft.


To e-mail Brian Ianieri at The Press:BIanieri@pressofac.com

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Shore Home Prices Holding

Shore home prices, sales escape brunt of market downturn

Saturday, January 19, 2008
By WILLIAM H. SOKOLIC
Courier-Post Staff

AVALON
Chip Moran just put the family vacation house up for sale.

His father died in July and his mother is in an assisted living facility. Selling the house would help offset the costs for his mother's arrangement, said the Westmont resident.

Moran and his two brothers are asking $2.1 million for the five-bedroom, beach block house on 20th Street. His parents paid about $350,000 for it in the early 1980s.

"If it sells for the price we're looking for, that's the best. But there's no rush on our part. If it doesn't sell and we end up keeping the house, great," Moran said.

The Moran situation typifies the real estate market at the Jersey Shore as the new year unfolds.

While the home-sale market nationwide has gotten hammered since the real estate bubble burst in 2005, the shore has weathered the downturn better than much of the country, said Drew Fishman, president of the New Jersey Association of Realtors.

As a corollary, the repossession market has not hit the shore area, said Lester Argus, president of the Atlantic City & County Board of Realtors. Because so much of the market consists of second homes, neither sellers nor buyers are pressed to transact a sale.

"The shore does better because buying and selling are discretionary," said Richard Perniciaro, director of the Center for Regional and Business Research at Atlantic Cape Community College.

"People are not moving in or out for jobs. Most are in a position to wait a year or two to sell," said Matthew Iannone, president of Freda Real Estate in Sea Isle City.

Yet, real estate experts say the time is better than ever to buy. Prices have come down from the bloated figures of a few years ago. Interest rates are favorable, dipping below 6 percent.

And inventory is high.

"There's more inventory than buyers by a 4-1 margin," said Alex Linsk, a Realtor with Farley & Ferry Realty Inc. in Margate. "Lenders are anxious to get the market started and lend, but they will look a little closer into the buyer's credit history. Still, it doesn't cost anything to make an offer."

Back in 2005, there was a dramatic increase in the number of homes on the market at the same time buyers throttled back, said Randy Leiser, a Realtor with Avalon Real Estate Agency.

"Demand decreased, supply increased, and there were more on the market ever since."

The ups and downs are a cyclical thing, Linsk said. "It happens every seven or eight years. I've seen it three times since the early 1980s."

A lot of professionals, steeped with cash in 2002 and 2003, were sold on real estate.

"They didn't think there would be an end to the boom. Now they're paying the price. They can't sell their properties. Those who spent $500,000 to $1.5 million and thought they can flip with a 20 percent increase, they got hurt," Linsk said.

In 2005, the last strong year at the shore, some 435 units sold in Avalon and Stone Harbor.

Last year, the figures were around 300, Leiser said. But the turnaround began this past year.

"We had a good run in 2007, much better than 2006," Iannone said.

The market experienced a 13 percent drop in the volume of sales in the last year. But prices have not taken the hit other areas did, Argus said.

In Ocean City, the number of sales was up compared to 2006. November and December numbers picked up over the previous year by as much as 25 percent, Fishman said.

"It's not 2005, but it's not bad, and the dollar amounts are well ahead," Fishman said.

Said Iannone, "The asking and selling prices are not far off nowadays. We haven't had a distress sale to any great extent." Certainly, sellers are not going below what they paid for the property, Leiser said.

"One unit came on the market at $740,000 two years ago. It came off for a while, then went back on for $649,000. However, the folks paid $200,000 10 years ago. What has happened, sellers have gotten the message and depending on the situation, are reducing asking prices."

The average sales price has declined from $1.7 million in 2006 to $1.57 in 2007 in Avalon and Stone Harbor.

"The market is not as strong as we'd like it to be," Argus said. "But indicators for 2008 are looking pretty good. Mortgage companies are getting a lot more activity. We hope that translates into sales."

"We believe barring any major economic disaster, there's no cause for a further decline in values during the next 12 months," said Ian Lazarus, president of the Cape May County Association of Realtors.

Moreover, interest rates tend to ease in a presidential election year, he said. Outside of some high-end properties, Realtors aren't seeing bidding wars anymore.

"Buyers can take their time for inspections and due diligence. I think lots of buyers are on the fence figuring when they can get a good buy. Sellers are willing to negotiate," Leiser said.

Not Moran and his brothers. Then again, they don't really have to. Properties over $1.5 million sold even when the market turned, Linsk said.

