Sale generates optimism
By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6712
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Friday, August 18, 2006

UPPER TOWNSHIP — Employees at B.L. England on Thursday were “cautiously optimistic” about an energy company's offer to buy their power plant.

They feared land speculators would be first in line.

“We're very happy it was a generating company instead of a land developer,” said Charlie Hill, spokesman for Local 210, the plant's union.

The power plant with the familiar lighthouse-like smokestack sits on 298 acres along the Great Egg Harbor Bay. While some of the land no doubt is contaminated, its prime bayfront real estate interested both the state and Township Committee. Atlantic City Electric initially planned to close the plant in December 2007 when stricter pollution regulations go into effect.

“We would have been out of a job,” Hill said.

Instead, company officials met with plant employees early Thursday to announce the tentative sale to Rockland Capital Energy Investments. Their reaction was positive but subdued, Hill said.
Employees have seen similar deals dissolve in the past. NRG Energy backed out of a proposal to buy the plant in 2002.

“It wasn't a real big event (Thursday) because they'd been living in turmoil there since 1998, when the company was going left or right in terms of what they wanted to do,” Hill said. “Employees have been living with the ups and downs. But we're cautiously optimistic.”

The sale includes a fishing pier and a private nine-hole golf course. Bob Williams, who works in the pro shop, said he hopes the new owners will keep the golf course intact.

“It's very popular. A lot of people golf here. I've got a nice job here. Plus, I live in the township, so I benefit in two ways,” he said.

The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club lobbied the state to close the plant. On Thursday, chapter President Jeff Tittel bemoaned news of the plant's extended lifespan.

“I think the people living in the area should buy gas masks,” Tittel said. “There is no such thing as clean coal. It's an oxymoron. It's like saying Ben & Jerry's is for dieters.”

The plant has been one of the state's biggest polluters year after year, according to federal records. Tittel said the plant's emissions are only half the story. He criticized coal mining as equally destructive to the environment.

The plant's pollution has never raised much public concern in Upper Township. The township benefits from more than $6 million per year in state Energy Receipts Taxes for hosting the plant. Local residents pay no municipal property taxes.

Atlantic City Electric, formerly Conectiv Power Delivery, has always been a good corporate neighbor, Township Committeeman Jay Newman said.

“Everyone wants clean air and clean water,” Newman said. “With the sale, the company obviously knows they have an environmental issue. Everyone realizes the benefit. The tax benefits are tremendous.”

Board of Education President Michele Barbieri said she was happy the plant will remain open.

“I think it's wonderful to keep the plant open. The township residents will realize the benefits of having it there,” she said.

Joe Innocente, who owns Beesleys Point Sea-Doo, said he never had any problems with his industrial neighbor.

“I'd rather see it go away, just because it would increase the value of our property. But it doesn't bother us,” he said.

Atlantic City Electric tried twice before to sell the plant to no avail. But coal is becoming a more enticing commodity, said Jason Hayes, spokesman for the American Coal Council, an industry association.

“The price is very stable. The supply is rock solid,” he said. “North America has over 200 years of coal reserves at current (consumption) levels.”

Hayes said coal is far less dependent on socio-political factors than oil. And the price is less erratic than natural gas, he said.

“You don't have to worry about what's going on in the Middle East. Montana is a lot more secure than, say, Baghdad,” he said.

To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com

Upper approves ShopRite planned for Marmora site
From Pressof Atlantic City staff reports
Published: Saturday, August 19, 2006

UPPER TOWNSHIP — The Planning Board on Thursday granted site-plan approval to ShopRite for a new supermarket in Marmora.

This will give township residents two local supermarkets from which to choose. Acme is in Seaville.

As a condition of the approval, the board asked ShopRite to commission a mural on its exterior similar to the one featured by Genuardi's in Egg Harbor Township.

Mayor Richard Palombo, who serves on the board, said the supermarket would boost tax revenues in the township and attract more retail businesses to Marmora.

“It's a cascading effect. You bring in a big anchor store like that, and you have an opportunity to bring in other retail businesses,” he said.
Beside a new supermarket, Marmora could see a new fast-food restaurant, a new pharmacy and smaller retail stores, the mayor said.

