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Aaron Morrill

A Notorious Developer Has the Last Laugh — Part III

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This is the third of a four-part series. For part two, click here.

 

Magical Zoning

Mocco was no stranger to reversals. He’d come through bankruptcies, an indictment, and a suspension of his law license. His history was one of forging ahead, pushing the envelope, and wearing down the opposition. Yes, the Board of Adjustment ruling on 245 Newark had been a setback. But perhaps with a little luck, things would turn out differently at 333 Grand Street.

As it turned out, luck was just around the corner.

The massive Liberty Harbor Redevelopment Plan assigned each building one of five classifications dictating the major design parameters like height, internal configuration, number of elevators and size and location of parking facilities. Those classifications would end up working in Mocco’s favor.

At the July 24, 2018, Planning Board hearing, everyone, including Mocco and his attorney McCann, was operating under the assumption that 333 Grand Street had an “L” classification. That meant that the building could have a penthouse but that it could be no larger than 5,815 square feet in size and had to be invisible to someone standing across the street. At 12,013 square feet — more than double its approved size — Mocco’s penthouse was way too big. It was right there in front of you, plain as day, as you stood next to the diner across the street and looked up.

With virtually no cards to play, Mocco had agreed in several emails to the mayor to demolish it in exchange for the temporary certificate of occupancy. This willingness surprised most people.  The cost of taking it down would be substantial.

Attorney James McCann speaking to Planning Board

In a February 2019 meeting with McCann, Taylor, Jersey City’s zoning officer, realized that 333 Grand Street had been misclassified. In fact, under its correct “M” classification, a penthouse wasn’t allowed at all. But there was a potential workaround, and Taylor seized on it.  Sure, it would be stretching some common architectural definitions to the point of meaninglessness, but without the workaround, Mocco’s entire penthouse would be toast.

Under the Redevelopment Plan, an M class building could have an “attic story.” If you didn’t read the definition too carefully, it might be possible to call the penthouse an attic. And in an April 17 letter to McCann, that’s what Taylor did.

Like magic, Mocco’s penthouse had morphed into an attic. Now there was no need for demolition or rebuilding. This was the break Mocco had been waiting for.

On October 29, 2019, armed with Taylor’s letter, McCann brought the matter back to the Jersey City Planning Board to argue that Taylor was right — that the 12,013 square foot penthouse, sitting like a cabana on top of the roof, was really an “attic story.” As such, no demolition or alteration would be necessary, since the setback requirement for an attic story was only ten feet, and Mocco’s massive penthouse was set back that far.

The pitch wouldn’t be easy though. In its collective mind, the board had turned a blind eye to Mocco’s 40 deviations because he’d agreed to take down and rebuild the massive penthouse. Now, it seemed, he was reneging on the deal. He was going to make fools of them.

McCann did what good lawyers do when defending the guilty. He acknowledged Mocco’s culpability and suggested that Mocco had now seen the error of his ways. Mocco “created [the] mess,” McCann admitted. But he added that Mocco had paid the $582,000 fine. “The applicant’s trying his best to make amends here.”

The public speakers were having none of it. Tony Sandkamp argued that allowing Mocco to ignore the rules would send a dangerous signal to other developers considering breaking the rules. They would notice that the board “just walked back a decision they made the year before.”

Irene Barnaby, treasurer of the Village Neighborhood Association, spoke.

“I just feel like this sets a terrible precedent. It gives the wrong message to other developers where they can come into Jersey City and say, ‘You know what? I’m just going to throw on another amenity floor. I’m going to go on and increase my density even though I wasn’t approved because all I have to do is come in, spend a couple hours in the evening, hire a few attorneys and a few experts, and I’m good to go.’”

Corinne Mulrenan added, “People don’t take you seriously, just so you know. The little guy would never get away with this crap.”

Drawing of penthouse. Red line indicates approved plan. Green line indicated penthouse “as built” by Mocco.

But it wasn’t just the public speakers who lashed out. Commissioner Edwardo Torres ripped into Mocco: “To come here, from a developer from the ’70s as big as this developer is, and to allow these things to continuously happen… it’s been turning my stomach… it gets me nauseous to listen to this from this developer. We sat here and made an agreement in 2018. He comes back to change that agreement…if it was up to me, we’d get rid of the balconies, and we’d get rid of the EIFS [exterior insulation and finish systems], and we’d get rid of that top…It is not an attic.”

