Preserve Avalon's Dunes

Defending Avalon's high dunes
As beach mansions rise, there are fears about this unique coastline. A house going up now has 40 rooms. Some ask: "How big is big enough?"
By Jacqueline L. Urgo
Posted on Sun, Jul. 16, 2006
Inquirer Staff Writer

AVALON, N.J. - The high dunes of Avalon, a mostly undeveloped stretch of sandy grassland and woods thick with bayberry, Atlantic white cedar, and pines that soar 50 feet above the beachfront, are unique along the southern New Jersey shore.
Mostly by luck, Avalon's high dunes have survived the development that has all but erased similar strands that once lined the entire 127-mile coastline.
Until now.
The high dunes of Avalon are under attack.
It turns out that the same characteristics that environmentalists and local officials want to protect - beauty, uniqueness, and a buffer for the coastline - have attracted investors to this upscale Cape May County municipality who want to build dune beach mansions.
A Pennsylvania potato-chip magnate is building a 14,000-square-foot beach house - six times bigger than the average U.S. home - on Avalon's high dunes. Another landowner has applied to the borough zoning office to build a 4,200-square-foot house two blocks away. Plans for a 10,000-square-foot house in another area of the dunes were recently withdrawn, but may be resubmitted later, officials said.
"We have an incredible national treasure here in our high dunes, and there doesn't seem to be any mechanism in place to make sure they remain," said Elaine Scattergood, who can still remember when many of the paved streets on the island were dirt roads.
"We've seen big houses here for a long time, but they are getting bigger and bigger, really to the detriment of everything else around them," said Michael Collins, whose roots in the town date to the 1940s, when his father was a beach patrol captain here.
"The question becomes, 'How big is big enough?' Do people really need summer houses that are this big and use up this much of a natural resource?"
Scattergood and Collins are among those who have organized a 100-member group of locals and summer residents called Save Avalon Dunes.
The group, Scattergood said, asks local officials: "How did this happen?"
Why, wondered Scattergood, did regulations protecting the dunes give way to the gigantic home being built by Michael Rice, president of Utz Quality Foods?
Environmentalists say that without stronger regulations, development could gobble an additional 10 percent of Avalon's remaining high dunes - the last ones in New Jersey - over the next decade. Unlike most coastal dunes, high dunes rise steeply to a height of 30 to 50 feet above sea level.
Local officials are so concerned by the citizens' questions that they have hired a public relations firm to answer criticism, said Neil Hensel, chairman of Avalon's planning and zoning boards.
"I don't think there is a single person on this island who doesn't understand that these dunes are our lifeline," Hensel said. "But people come here, make a big investment, and want to use that asset. In many ways, our hands are tied by the regulations that we have.
"If they don't need a variance to do what they want to do, then we are often in a position where we can't say no."
Although large, expensive beach homes are nothing new in Avalon - the $1 million-plus median home price here is among the highest at the Shore - the 40-room dune-top mansion being built by the potato-chip heir is.
Rice runs his family's Utz snack company in Hanover, Pa., which was started by his grandparents in 1921. His wife, Jane, is vice president of marketing.
The couple also own a 7,000-square-foot house on the beach at 38th Street that has an assessed value of $8.75 million.
Six years ago, the Rices paid $3.5 million for a 1.2-acre lot in the 5200 block of Dune Drive.
Their first plan was for a 20,000-square-foot home - even bigger than the one they're now building. The Avalon Environmental Commission, which oversees the town's natural resources, rejected that plan, citing the home's size and effect on dunes and wildlife.
The Rices appealed the decision to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which regulates some new oceanfront construction. The DEP upheld Avalon's ruling.
The Rices then appealed to a state administrative law judge, who strongly advised the DEP to settle with the couple.
"It's not often we see an application for a project the size of what the Rices originally proposed building on the site. The scope was unbelievable," said Mark Mauriello, assistant DEP commissioner of land use management.
Mauriello said the DEP chose to settle instead of fight because of the costs of the continued litigation and the risk of losing. The DEP couldn't argue, as it usually does in coastal construction litigation, that the house would be unsafe, because the high dunes protect it from the tide line, Mauriello said.
The Rices asserted their property rights, arguing that they have a right to build on their land.
In 2001, the DEP and the Rices compromised. The couple could build a 14,000-square-foot house on a 9,000-square-foot piece of land. They also would file deed restrictions on the rest of their property that forever prevent further construction.
Mauriello said the settlement wasn't "everything we could have hoped for" and involves destroying some dunes on the Rices' property. He said the compromise is "very big" in preserving the rest of the property.
Neither the Rices nor their lawyer would comment.
In April, the Rices began construction of their three-level house with 40 rooms, 15 bathrooms, and maids' quarters.
Mauriello said a landscape mapping project completed by the state in 2002 and new regulations protecting Avalon's high dunes would give the DEP "sharper teeth" in negotiating future residential development along the coastline.
Avalon officials say they also plan to vigilantly protect the remaining dunes.
"We do have these historic dunes that are unique to Avalon, and my personal feeling is that when you take one shovelful of sand out of them, you are negatively affecting the entire infrastructure," Avalon Borough Councilman Dave Ellenberg said. "We have to do whatever we can to preserve them."