Shannon Mullen

@MullenAPP

LAKEWOOD - It used to be the soaring gold-trimmed windows and elegant wrought-iron fence that drew people’s attention to the stately building at 401 Madison Ave.

Now, what’s turning heads is the recurring sight of township workers boarding up the doors with sheets of plywood.

“It’s been boarded up twice. This is the third time,” Gene Canfield, a township code enforcement officer, said Tuesday afternoon as his crew went back to work blocking off doorways inside the building.

For the past two years, the township and the property’s owner have been at an impasse over the building’s unapproved uses, which include a prestigious Talmudic institute, Bais Hora’ah of Lakewood, and a basement banquet hall. The township says the building has been operating without a certificate of occupancy.

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In recent weeks, the dispute has entered a new, surreal phase. The township keeps boarding up the doors, and, in short order, the plywood disappears and the building is reoccupied. Canfield said those who re-enter the building could be charged with trespassing, but the township hasn't taken that step yet.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” said Harold Herskowitz, an outspoken downtown business owner who has pressed the township to crack down on what he sees as the property owner’s open defiance of the law.

“What’s going on now is a game of musical chairs,” he said, “and I’m the last guy standing.”

On Wednesday morning, the building's parking lot was nearly full and the plywood blocking two of the three interior doorways for Bais Hora'ah had been removed. A handful of students – not the 50 or more who would normally be studying there – were inside. Some were collecting books to bring to other study sites elsewhere in town.

One of the students, Ben Hasenfeld, 30, said the dispute has disrupted the students' rigorous study routines.

"Everybody's going to different places," he said before departing with his study partner. "If affects the whole morning."

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For Herskowitz, who owns a toy store and yogurt shop downtown, the chief issue surrounding the building is parking.

Public parking is at a premium downtown, he says, and the heavily trafficked building is unfairly exacerbating the shortage of available spaces.

“The parking is worse than ever,” he said. “It’s out of control.”

Hasenfeld, however, said he and his fellow students at the Talmudic institute make a point not to park in the municipal lots, in keeping with the instructions from the institute's head rabbi, Rabbi Schlomo Miller, that can be seen posted inside the building.

The building's owner, local developer David Gluck, could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Ronald S. Gasiorowski, says his client has done nothing wrong.

The township’s zoning ordinances allow all of the building’s current uses in the downtown area, Gasiorowski noted.

In addition, he argued, with 18 parking spaces on site, another 12 the township later agreed to set aside for the building’s use in a nearby municipal lot, and 15 more spaces that Gluck is leasing next door, Gluck is providing more spaces than the township required.

Gasiorowski called the township’s repeated efforts to board up the building an “unlawful trespass onto my client’s property.” Township Attorney Steven Secare, however, says the township is operating well within its rights.

'The place is packed'

The roots of the controversy go back a decade, when Gluck won approval from the Planning Board to construct the building at Fourth Street and Madison Avenue (Route 9.) An unsightly boarding home previously occupied the site. On some property records on file with the Ocean County clerk and the township, Gluck's name is listed as David Glick.

The planners approved the new structure for a single use – as the headquarters of a local real estate company – and the board’s resolution expressly prohibited Gluck from renting out space in the building, which is now called the Lakewood Conference Center, without the board's approval.

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But that’s what occurred, the township says. Instead of having 17 real estate company employees, as the planners approved, the building is used by scores of Orthodox Jewish scholars on a daily basis, as well as by the employees and customers of a savings bank on the third floor and those attending special events in the basement simcha hall. The township says the savings bank is a permitted use and can remain open. The third floor can be accessed via one of two rear entrances that weren't barricaded.

To make matters worse, Herskowitz says, in recent months Gluck has relocated daily prayer services from another downtown property he owns, the former Capitol Hotel, to 401 Madison.

“They have four prayer services a day. I mean, the place is packed,” Herskowitz said.

Parking lot proposal

Township Committeeman Raymond Coles agrees with Herskowitz that the township has allowed the situation to drag on far too long.

“I acknowledge the fact that it’s a very delicate situation downtown,” he said. “You don’t want to be seen trying to shut down a religious institution, but you have to abide by the same rules as everybody else.”

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Last year, Herskowitz and other downtown merchants agreed to a negotiated plan providing Gluck with a temporary certificate of occupancy to give him time to reach a deal to purchase property next door for a parking lot, but Coles said the deal fell apart over the property owner's $1 million asking price. The temporary CO expired in July.

In the interest of resolving the conflict, Coles has suggested that the township "partner" with Gluck to purchase the property, contributing perhaps $200,000 to help close the deal.

“I don’t see any solution past that,” he said. “They have to come up with more parking if they want to use the building for the uses they have in there.”

Gluck filed a change-of-use application with the Planning Board last week, hoping to get on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting. However, Ally Morris, the planning board administrator, said the application wasn’t complete and has been tentatively scheduled to be heard in April.

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Meanwhile, back at 401 Madison, the plywood boards keep going up – and coming back down.

“They’re understandably not happy to see us” Canfield, the code enforcement officer, said Tuesday. As he spoke, students of the Talmudic institute filed out of the building, some lugging teetering stacks of books.

“I don’t know anything about it. I come here and do my thing, and leave,” one of the students, township resident David Pollak, 28, said of the dispute.

“I hope they can all figure it out,” he added.

Hours after the building was boarded up , shortly before 6:30 p.m., Herskowitz drove by and saw that it was open again.

“And they are back inside,” he tweeted.

Shannon Mullen: 643-4278; smullen4@gannettnj.com