Shore home buyers come in with their own financing, and larger down payments. They come in with more income. In Ocean City, there was a bidding war for a million dollar home that sold for over the asking price, Fishman said.

So the prospects look good for Moran, a 47-year-old facility manager.

If the house sells, he has a condo on 78th Street in Avalon he'll use more often. Or he and his brothers will get together and buy something else a little less expensive.

"The Jersey Shore is great. I've been all over the country. I'll put Jersey beaches against anybody," he said.

Reach William H. Sokolic at (609) 823-9159 or bsokolic@camden.gannett.com

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Library

Sea Isle City picks site for new library
By BRIAN IANIERI Staff Writer, 609-463-6713
Published: Saturday, October 27, 2007

SEA ISLE CITY - Officials picked a site for a $4.5 million library this week, choosing an empty lot on 48th Street instead of the site of an existing library downtown.

A lack of available parking downtown in the summer months prompted City Council's decision, Council President Michael McHale said.

Finding a location for a new county library branch has been a matter of some contention after county library officials announced earlier this year they would build new branches for the city and Stone Harbor.

Because library funding is based on ratables, the two shore communities are the biggest contributors, each paying about $1.4 million annually.

City Council formed three committees to address location, content and whether the city was interested in the county's offer or should consider funding their own library outside the county system.

Although council has not voted on the question about pulling out of the county library system, the committee recommended the city stay in the system, McHale said.
City Council passed a resolution this week to use city-owned land on 48th Street, which was the site of a former sewer plant, for the library.

The city's branch library is now located in downtown Sea Isle City on John F. Kennedy Boulevard. Mayor Leonard Desiderio first championed the site for a new building, citing its central location.

He said Friday that he backs City Council's choice.

"If this is the location council feels it should go with, and as long as we get a new library and stay in the system, I'm happy," he said.

"We're a three-months community, and in the summer months there's no parking in the area," McHale said of the downtown location. "Between people going to the beach and the Promenade, the parking is just not there."

"Our idea is we'd like to see it as a cultural center for the town," he said.

The city also considered a location near the Sea Isle City Elementary School.

New buildings in Sea Isle City and Stone Harbor are expected to cost the county library system about $8.5 million.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Strathmere

Strathmere wants out of township
By Jacqueline L. Urgo
Posted on Mon, Oct. 8, 2007
Inquirer Staff Writer

STRATHMERE, N.J. - This is a place like no other at the Jersey Shore. Its appeal may be that it's just like everywhere else used to be.
It's a place that still has a collection of ramshackle summer cottages without screens in the windows, the kind of little places where the whole house seems to inhale and exhale when the ocean breezes blow the curtains in, and then back out again.

About a mile-and-a-half long and two blocks wide, nestled on the same barrier island as Sea Isle City and across an inlet bridge from the southern tip of Ocean City, this is a town where the asphalt paving runs only so far down the street leading to the ocean before the sand and the beach grass take over.

There are no traffic lights, no boardwalk, only a couple of seafood restaurants and one motel. And the people who live here year-round seem to like things the way they are.

Except for one thing: Their tiny Cape May County town is part of a sprawling 65-square-mile, mainland municipality that some residents contend doesn't provide adequate services to their beach community.

A group called Citizens for Strathmere and Whale Beach collected signatures from 115 residents - or 83 percent of the registered voters in the town - and last week presented to officials a petition to secede from Upper Township.

The group contends that as a beach town, Strathmere would be a better fit with its neighbor, Sea Isle City, because issues such as beach replenishment, police protection, and concerns about public water and sewers often overlap.

Without a full-time police force in Upper Township, when officers are needed in Strathmere - say, to deal with a rowdy group of out-of-town surfers - they are summoned from a state police station some 20 miles away instead of neighboring Sea Isle.

When Sea Isle put in new lines to provide clean drinking water and state-of-the-art sewers a decade ago, the project was halted at the Whale Beach section of Strathmere bordering Sea Isle. Strathmere remains one of the few Jersey Shore towns with antiquated septic systems.

And while Strathmere's high-school-age students have attended Ocean City High School for decades, elementary students are required to take a 30-minute-plus bus ride to attend classes on the mainland. Proponents of the secession say Strathmere's handful of students would be better served next door in Sea Isle.

But Upper Township officials are not ready for a divorce.

Township committee members rejected the petition, saying it was not explicit enough because it failed to map exactly what lands would be de-annexed from the municipality.

