The developer accused Morristown officials of shady dealings to favor another builder. The officials called him a greedy, inept bully.
Both sides buried the hatchet this week. If the settlement holds, the result will be at least 70 new apartments on Speedwell Avenue.
Ending an acrimonious dispute spanning years, Morristown has agreed to amend its Speedwell redevelopment plan to allow Paul Marshall or his designee to erect 70 residential units from Speedwell to Clinton Place, at heights ranging from three to four stories, with the possibility for more units. Fifteen percent — 11 units — will be designated as affordable. Eighty-eight onsite parking spaces will be required.
The project may include up to 8,800 square feet of retail space. Marshall may apply for a tax break known as a PILOT — Payments in Lieu of Taxes — but the town has not promised it, agreeing only to adhere to state standards as it has “historically” applied them when weighing such applications.
Marshall, who sued the town in 2021, has agreed to drop defamation claims against Mayor Tim Dougherty and town redevelopment Counsel John Inglesino, who had labeled him “greedy” and inept and accused him of trying to bully the town into giving tax breaks.
The developer also dropped requests for millions of dollars in damages and reimbursement of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal and engineering fees.
Superior Court Judge Noah Franzblau approved the settlement earlier this week. The case between Marshall’s entities — Speedwell LLC and Speedwell Associates LP — and the town will be dismissed upon the town’s amendment of its Speedwell redevelopment plan.
“This was a fully negotiated — a very difficult….negotiated settlement. It incorporates all terms, to my knowledge, that both parties were insisting on, and it is comprehensive,” Marshall’s lawyer, Philip Rosenbach, told the judge. He noted that PILOT discussions were “a very difficult point” in the negotiations.
“The Town has always wanted to see a quality project that is reasonably sized to transform a property that has been in disrepair for a long time,” town Administrator Jillian Barrick said Thursday in a statement to Morristown Green.
“We are glad that the plaintiffs came around to an agreement to move forward with a comparably sized project that is only a few units more than our original vision and that will restore an active retail storefront in this corridor. We are even more gratified that the settlement comes without any monetary damages owed to the property owner. We hope to finally see a project come to fruition in the near future,” Barrick said.
Named as defendants in the suit were the mayor, attorney, the town, town Planner Phil Abramson and his firm Topology, and Morristown Development LLC, an entity of Mill Creek Residential that built the Modera 44 and Modera 55 apartments.
Dougherty and Inglesino did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nor did Marshall or his wife. Rosenbach, their lawyer, said he was “pleased that it is finally resolved and that both parties can move on and the property can now be developed.”
A CONTENTIOUS HISTORY
Marshall and his wife, attorney Linda Cahn, had alleged that town officials induced them to surrender valuable development rights through false promises, then systematically blocked all their redevelopment proposals for more than six years while favoring the Modera developer, in violation of the Marshalls’ constitutional rights and contracts.
At a council meeting in 2019, the couple and their lawyer said the town stonewalled them after reneging on 2015 plans to make the Marshalls and their then-partner, Claremont Companies of Far Hills, the Phase Three redevelopers in a four-stage Speedwell redevelopment. (The other phases — the 453-unit Modera apartments and a CVS pharmacy — are completed.)
They further alleged the town had whittled the scale of Phase Three from about 150 units down to 65 and then 24 units, too small to be profitable. Inglesino called their allegations “a bunch of nonsense” and answered with a fiery, four-page rebuttal.
“Said simply, the Town will not be bullied or otherwise threatened into granting a tax abatement, at the expense of taxpayers, simply so (Marshall) may artificially inflate the sales price” of his property, Inglesino said, reading aloud his letter at a council redevelopment session in 2019.
At the time, the mayor echoed Inglesino’s comments. “Tax abatements are only granted where project need is demonstrated or public benefit is established, not to line the pockets of a greedy developer with taxpayer dollars,” Dougherty said in a 2019 statement. The mayor contended Marshall’s earlier proposals were too large for that stretch of Speedwell Avenue.