Board chairman Langston agreed. “If we’re going to talk about approving a penthouse that wasn’t supposed to be built like this, I want the EIFS back. I want the balconies back.”

Mocco went on to lose the vote 5-3.  He had promised to demolish the penthouse when the board  waived the nearly 40 other violations. He couldn’t back out now, or so they thought.

How to Greenwash a Penthouse

If anyone on the Planning Board thought that their vote was the last they’d hear from Mocco, they didn’t know whom they were dealing with. Litigation had almost always worked to Mocco’s benefit. Why not use it again.

On February 20, 2020, Mocco filed suit against the Planning Board. He claimed its actions were “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.” If zoning officer Taylor said the penthouse was an attic, who was the Planning Board to argue?

And indeed, the Planning Board’s attorney doesn’t appear to have argued — at least not for long. In August he agreed to a settlement that would let Mocco keep his penthouse—as an “amenity attic.” But to make the concession more palatable to the community, Mocco would need to make a number of “wellness and sustainability improvements” to the “attic.” They would include converting a storage room to a “tele-conference room,” adding air purifiers and two additional windows, adding UV lights, and putting a community garden, a green wall, a green surface, and a barbecue with tables and chairs on the roof outside. In a side agreement, Mocco would have to forfeit the “attic story” on a future building on Morris Street.

Tony Sandkamp

On August 25, the case came back to the Planning Board to give the public a chance to weigh in on the settlement.  McCann methodically laid out the “wellness and sustainability” features they would add, and he again called witnesses to provide their justifications for the penthouse’s being allowed to be reclassified as an attic.

One such witness alleged that the wellness and sustainability measures would “advance the public welfare for future tenants and existing tenants.” There was no mention of a public benefit for the public.

The board listened to McCann’s witnesses with the deflated affect of a team that knows the game is lost. There were a few non-confrontational questions, but otherwise the fight was gone; the fix was in.

When it came time for the public to speak, Tony Sandkamp was there again to weigh in, however quixotically.

“It floors members of the community to think that a developer can just do what they want…if we allow developers to do this, we are essentially telling them ‘do whatever you want, it doesn’t make any difference’…if you run a city that way, you slowly degrade the respect that those developers have for the institutions that make that city viable…if a little guy who’s building a four family adds three feet to a rooftop structure, he’s gonna have to take it down…you can’t have two different governments for people who are wealthy and people who are just regular people.”

The votes were tallied.

Planning Board commissioner Eduardo Torres was the last gasp of resistance. It “hits my gut like a big insult,“ he said. “We should bring everything back to the table and start over.”

Board chairman Langston was the last to vote. He spoke with an air of weary resignation.

“It wouldn’t feel like summer if this wasn’t in front of us again. The only comment I have is given the determination from Nick Taylor, our zoning officer, that the attic is a permitted use, and I’ve taken an oath to uphold the MLUL [Municipal Land-Use Law], so I don’t think I have really any other choice but to vote ‘aye.’”

The final vote was 6–1 in Mocco’s favor.  Mocco had outlasted and outlitigated the board. He had gambled that he’d get away flouting the zoning rules.  And by hook or by crook he had.

Coming in the final installment, the City Council signs off, and local architects and pols weigh in.

Aaron Morrill

A Notorious Developer Has the Last Laugh — Part II

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This is the second of a four-part series. For part one, click here.

 

Hold Your Nose

That summer Mocco was also putting up a five-story building at 245 Newark Ave. in the Village.

Neighbors reported debris and pieces of foam raining down from the building. The foam blew into nearby lobbies and accumulated in the storm drains. As it turned out, Mocco was covering the building with the same EIFS he was using at 333 Grand St. And like at Grand St., the use of EIFS in the redevelopment area was prohibited.

Architect and President of the Village Neighborhood Association, Eric Hofmann, says the facade was “appalling.”  But he noticed something else about the building. “It looked taller than what was approved.”