"We're going to act in the best interest of the township," Mayor Richard Palombo said during the meeting last Monday night.

Strathmere accounts for some $390 million, or about 18 percent, of Upper Township's $2.2 billion in property values, contributing a large amount to school and county taxes.

Now members of the petition group must decide whether they will pursue the matter in court. Mary D'Arcy Bittner, the group's lawyer, said the law requires that 60 percent of the voters there need to agree to the secession for it to become law.

After originally stating he would welcome Strathmere residents, Sea Isle City Mayor Leonard Desiderio has been more reserved in recent comments, saying he would stay out of the Strathmere controversy as it played out.

Some Strathmere residents clearly are ready for a change.

"We're basically second-class citizens to Upper Township," said Delores Reynolds, 78, whose family has owned property in Strathmere since the early 1900s, when the town was known as Corson's Inlet.

"Whenever we ask them for some help with an issue, whether it's police protection or fixing the beach, whatever it is, they act like we're bothering them. We're sick of it," said Reynolds.

Reynolds and others insist the township over the years has consistently failed to provide basic services to Strathmere.

"They have a whole mainland township to worry about, so it's rare that any attention at all is ever given to the beaches and the needs of a beach community," said Strathmere resident Frank Zimmer.

Zimmer said that three years ago, residents expressed surprise when the township embarked on a $20,000 plan to upgrade Strathmere's beach patrol headquarters.

For years, the beach patrol had to make do with a tiny shack and a couple of storage sheds to hold its equipment for the five lifeguard stands it stations on the beachfront each summer.

"That was really the first time in a long time that the township seemed to take any notice of the beach at all," Zimmer said.

Palombo, however, said officials recognize what an important part of the township Strathmere is and that some improvements have been made, including the new lifeguard station, because "we have to realize that Strathmere is a true asset to Upper Township."

Palombo calls Strathmere's apparent desire to secede from Upper Township "unfortunate" and counters the group's claim that the township has not properly responded to the town's needs as a beach community.

"Whenever they've presented us with needs or requests, we've done out best to accommodate any lists of concerns they've given us," Palombo said.

Palombo said that at Strathmere residents' request, the township has provided a full-time EMT on the beach in the summer, speed bumps in certain areas, and an agreement with the Ocean City Fire Department to assist with fire if necessary.

Palombo acknowledged that the residents have a right to sue the township to secede. He also said they are welcome to refile a petition and, if it meets all state law requirements, the township committee would "most certainly pass it on to the Planning Board."


Contact staff writer Jacqueline L. Urgo at 609-823-9629 or jurgo@phillynews.com.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Summer 2007 Almost Over

Almost Over
By JEREMY W. PETERS
New York Times
Published: August 31, 2007

"EVERYTHING must go!” shouted the clerk manning a T-shirt rack outside Hoy’s Five & Ten, a purveyor of the kinds of trinkets and knickknacks that you would only entertain buying while on vacation.

Stone Harbor, N.J. Dave Hoy, the store’s owner, stood on the sidewalk trying to keep up with the swarm of customers who were snatching up the last of his snow globes, glass animal figurines and shirts advertising where their owners spent the summer.

“My whole thing is to get rid of everything while we can,” Mr. Hoy said, wiping the sweat off his brow as he faced the hot morning sun. In a little more than week, he said, “it’s going to be very quiet.”

As a year-round denizen of Stone Harbor, N.J., for the last three decades, Mr. Hoy knows what happens — or, more accurately, doesn’t happen — in this South Jersey shore town when the summer crowds vanish. Like countless other summer destinations across the country after Labor Day each year, Stone Harbor goes into hibernation. It will be a sedate, even desolate, place where it’s easy to find a parking spot, but not so easy to get a pizza delivered. Most of the million-dollar homes will sit dark, and drivers will be permitted to make right turns at red lights again.

But on a late-August weekend, the town was anything but sedate. Mobs of Stone Harbor’s summer dwellers were squeezing all they could out of their last days of summer freedom: one last round of rooftop miniature golf, one last dinner under the stars — probably something with crab in it — and one last header into the breaking waves. They were all trying not to think about the regimented lives awaiting them on the other side of the waterway.

Chris Hartzell, the 22-year-old manager of Shades of Stone Harbor, a sunglasses boutique, said leaving town never gets any easier. “It’s probably the worst feeling, driving out on Avalon Boulevard across the bridge,” he said. “Because you know your summer is gone.” He was planning to make that drive last Sunday so he could head back to school.