Marshall’s relationship with Morristown has been contentious for years. In 2013, the town and the Morristown Parking Authority sued him to nullify his 99-year lease on Phase Two parking land.
That litigation ended with a January 2015 settlement in which Marshall relinquished his valuable lease interest—enabling the parking authority to sell the property to the developer of Modera 55—and he spent nearly $1 million acquiring two street-front parcels from the town.
In exchange, Marshall maintained, town officials pledged to “diligently work in good faith” to approve Phase Three plans and designate him or his designee as redeveloper. But just months after the 2015 settlement, the town drastically reduced Phase Three density limits.
Marshall claimed in court filings that for the next four years, officials kept “falsely inducing” him to believe more than 100 residential units would be approved, costing him more than $300,000 annually in lost rental income while he vacated tenants and paid architects to revise plans repeatedly.
This story has been updated with a comment from the plaintiffs’ attorney.
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More Rentals!! The town needs to ban additional rentals. This is a recipe for a blighted area when people bail out and rentals collapse. They also don’t have skin in the game to ensure that the town improves.
Crawdad, it’s the NIMBYism and local so-called “leaders” who constantly downscale/downsize every project while taking at least a decade to make a decision. As Connor has so aptly pointed out, note the sameness of building heights. Decades from now people will look back and wonder what these “leaders” were thinking.
How long has North Park Place been vacant? It’s a dead zone. I seriously doubt we will not see any physical changes to that block this decade as the usual back-and-forth fights with the developer make it move at glacial speed.
Great news! The NIMBYism is just crazy in Morristown. Takes a decade to build a few apartments. Time to build more housing, everywhere, if we want our kids and grandkids to have a place to live.
Motown resident, if someone doesn’t know how to use a roundabout they really shouldn’t be driving.
I liked the comment regarding the useless signage and lights. The only people who think these traffic devices are useful are traffic planners who seem from their plans never to have actually driven a car. They think adding all kinds of bells whistles and useless distractions is ‘Traffic calming”. and as for roundabouts-no one knows how to use them. it never gets better and they are a terrible terrible idee wherever they are added. but they still happen because these people were taught in whatever school they go to that they are great.
Traffic is going to be even more of a nightmare over there!
This is good news. but it would be nice to see something that looks a little different than the generic structures that we see in every city. It’s like one firm designed this type of apartment/condo building and they keep running them off the assembly line.
Also, this downsizing seems to happen with every project.
Just no more PILOTs .
Great to see potential redevelopment of those run down eyesores, now let’s expand that to both sides of the street and down to beyond the laudromat, a mix of apartments and condos with first floor retail and restaurants. Time to really clean that mess up. The mayor will probably object again to protect his voter base and will probably opt instead to leave the eyesores in place while enhancing Speedwell from the laundromat to HQ Plaza with another 15 crosswalks with weird flashing lights that often don’t work and that neither drivers or pedestrians understand.
Great, so another 140+ vehicles to deal with everyday, twice a day. Great, another P.I.L.O.T. program that doesnt support infrastructure upgrade to cope with the influx of people into the community all the way from school to street and pedestrian traffic. Great, we get to spend more money on overtime for Police so we can manage traffic during commute times at over 100$ per hour, so what’s that approx $156k per year per police officer to sit and direct traffic…… this town has got some backwards priorities……
lets not collect the taxes, lets spend more money, lets collect the PILOT $ so we don’t have to bebas transparent about where the money goes(read as into someone’s pocket) instead of collecting taxes and distributing it as it should be.
Good. Lets get it built now. That corner has been ugly for a while now. Only wish one of these larger buildings would be condos, not apartments. People looking to move into town who work at some of the great companies that have moved here, want to buy and have a stake in the town.
That is actually good and rational news. Miraculous. Hats off to being effective and thorough!