Application was approved. (Like we had a choice?)
Lots of talk about Parking and Traffic problems.
Staff at the Blog has done our own study, and found that this will not cause any parking or traffic problems on Blossom Cove Road in Middletown. So, all is good.
Well it is super ugly, but a least it’s oversized.
Belmar has lost its charm.
Avon, Spring Lake, Sea Girt, Manasquan would never change their landscape to appease greedy developers.
Some towns have been very innovative. Spring Lake is converting their old Wells Fargo Bank building.
Spring Lake preserved it a historic building within weeks of Belmar demolishing our bank building. That wasn’t a coincidence. If the Belmar Democrats and Belmar Republicans could escape their bubbles of control and dyadic thinking, we’d have been making the correct development moves over the past few administrations. Instead we ignored the necessary contributions that were supposed to be allotted to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund established during the Pringle Administration, gave away borough leases like the 35 year agreement with Chef’s International for Marina Grille for pennies on the dollar when Matt Doherty was mayor and his neighbor growing up in Edison was the CEO of Chef’s International, and then the Walsifer Administration ran on controlling development and exclaimed soon after getting elected that a ferry to NYC direct from Belmar among a 400 plus car parking garage and massive Seaport Redevelopment was the order of the day.
Now the same three are positioning themselves for control over the mistakes that they seeded and the present administration was forced by the State and the Fair Share Housing Act to remedy with forceful measures as the can was kicked down the road for years and the day of reckoning finally arrived. They are all counting on our lack of the facts of history to regain control, and the lack of knowledge of the newer residents after the turnover of homes from those who’ve left and those whom only recently arrived. Now we’ll raise the population by 13-15% within a four block radius over the coming handful of years and an “independent study” by a “traffic engineer” from Dynamic Traffic of Lake Como which is owned by the current Belmar Mayor’s Campaign Manager’s husband said that it will have minimal impact on transit and we should trust him because he lives nearby and wouldn’t want to see that happen and the board the mayor sits on approved the first development on Route 35 without an entrance on Route 35.
Belmar is a microcosm of what’s been going on at the State and National Government levels for the same period in the past few decades and there’s no end in sight or so those in control with their egos, narcissism, and lack of common sense and dedicated civic work believe, but the world is finally waking up to the corruption, lies, and cronyism at each of these levels. Soon they’ll fade away if enough Belmartians educate themselves and each other to their years of BS and reframed history or else the residents will continue to suffer for their years of arrogance towards the citizenry they were elected to represent, but failed to in the most sensical of ways, because of their ignorance. They can’t lead. They refuse to follow, and they still won’t get out of the way.
We have no self esteem. The loud minority always argues “it’s better than what was there!” But that gets us here.
We can’t keep rewarding bad property owners and greedy developers.