Atlantic Health, the parent company of Morristown Medical Center, is poised to buy one of the town’s most desirable–and controversial–properties.
It’s an acre on South Street, adjacent to the Vail Mansion on South Street. The horseshoe-shaped tract was approved for 29 luxury apartments and ground floor retail last January, after a year of grueling hearings before the town planning board and strong opposition from Vail condo owners and the town historical commission.
Prominent local developers had wanted more, but their unusual pitch for ten additional apartments was rebuffed.
Now, they are flipping the property to an Atlantic subsidiary, the AHS Investment Corp., according to a notice filed with the Morris County Clerk’s Office.
It is believed that Atlantic intends to use the site for executive- and doctor housing, as an inducement to attract top talent. Presumably, Morristown restaurants and businesses would benefit from these affluent new residents.
Atlantic spokesperson Karen Zatorski promised details “once we have news to share.”
The sale is in a due diligence period and the parties are precluded from commenting.
No sale price was indicated in an October notice of a “contract or agreement of sale” between the developers, trading as 126 South Street LLC and 136 South Street LLC, and the AHS Investment Corp. Records show the developers bought the property, consisting of two lots, for a total of $3.8 million in 2016 and 2017.
At least two of the developers have forged close ties with Atlantic Health over the years.
Finn Wentworth is an Atlantic Health trustee, and led a capital campaign that raised $106 million for Morristown Medical Center in 2016. The Morristown resident also is co-founder of Normandy Real Estate Partners, which was part of a joint venture that in 2017 sold a portion of Giralda Farms in Madison to Atlantic Health for $18.5 million, for a rehabilitation center.
Carl Goldberg, a key player in the redevelopment of the former Epstein’s department store into the 40 Park condos and Metropolitan apartments, is a trustee of the Foundation for Morristown Medical Center.
TEMPESTUOUS SAGA
The developers, who also include Wentworth’s longtime real estate partner David T. Welsh, spent five years on the project. They revised their plans at least 15 times, according to remarks by their attorney, Frank Vitolo, to the planning board.
It was presented as an upscale addition to the downtown, blending modern amenities with architectural nods to Morristown’s Revolutionary past. The configuration wraps around a dry cleaner shop, and will preserve the former Suzi’s Salon structure. Four of the apartments have been designated as affordable, and are earmarked for inclusion onsite.
126-136 South St. Photo courtesy of Vail Mansion trustees.
Conditions of the planning board’s site plan approval, memorialized in a developers agreement approved by the town council last week, are binding on any buyer, the document states.
The approval process took a bizarre twist in 2021 when the developers tried to reap a 10-unit “density bonus” by offering the town a sliver of lawn for a “pocket park.”
A quirk in the zoning code offered such a bonus for housing projects on lots smaller than one acre; this was the developers’ Hail Mary attempt to qualify by shedding 652 square feet.
The town didn’t bite. The state Department of Transportation was in no hurry, either, when the sliver was offered as an extended right-of-way. Planning board Chairman Joe Stanley called the offers “very contrived.”
Morristown’s Historic Preservation Commission initially labeled the project a “tortured plan.” The Vail Mansion condo association fought it, too.
The developers settled swiftly with the association. A lone condo owner then waged his own battle, contending the proposed four-story apartments would obscure his view of the downtown.
With perhaps a touch of hyperbole, his planning expert suggested that juxtaposing these apartments with the Vail Mansion — an Italian Renaissance-style palazzo dating back more than a century — was akin to plopping a motel at the base of Yosemite’s magnificent El Capitan.
Eventually, the developers settled with the objector. They also settled an easement dispute with the South Street Creamery.
Over the course of at least eight virtual hearings, concerns were raised about pedestrian safety on South Street, and how to shoehorn more cars onto one of the town’s busiest thoroughfares.
Other issues included noise and headlight glare from the proposed ground-level parking garage, off-site parking, and loading zones on the street.
Patience had worn thin when the application finally came to a vote on Jan. 27, 2022. “A totally arduous process” could have been avoided, Stanley said, if the developers had stuck with what the zoning allowed. Which is what they wound up getting.
Final revisions made “an exceptionally bad project…a whole lot better,” Stefan Armington, town council liaison to the board, said that evening. Questioning Morristown’s need for more luxury housing, he still cast the sole dissenting vote.
The matter almost didn’t come to a vote at all. Not that night, anyway.
There appeared to be no quorum of eligible members; the application had dragged on for so long that the board experienced some turnover.
But newcomers Chris Russo and Marissa Sweeney said they had binge-watched video of all the prior hearings. They were allowed to vote, and supported the application.