Hofmann was on to something. Four apartment owners in the “Cheesecake Lofts” building next door realized that Mocco’s building was now blocking views from their roof deck. With a little investigating it soon became apparent that 245 Newark Ave. was seven stories high, rather than the approved five. Mocco had essentially doubled the height of two of the floors in order to give the apartments on those floors interior “mezzanines.”

In addition, Mocco had more than doubled the size of a retail space, hoping that he could create a massive restaurant along the lines of his Zeppelin Hall in Liberty Harbor North.

When locals confronted Mocco at a Village Neighborhood Association meeting, he was blasé. One person in attendance, who asked to remain anonymous, remembers Mocco saying in substance, “My guys came to me and said these apartments would be great with mezzanines, so I said ‘go ahead.’”

Mocco tried to spin the changes as benefits to the community.

Meanwhile, back at 333 Grand St., Mocco was forging ahead with construction despite repeated assurances from the city that it would issue a “stop-work” order.  Mayor Fulop told the Downtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations that the city “won’t be allowing any occupancy of the building with CO [certificate of occupancy] or anything of the sort until resolved.”

And with pressure from the community building, Nick Taylor, Jersey City’s zoning officer, said he would assess a daily fine of $2,000 for Mocco’s violations at 333 Grand St.

If threats of a work stoppage and fines were a major concern for Mocco, it isn’t evident from any of the documents that Jersey City Times has been able to review. Instead, it appears that Mocco was focused on convincing the city that it should retroactively sign off on his “deviations” to the plans and give him a temporary CO that would allow him to begin renting out apartments.  This would take some good lawyering and some sympathetic ears, but it was doable as Mocco had used legal proceedings to great effect in the past.  Why should this time be any different?

The strategy quickly paid off. On April 30, Zoning Officer Taylor wrote to Mocco with great news on 245 Newark Ave.: The mezzanines, which had added the equivalent of two stories of height, didn’t count as stories at all. For legal purposes, Taylor wrote, the building was still only five stories. Mocco had dodged another bullet.

When the VNA caught wind of Taylor’s letter, it hired local attorney Cynthia Hadjiyannis to file an appeal with the board of adjustment, the body with the power to review the zoning officer’s interpretation of the law.

The board heard the VNA’s appeal on July 19, 2018. Hadjiyannis’s expert witness, architect Cecilia De Leon, explained that Taylor had miscalculated. The mezzanines did in fact count as stories under the applicable law, making 245 Newark a seven-story building after all.  This was on a site zoned for five-story buildings.

245 Newark Ave.

The board agreed. Its decision was scathing in its bluntness. “The Board does not uphold the zoning officer’s determination or any part of his determination.”

Mocco was ordered to remove the EIFS façade, subdivide the massive retail space, and close up the mezzanines to make them useless. He also reportedly agreed to pay Cheesecake Lofts $100,000 for the loss of its residents’ views and had to remove the roof deck at 245 Newark.

Five days later, Mocco went before the planning board to plead his case on 333 Grand St.

At the outset, the developer made an important concession to “restore the penthouse … to what had been originally approved in 2015.” But as to the other changes — which included adding balconies and a swimming pool, enlarging the building’s footprint and using EIFS —Mocco was holding firm.

One of his witnesses testified that EIFS had improved over the years and should be allowed in Liberty Harbor North.  Other witnesses testified that the other changes, unapproved though they were, were consistent with the goals of the redevelopment plan.

The community wasn’t buying it. Cecilia De Leon told the board, “This is a seasoned developer with many projects in the city, and he has done this before and will undoubtedly try to do it again.” Architect and planner Gerry Bakirtjy added, “This is probably the most experienced developer in Jersey City. They’ve been doing projects for 35 years. This process of submitting plans, getting approval, ignoring plans, then asking for forgiveness seems to be the course of conduct of this applicant.”

Mocco’s attorney, James McCann, pleaded that the board set its emotions aside. Referring to Mocco, McCann said, “I’m asking you to effectively hold your nose regarding the conduct of any developer.” And alluding to the impending fine, he said that Mocco would be adequately punished by “another arm of the city.” Mocco’s agreement to rebuild the penthouse to its approved, smaller size was “an act of contrition and apology.”