Long summer rentals decline, but weekly deals soar in area
By LYNDA COHEN Staff Writer, (609) 272-7257
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Saturday, August 12, 2006

While real estate may be all about location, time seems to play a major role when it comes to summer rentals.

Downbeach towns that generally rent monthly or seasonally are lagging behind cities that rent by the week, according to local real estate agencies.

“We're having the best summer rental season we've ever had, by far,” said Steve Libro, rental manager for Berger Realty in Ocean City, where properties rent by the week. “We probably have 1,000 more leases than last year, and last year was a record for us.”

Libro even received two calls from owners thankful they had no open weeks.

But business is down in Margate, Longport and Ventnor, where longer rentals are the norm because a certificate of occupancy is needed every time someone new moves in.

“We are getting calls from people who want a week or two, but, unfortunately, we can't get owners to accommodate them,” said Cloey Rodriguez, broker manager for Century 21 O'Donnell in Ventnor.
“Anyone can do $2,000 for a week,” she said. “But $20,000 for the whole summer? That's not happening.”

Libro said gas prices don't seem to be hurting his business either, because most visitors are less than a gas tank away. But for Rodriguez, it's once again a matter of time.

Weekly renters typically make just one round trip. But those who rent by the month or for the season still are likely making trips back and forth to work — filling up their tanks each time.

Joe Kelly, Realtor associate at Atlantic Properties in Brigantine thinks gas may be a problem as well. Brigantine does do weekly rentals, but business is still off. Kelly estimated a 25 percent drop from last year.

Doreen Kraemer, who opened a Weichert Realtors in Margate this year, had no comparison for her first summer as an agency owner.

She said things were slow in the spring, but picked up in the middle of summer.

“When it got hot, suddenly people started calling,” Kraemer said. “It was like people waited until the last minute and then were scurrying.”

She did see many requests for weekly rentals toward the end of July. Some owners did oblige. Others lowered their prices. Most of the 30 to 40 properties she deals with had been rented, Kraemer said.

Prudential Fox & Roach in Wildwood also saw a second-half surge.

“What we're seeing is a lot of last-minute calls for the following weeks,” sales associate Lisa Palmer said. “It's definitely a bit of an increase from last year.”

Her owners wait it out rather than lower prices, she said. “With Avalon and Stone Harbor you tend to see owners would rather use the place themselves rather than drop the price.”

In Ocean City, prices are far from dropping, Libro said.

In fact, when someone tried to call for a last-minute deal, they wound up paying more than the asking price because someone else was also interested, he said. “This year, negotiating is not happening.”

With her clients avoiding the hassle of weekly rentals, Rodriguez's Ventnor agency is going the other way.

“What we're trying to do is get some of our summer rental owners to just agree to do a yearly rental,” she said. The demand is there, according to Rodriguez, who said the economy is making year-long leases more attainable than down payments on a home.

To e-mail Lynda Cohen at The Press:LCohen@pressofac.com

Atlantic City Electric agrees to keep two substations in Ocean City
By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6712
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Saturday, August 12, 2006

OCEAN CITY — Atlantic City Electric promised to keep two substations on the island to ensure reliable transmission of electricity.

The company asked City Council this week for an easement after the company learned it inadvertently built a mammoth metal utility pole at 34th Street and Bay Avenue on city property in 2004.

The larger, and some say unsightly, metal poles caught many city officials off guard when they were erected in conjunction with a new substation at 35th Street. The city had little discretion because the 34th Street pole was believed to be on a county right of way.

But the city has since learned it was placed on city property, Business Administrator Richard Deaney said.

In exchange for the easement, Atlantic City Electric said it would:

n Pay the city $25,000 for lighting in the historic district.
n Provide an inventory of street lights by the end of this year.

n List alternatives to meet the city's power requirements for the next 20 years.

Substations do not generate any electricity of their own, Atlantic City Electric spokeswoman Betty Kennedy said. Instead, they serve as buffers to “step up” power leaving a plant or “step down” power before it reaches customers through transformers and smaller distribution lines.

The company originally intended to close the 10th Street substation when the one at 35th Street was built. The new substation was designed with redundancies in mind in the event of accidents or mechanical failures.

But many residents and business owners objected to the substation closure, fearing that a summer blackout would cause an economic catastrophe.

“The company agrees to maintain two separate substations in Ocean City,” Atlantic City Electric lawyer William Serber said Thursday.