For the last 15 years, Mr. Hartzell, a student at East Stroudsburg University in eastern Pennsylvania, has spent each summer at his parents’ house in Avalon, the “other” town on a seven-mile spit of sand that sits just off Cape May on New Jersey’s southernmost shore, about 150 miles from New York City.

When he gets back to school, where he still has to write a term paper he didn’t finish before bolting for the shore at the end of May, he said he will do what he does at the beginning of every new school year: regale his friends with stories of his summer. “That’s all I talk about,” he said proudly. “I just tell them it’s the best place. Ever.”

Even at its busiest, Stone Harbor has an unruffled feel to it. Its 1,200 year-round residents watch their town’s population mushroom to more than 20,000 in the summer. But even in high season, it’s easy to lose yourself on a stroll down the beach or a bike ride down Second Avenue, the main drag. The island is only about two or three city blocks wide at most points, so the beach is never far.

It lacks the commercial feel of other Jersey Shore towns like Ocean City, about a 25-mile drive to the north, or Wildwood, a 15-minute drive south. There is no boardwalk. No roller coaster.

“There isn’t a bad time to be down here,” said Mary Ann Lafferty, 60, a first-grade teacher visiting from Williamstown, N.J. Like many of the town’s seasonal visitors, she has been vacationing in Stone Harbor since she was young, and couldn’t shake the sand out of her shoes. “It’s been my place as long as I can remember,” she said wistfully. “You know what they say, a bad day at the shore is better than a good day at work anytime.”

THE preferred style for beach houses, which are densely packed onto a Manhattan-esque street grid, is Cape Cod with a distinctive New Jersey accent — the more windows, balconies and gables, the better. It’s not uncommon for homes to sell for well over $1 million, yet the area is decidedly unpretentious. Flip-flops are never frowned upon, and restaurants won’t scoff if their patrons bring a cooler of beer to drink with dinner.

While many of the hotels are resort-motel hybrids, they charge resort prices — between $200 and $250 a night for a room during peak season.

Staffing the town’s hotels, restaurants and shops gets difficult after Labor Day. Stone Harbor’s businesses rely heavily on college students, many of whom are enjoying all the carefree time they can before the real world beckons.

Chloe Obando, 21, a University of Delaware senior, was working her last shift on Saturday night as a waitress at Solé, an Italian restaurant in downtown Stone Harbor. Once the last plate of crabmeat ravioli had been served, she and her roommate were planning to make the two-hour drive back to school in Newark, Del. They spent all summer working at Solé and living in nearby Sea Isle City. But this season was most likely their last together on the shore.

“I’ll probably have to find a real job,” Ms. Obando said, looking sunburned and sounding a bit forlorn during a brief break from hustling between tables. “You can’t live on the beach forever.”

She said she would miss watching lifeguard races on Friday nights and evenings out at the Princeton, Avalon’s hot spot for 20-something night life. Downtown Stone Harbor is lacking as far as night life is concerned, she noted dryly.

But leaving Stone Harbor will also be a release, in a way. The town may be a summer getaway, but many people like Ms. Obando, who uses her summer job to pay for tuition, find that Stone Harbor can be a grind. When asked the emotion she felt most strongly on her last night at Solé, she responded without having to think, “relief.”

Stone Harbor, N.J. Tom Gilardi, a 20-year-old junior member of the town’s police force, was counting the days until Labor Day, when he will head back to school. In Stone Harbor, even the law enforcement is seasonal.

Mr. Gilardi, a student at Burlington County College in Burlington, N.J., said he was tiring of the job’s mundane tasks like foot patrol, writing parking tickets and opening car doors for people who locked their keys inside. Besides, he still has another round of academy training to go before he can carry a pistol. The only weapons on his belt were a baton and pepper spray.

“It’s repetitive,” he said. “You go out, walk around, talk to business owners, check your meters and wait for something to happen. I won’t mind getting back to class.”

Most of his friends are already gone, and he said there were little ways that made it seem like summer was over in Stone Harbor. “You can already tell the seasons are changing,” he said. “The sun doesn’t set on 96th Street anymore.”

LAST Sunday, Charles and Doris Mapes sat in the sand, their chairs facing the ocean so they could catch the last bit of sun before driving back home to Lawrence Township, N.J. While most of Stone Harbor may be packing up, the Mapeses are not letting summer slip away without a fight. They plan to return to their house on 98th Street a few more times before the weather turns cold.