Most of the commissioners condemned Mocco’s behavior. But with his promise to demolish and rebuild a smaller penthouse and the assurance that he would end up paying a substantial fine, the board held its collective nose and voted 5–2 to let his 40-odd deviations stand.

While Mocco had won a partial victory, a new problem presented itself: Taylor had made both the payment of Mocco’s fines—which now came to $582,000—and the demolition of the penthouse pre-requisites to getting a temporary CO.

Without a CO, he would be unable to start renting out apartments and generating income. So four days after the hearing, Mocco fired off an email to Mayor Fulop asking that he overrule Taylor and issue the CO immediately. He said he would pay the fine “today.” In an email four weeks later, he assured the mayor that the “penthouse structure on the 13th floor…will be removed by June 2019.”

Mocco’s emails worked. The pre-condition that he take down the penthouse before receiving the CO was dropped. He could start renting right away. Fortuitously, he had also bought the penthouse more time.

In September, a representative of the Van Vorst Park Association wrote to Fulop expressing concern that by giving Mocco his CO it had lost the leverage it needed to get him to dismantle the penthouse. The mayor explained that it was in the city’s interest to have both Mocco’s compliance and 333 Grand St. on the tax roles.  “We feel 100% confident we are going to achieve both.”

For part three of the series, click here.

Aaron Morrill

A Notorious Developer Has the Last Laugh — Part I

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The case of two Downtown buildings completed last year by the notorious developer Peter Mocco has raised serious questions about the city’s commitment to enforcing its own zoning laws. Without approval, Mocco added floors, a swimming pool, changed building materials, and made myriad other substantial changes to the two luxury apartment buildings with little concern that the city would stop him or that he would face serious consequences.

That Mocco was able to flout Jersey City’s zoning laws with little fear of repercussions has caused consternation among neighborhood groups and at least some public officials.

Foam Depot

On July 1, 2017, Tony Sandkamp was working in his garden on Bright Street near Van Vorst Park when he noticed white particles falling through the air and onto his plants. “It was like snow in summer,” he recounts.  It was “all over the street and sidewalks.” A cabinetmaker by profession, Sandkamp quickly figured out that the particles were Styrofoam and most likely coming from a nearby construction site.

With a few friends Sandkamp walked over to the site, 333 Grand Street. “We saw guys on scaffold cutting foam. We said, ‘Hey listen, you’re covering our entire neighborhood with foam.’ The workers said ‘we’ll take care of it.’ They sent a couple of people over to sweep our street with brooms.”

Sandkamp would soon learn that the foam was actually something called “EIFS,” an inexpensive product used by builders to create a faux brick exterior on a building. EIFS wasn’t approved for use in Liberty Harbor North. Indeed, the plans for 333 Grand approved by the building department called for the use of more expensive and longer lasting brick veneer. But EIFS has one major advantage over the more durable brick veneer: It is cheap. Locals came to call the building “Foam Depot.”

As it turned out, the use of EIFS was only one of the forty-some building code violations that would soon be lodged against Mocco in connection with the construction of 333 Grand Street.  Among his many other unauthorized changes, Mocco had also added a swimming pool and balconies and more than doubled the size of the penthouse from 5,815 to 12,013 square feet.

These unauthorized changes saved Mocco money and simultaneously added substantially to the building’s value.

A Developer’s Checkered History

Peter Mocco came to Jersey City colorful reputation in tow. In the 70s, he and his brother, Joe, had run North Bergen: Peter had been mayor and Joe town clerk and Democratic party boss. Their influence continued into the 80s only to come to a sudden end in 1989 when Joe was sentenced to 20 years in jail in connection with an illegal garbage-dumping scheme.

In 1992, Peter’s business partner, Jeff Zak, was sentenced to three years in prison for attempting to tamper with the jury in Joe’s trial.

Peter had had his own brushes with the law. His law license had been suspended for one year after he allegedly forged the name of both a business associate and his brother Joe on a legal document.

At one point New Jersey education officials implicated Peter in the firing of seven teachers who had refused to do political work for him. He faced allegations of voter fraud for his role in a 1976 Democratic congressional primary. He was also the subject of a lengthy grand jury investigation regarding his fundraising.