Serber said these stations might not always be at their present locations, but the company is committed to keeping two on different parts of the island.

To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com

Picture This
By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6712
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Saturday, August 12, 2006

OCEAN CITY — The city is using some of its Cape May County grant money to build a new park on Ninth Street in the shadow of its year-old mural.

The tiny “Gateway Park” will feature benches and a fountain, an improvement from the dirt lot that hundreds of visitors see every day now, Community Art Project spokeswoman Leslie Skibo said.

“It's going to be a beautiful place. People at City Hall or downtown can come there to have lunch,” she said.

The park will be designed around a fountain that should help drown out some of the traffic noise passing Ninth Street, Skibo said.

It will be the first of several improvements slated for Ninth Street in conjunction with the new Route 52 causeway. Construction of the causeway will raise Ninth Street to prevent road closures from coastal flooding, Council President Jack Thomas said.

The city is spending about $200,000 of the $928,920 the city received from the new recreation grant program Cape May County freeholders launched this year. The city is spending the rest of its county grant money on improvements at the Tennessee Avenue soccer fields and a portable hockey rink.
“One of the things that hasn't been firmed up is what the fountain will look like. If we're going to have a fountain, we should have a drinking fountain there, too,” Thomas said.

The project has some urgency given that the city must spend its grant money in this calendar year, Thomas said.

The city will open construction bids on the project Sept. 5 with an award likely Sept. 14.

The empty lot is used for parking now. The new Gateway Park will retain nine parking spaces. It will have grass and landscaping, Skibo said.

“It will be a little green space which we need,” she said.

The park sits at the foot of the Route 52 causeway, the busiest of four bridges onto the island. As a result, the park has one of the most prominent locations on the island.

“Gateway Park. The name says it all. It will be a huge improvement,” Skibo said.

She has already gotten countless compliments on artist Victor Grasso's mural, which was commissioned by the Community Art Project.

“Plus, we'll have a fountain there. I think it will be the prettiest park in Ocean City.”

To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com

Real Estate Update: Homeowners Scramble for Replacement Insurance
By C.M. Mattessich
8-9-2006
Cape May County Herald

In late July, Shelby Casualty Insurance Company, which wrote thousands of policies covering properties in Cape May and Atlantic counties, was placed in Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Texas and ordered to begin the liquidation process.
On Aug. 3, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance pronounced that all Shelby policies in New Jersey will be terminated effective Aug. 24. According to the state agency, if you are a policyholder of this company, you must immediately seek replacement coverage.

Michelle Clark, manager of personal lines sales at the NIA Group in Cape May, told the Herald that while NIA did not place its own customers with Shelby, it already has received a "flurry" of calls from homeowners who previously used other agencies and now are frantic to get replacement coverage.

Homeowners apparently are in for sticker shock on replacement policies.
Clark told the Herald that the yearly premium for homeowners insurance on an owner-occupied, newly-constructed home will average somewhere around $3,000, whereas the average paid by Shelby policyholders last year was in the neighborhood of $1,200.
The difference, in part, is attributable to last year's Hurricane Katrina, since premiums of all carriers have risen sharply as a result of huge payouts they made to storm victims.

It's also a function of insurers opting out of New Jersey shoreline settings altogether.

"Most open market carriers are not writing coastal risk," Clark said.
Those that do still write the risk are both demanding and costly. Among other things, a carrier can legitimately require that insured structures be constructed pursuant to BOCA code; while new construction may meet that standard, Clark explained, many older homes do not.

A double whammy for current Shelby policyholders is that they must shell out cash immediately for replacement coverage but will have to await refunds of whatever they've already paid to Shelby - if they're successful at all in obtaining unearned premiums.

The New Jersey Insurance Department reported late last week that, as of Dec. 31 of last year, Shelby wrote approximately 11,000 homeowners' policies, 1,200 renters' policies, 3,000 fire policies and 3,000 condominium policies statewide.
Shelby Casualty Insurance Company is a member of Vesta Insurance Group, Inc.
In March, when Vesta's property casualty subsidiaries received a downgrade from industry ratings giant A.M. Best Company (declining from "fair" to "marginal"), Vesta issued a statement that its relative performance was affected by the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons and other declines "attributable to changes in accounting estimates."