“Why would you want to leave this?” Ms. Mapes, 70, asked, her arms outstretched toward the open ocean. “It’s hard to go home to the normal routine of life. You can get very lazy down here.”

But the Mapeses know they can’t stall winter forever.

“It’s sad to see summer come to an end — always,” she said. “It happens every year, and it always comes too soon.”

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Money Surplus

High property values equal unwieldy surpluses for some libraries
8/19/2007, 5:02 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press

AVALON, N.J. (AP) — Far from crying poverty, public libraries in some well-to-do New Jersey shore towns may be getting too much of a good thing.

The booming shore real-estate market combined with a 120-year-old state law that allocates a fixed percentage of local taxes to libraries has created a surplus that has reached in the millions in some cases.

In Avalon, where taxable real estate has tripled since 2004, $2.3 million will go the town's library this year. In Ocean City, officials expect a library surplus of more than $4 million.

Now, town officials want legislators to modify the law so they can transfer some of the surplus to addressing other municipal expenses. The New Jersey State League of Municipalities plans to continue pushing for a change.

"Some of these towns, their library systems cannot possibly spend the amount of money they're collecting," William Dressel Jr., the league's executive director, told the Philadelphia Inquirer for Sunday newspapers.

But library advocates warn that the law is a necessary fail-safe because it stops politicians from cutting library budgets.

The real-estate slowdown may act as a natural regulator. And some local officials point out that library revenues fall under a state cap on how much property taxes can be raised, currently at four percent. The more towns raise for libraries, the less wiggle room they could have under the cap.

___

Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.philly.com

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Turtles

Dredge spoils could become terrapin nursery in Cape May County
By BRIAN IANIERI Staff Writer, (609) 463-6713
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Sunday, July 29, 2007

AVALON — Researchers are experimenting with sand dredged from the ocean floor to determine whether diamondback terrapins will use it to lay eggs.
Their aim is to find places for turtles to nest other than road embankments — with their four-wheel hazards. But the idea has sparked interest in more than turtle researchers. Another use for the materials may prove fruitful when officials search for places to stock the spoils after dredging waterways.

The Wetlands Institute in Middle Township, Cape May County, received a $100,000 grant from the state Department of Transportation’s I BOAT NJ program. The Richard Stockton College Coastal Research Center is also involved.

Wood said the research involves looking at potential dredge materials for nesting as well as potential sites for it to be placed to draw turtles away from the highways.

“This is really early preliminary stuff. Who knows what’s going to happen?” said Roger Wood, director of research at the Wetlands Institute and a zoology professor at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in Galloway Township

Over the years, development on barrier islands and construction of roads through salt marshes changed the habits of diamondback terrapins. As humans developed the land over the past century, terrapins developed different nesting habitats: seeking road embankments to lay their eggs above the high-water line.

The Wetlands Institute is close to documenting its 7,000th confirmed road kill in almost 20 years of recordkeeping, Wood said.

Their efforts also include extracting eggs from crushed turtles and incubating them, as well as erecting mesh fencing along some roads to keep the turtles from crossing during nesting season.

But the experiments with alternate nesting habitats seek to remove roads from the equation.

The concept sparked Avalon’s interest.

The borough plans extensive dredging of its harbors, lagoons and bays over the next decade.

Dredging produce large quantities of materials, said Stewart Farrell, of the Coastal Research Center.

“The problem is, where do you put it?” he said.

Avalon is proposing to the state Department of Environmental Protection transforming a dredge disposal island it owns and building a road to it.

The road, Avalon Borough Engineer Tom Thornton said, would make it easier and more cost effective to remove dredge materials from the island once they dry.

As a result, it could be used as a recycling center for dredge materials. Otherwise, the island would be almost stocked to capacity after dredging this fall, Thornton said.

But their plan involves disturbing three acres of wetlands to build the road and then reducing the size of the existing dredge disposal island to compensate for the environmental impact.

The proposed project will also require environmental and wildlife studies, officials said.

Avalon Mayor Martin Pagliughi said proposing the area on Macchia’s Island as turtle nesting habitat is part of their application to the DEP to make the project more appealing.

“How are they going to say no to turtles?” he said.

Macchia’s Island is a pear-shaped island and existing dredge-disposal site located between Avalon and Middle Township.

Middle Township has also supported the idea for dredging it plans near Avalon Manor, which is in Middle Township.

To e-mail Brian Ianieri at The Press:BIanieri@pressofac.com