But Mocco had also developed a reputation as a charmer. He was known to serenade senior citizen voters with his guitar. Today Mocco comes across “as a kindly grandfather” according to one person who knows him.

Asked about his background, Mocco would only tell Jersey City Times that he “served as Mayor of North Bergen from May 1971 to May 1979” and that he “retired from all municipal politics and Township municipal activity after May 1979.”

“I went from being a public figure to a private citizen some forty some years ago,” said Mocco.

From politics, Mocco moved on to development. In 1985 he bought the 70 acres that would become Liberty Harbor North from the Jersey City Employees’ Retirement Fund for the princely sum of $880,000, a pittance in today’s prices.

In 1994, following a downturn in the real estate market, Mocco filed for personal bankruptcy. It became one of the largest such cases in New Jersey history with one creditor claiming Mocco owed his firm $70 million. But ever the survivor, Mocco managed to hold on to Liberty Harbor North.

In the meantime, he racked up multiple code violations involving an un-permitted parking lot and the infamous and now defunct “Sand Bar” restaurant. Twice, Mocco sued Jersey City over code-related issues; twice he lost.

Notwithstanding this history of violations and lawsuits, in February 2001 the Jersey City Planning Board gave Mocco the go-ahead on his ambitious plans for Liberty Harbor North. In what appeared to be a more enlightened approach to development and at the urging of local officials, Mocco brought in Miami-based “starchitect” Andres Duany, a respected critic of urban sprawl and advocate for the “new urbanism.”

The Liberty Harbor North Redevelopment Plan that emerged breathlessly trumpeted a new vision. “When completed, the neighborhood of Liberty Harbor North will perhaps be the most thorough exemplification to date of the principles of the New Urbanism. Due to its high-density housing, its multiple transit connections, its pedestrian-oriented mixed-use streetscape, and its inner-city location, this development is likely to serve as a text book model for healthy urban growth in the future,” read the development’s marketing materials.

The vision didn’t last long. With the real estate market still somewhat depressed from the 2008 financial crisis, Mocco had just the excuse he needed to argue for changes to the plan—changes that would increase the value of his property. Instead of a low-rise townhouse model, Mocco pressed for the right to put up what he said were the more popular buildings of up to 55 stories. In other words, Mocco vastly increased the number of stories he would build and profit from.

Then-Councilman Steven Fulop argued against the changes saying that Jersey City taxpayers should be compensated for increasing the value of the developers’ properties. But in the end, Mocco, aided by the unions, prevailed. Apparently Mocco didn’t return the favor. Today, the unions regularly bring out their inflatable rat to protest his use of non-union labor on the very high-rise buildings they fought for.

Mocco’s legal entanglements weren’t over. In 2013, he filed for personal bankruptcy again when a jury determined that he owed $21 million for 3.4 acres of land along the waterfront. He ultimately settled but not before almost bankrupting the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency. In another mammoth case, this one involving a Liberty Harbor mortgage, a Superior Court judge accused Mocco of “scheming,” “obfuscation” and “deception.”

Afterward, then-JCRA Executive Director Bob Antonicello quipped, “No one has been given more by the City of Jersey City for less than Peter Mocco and has done so little with it.”

Mocco’s reputation for skullduggery is such that Councilman-at-Large Rolando Lavarro recently outed Ward F Councilman Jermaine Robinson for having confessed that he wanted to “follow in Mocco’s footsteps.”

Thus, when the nearby Van Vorst Park Association learned of Mocco’s un-approved changes to 333 Grand Street, it didn’t pull any punches. It fired off a letter to Mayor Fulop charging that Mocco’s actions demonstrated “a blatant disregard by the developer and [the building’s] designers toward Jersey City, its zoning laws and the community.” The VVPA asked for a stop-work order and that no further approvals be granted. Both Fulop and the construction official, Raymond Meyer, said work on the building would stop.

But the work didn’t stop.

This is the first of a four-part series. For part two, click here.