According to Jack McMahon, Jr., of Ocean City's McMahon Agency, that agency placed approximately 2,700 current policies with Shelby, including some after the rating downgrade.

When the company's rating dropped, McMahon said, mortgage companies initially balked at the prospect of Shelby policies insuring purchases they were financing. (The typical mortgage lender requires its borrower to carry homeowners insurance coverage, in order to protect its financial stake in the home being purchased with its loan.)

According to McMahon, Vesta then provided "cut through" insurance which, at least temporarily, satisfied the mortgage companies.

"We didn't have another market to put it [coverage] into," McMahon said.
McMahan also said that his agency was directly in touch with Vesta officers, "who told us the company was being sold and that the executive staff was staying put."
Based on the mortgage companies' agreement to go forward, as well as its own interviews with Vesta, said McMahon, his agency continued to place customers with Shelby.

McMahon said his agency is scrambling to find replacement coverage for customers but it's not an easy task.

"Other companies don't want to write in any of the coastal zipcodes," he said.
The New Jersey Insurance Department is posting the names of insurers that write homeowners policies in New Jersey on its website, www.state.nj.us/dobi/shelby, as well as providing instructions for policyholders with claims under Shelby policies.
According to the state agency, claims by and against Shelby policyholders will be paid to a maximum of $300,000 by the New Jersey Property-Liability Insurance Guaranty Association (PLIGA).

Unearned premium claims also must be processed through PLIGA.

Late last week, however, an Alert issued to member agencies by the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of New Jersey (IIABNJ) indicated that considerable confusion exists in these early stages for the submission of claims by Shelby policyholders.

Sands of Time

Labor Day's still weeks away. Savor summer while it's still here.

by Daniel McQuade - PhiladelphiaWeekly.com

When you hit the circle, you know you’re almost at Ocean City.
The circle is MacArthur Circle in Somers Point, N.J., home to a couple cheap motels and the Wal-Mart-sized Circle Liquors. Ocean City is dry, so there are plenty of liquor stores just over the bridge. They’re all packed just before closing.

Originally known as Peck’s Beach, Ocean City was founded by four Methodist ministers in 1879, who built a Christian retreat on the island. It’s a town rooted in simple, restrictive Christian tradition.

Ocean City businesses couldn’t open on Sundays until the ’80s. Men used to have to swim with their shirts on. Games of chance are still banned on the beach—which requires tags.

Ocean City’s reliance on tradition has made it the most family-friendly resort in South Jersey, a place that combines the boardwalk of Wildwood with the upscale beach houses of Avalon. Last year the Travel Channel named it the best family beach in the country.

The crowd in Ocean City is young, wholesome and largely Philadelphian. The shirts for sale on the boardwalk bear the names of familiar high schools: North Penn, Council Rock, Neshaminy and the Prep.

Jersey shore resorts have a familiar sameness to them that makes them feel like variations on the same repeated themes: the nicer one, the family one, the trashy one, the one for twentysomethings.

But Ocean City makes you feel like you’re 5 years old, like you should be excited about seeing a guy dressed up in a Mr. Peanut costume or about riding in the bumper boats.

You pass bronzed fathers carrying their daughters past the arcade, sunburned 16-year-olds trying to make sure their parents aren’t embarrassing them, families walking back from the beach, all of them struggling to hold towels and plastic buckets.

You see pairs of teens walking by, wearing “God Needed a Driver” Dale Earnhardt shirts. You see 15-year-olds running in the center lane of the boardwalk—reserved for runners during the day—wearing shirts comparing “terrorists” to “abortionists.”

All this, for some reason, makes you smile and shake your head. And you remember your own times at the shore as a kid, digging holes in the wet sand until you hit the water, getting into arguments over Frisbee games, spending all your dimes playing skee-ball, making out under the boardwalk.

Every trip down the shore is a mix of old memories and new ones, as you miss the people you spent other trips down the shore with, while figuring out how to make this time just as exciting as the other ones.

But the best times down the shore are the ones you don’t overanalyze, the ones when your whole mind and body are consumed with the task at hand—playing on the beach, swimming in the ocean, bullshitting with your friends in a pizza parlor, nervously waiting in line for a roller coaster, trying to convince a girl to go home with you.