Updated 3.1.21

Jersey City Times Staff

Editorial: The Council Should Vote No on Steel Tech

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Tonight the City Council is scheduled to vote on ordinance 20-103, amending the Morris Canal Redevelopment Plan to create the “Berry Lane North Zone.” The amendment would allow for the construction of a gargantuan 361-unit luxury-housing complex known as “Morris Canal Park Manor” on three acres of land in Bergen-Lafayette formerly occupied by the defunct Steel Technologies facility. If this ordinance passes, it would constitute one of the most shameful developer giveaways in recent memory.  The City Council should reject this ordinance and return the plan to City Planning to craft a project that respects the wishes of the community and attempts to honor the longstanding policy of making this land part of Berry Lane Park.

As we laid out in an article on December 15th, the land in question was slated to become part of Berry Lane Park. The “Acquisition Map” of the 1999 Morris Canal Redevelopment Plan shows the parcel as one “To Be Acquired.” As recently as 2018, plans were afoot to buy the property on the city’s behalf.  An appraisal valued the land at approximately $3 million. The city applied for grants to buy it.  The grants were approved.

What happened? Bergen-Lafayette became the next hot neighborhood, property values soared and the property owner saw an opportunity to make a killing.

Let’s start with just what a valuable property the “Steel Tech” site became.  A back of the envelope calculation tells you why the developer wants to build this project rather than sell it to the city through eminent domain. For argument’s sake let’s assume that each of the 361 units is 750 square feet in size. Realtor.com tells us that upscale apartments in the neighborhood sell for $556 per square foot. That means that each apartment will have a value of approximately $417,000. The apartments – not including any retail and office units – will have a total market value of over $150 million. With help from the city and loans from the bank, investors have turned land they could have only gotten $3 million for two years ago into an extraordinarily valuable asset.

There’s nothing wrong with making money in America. The question is to what degree a municipality should relinquish control over land it has the legal right to use for a public good (like a park) to enrich real estate investors?  And if it does so, what should it get in return?

Proponents of the project claim that its “community benefits” more than justify rezoning the land to allow for a 17-story luxury monolith in a low-rise neighborhood.

Let’s start with the “benefit” of affordable housing. According to the plan, 5% of the units would qualify as affordable. That’s a paltry 18 units, the bare minimum under the city’s new inclusionary zoning ordinance and an amount that will do almost nothing to alleviate the affordability crisis besetting Jersey City. It imposes an almost inconsequential cost on the developer of such a large apartment building.

Then, proponents argue, the developer must build a 22,000 square foot recreation center/basketball court to be deeded to the city. So far so good. But the project has been sold has offering much more, including a rock-climbing wall, a sauna, dance studios, music studios, and a food concession. However, the developer isn’t required to pay for or operate any of these. When asked who would, Councilman Jermaine Robinson, the council’s primary booster for the project, pledged to “raise money” for it. Not reassuring.

And then what about the 14,000-square foot “Neighborhood Commercial Facility,” 40% of which will become space for ten minority owned businesses at below market rates?  Those only last ten years, after which they become market rate.

Finally, the project includes a 20,000 square foot outdoor public space that can be used for farmers markets and other public and private events. Who can criticize a public space for community events?

The problem is that the public will, in the end, have use of less than a third of the 3.3 acre parcel. The rest will go to the developer, land that was originally meant to be part of Berry Lane Park.

In a statement yesterday to the Jersey Journal, administration spokesperson Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione acknowledged that the city received millions in grants to acquire the property. But, she explained, the city couldn’t do so “without hurting taxpayers” since the asking price for the land was several million dollars above what the city had been awarded in grants.

First, the city has yet to account for all the grants. As JCT reported, the city may have already received more than $2 million for this purpose. The council should get this information before taking any action. Second, for the administration to claim that it is concerned here about “hurting taxpayers” when just a few months ago it rushed through a million dollar program to purchase “vertical gardens” to grow organic greens strikes us as a little rich.

Finally, the Bergen-Lafayette community has spoken up loudly against the project. In a section entitled “Community Empowerment,” the 1999 Morris Canal Redevelopment Plan stated “it is recommended that the Redevelopment Area community establish a single community based development coalition for the purpose of community inclusion and the decision making process of the Redevelopment Plan.”   The city needs to live up to these words.