In Mount Holly, Gardens residents suspicious of demolition contract

From the brick house where she has lived for 40 years, Joyce Curry has watched with a heavy heart as neighbors move out and Mount Holly Township boards up the houses around her.

The 69-year-old resident's Mount Holly Gardens neighborhood soon will grow even emptier.

The prominent contractor Winzinger Inc. is assigned to demolish several homes next to Curry's to make way for a 54,000-square-foot business center - a project a Winzinger official has been voting to fund under a state program through her position on the Mount Holly Urban Enterprise Zone board.

The official is attorney Audrey Winzinger, daughter of Winzinger's founders. She said in a June interview that her work for the company included reviewing contracts.

Since at least 2006, she has voted with the rest of the board to award hundreds of thousands of dollars in UEZ funding toward acquisition and demolition costs needed for the business center, planned for the area off the Route 541 Bypass where homes currently stand in the Gardens.

The business center is part of a much broader redevelopment plan under which the mostly low-income residents of the Gardens neighborhood could lose their homes through eminent domain proceedings.

Most recently, in September 2009, Audrey Winzinger voted to approve $270,000 toward the business center. Three months later, Winzinger Inc. came in as the lowest bidder on a contract to demolish 55 Gardens homes, including many in areas unrelated to the commercial project and UEZ oversight.

The contract is with Keating Urban Partners L.L.C., which signed a redevelopment agreement with Mount Holly for a project that includes 292 town houses and 228 apartments, in addition to the business center.

The Winzinger roles fuel the long-held suspicions of residents like Curry that well-connected people are profiting from the redevelopment.

"They're all in cahoots," said Curry.

But if Winzinger Inc. doesn't bulldoze those homes, someone else will, she added.

"I was wondering when they were going to come into the game, because I know they have a big stake in town, so sooner or later they were going to come in and make money out of this," said Santos Cruz, a Gardens resident who has opposed the redevelopment.

Gardens residents have long accused the township of using the demolitions - 201 houses have been knocked down - to intimidate them into leaving and complained that they have damaged adjoining homes.

But to Mount Holly, razing the homes moves the township closer toward a redevelopment that officials hope will revitalize a neighborhood that suffered from crime, absentee landlords, and blight.

Court papers filed by township redevelopment attorney Jim Maley seeking permission to demolish 22 homes - with the work handled by Winzinger Inc. - said there had been minimal damage to adjoining homes and outlined safeguards for future demolitions. The documents also detailed how the boarded-up buildings posed a public health hazard.

Maley wrote in an e-mail that some of the properties that have been demolished, or will be under the current Winzinger contract, are in the business area. He said he could not immediately determine how many and under which contract.

The UEZ program has been reimbursing the township for the acquisition and demolition costs for the business center under a 10-year, $2.5 million bond. Records state that 36 homes are to be affected and that the center is planned for the area where North and South Martin Avenues meet.

Audrey Winzinger did not return repeated messages.

"If she voted for something she hasn't spoken to me about it," said JoAnne Winzinger, her mother and president of Winzinger Inc.

JoAnne Winzinger was quick to point out that the company had won its contracts by competing against multiple bidders after reading advertisements. She said Winzinger Inc. had bid on the work since the demolitions started several years ago.

"That's our business - we bid as much as we can," she said.

JoAnne Winzinger stressed there was no connection between the Winzinger Inc. contract and her daughter's actions on the UEZ board.

Said Maley: "Somebody that is going to bid on contracts - even though this isn't a direct payment going in, it's certainly related to it - should always announce [that] and refrain from action."

But he added that the township had eliminated any potential conflict of interest by going through a competitive bidding process in which the difference in pricing between Winzinger and all but one other bidder had been "substantial, so this is not by any stretch awarding to someone because of who they are."

The demolitions are overseen by Keating, which pays the contractors and submits invoices to the township for reimbursement. Once enough properties are ready for demolition, Keating issues a request for proposals to at least four contractors and awards the work to the lowest qualified bidder, according to Maley.

Officials said the demolition contracts are not public records, and Keating declined to comment.

Information provided by Maley shows RiverFront Recycling has won five of eight contracts from Keating since the demolitions started in 2007.

Winzinger razed 32 Gardens properties in early 2008, but won its biggest contract yet in December to demolish the 55 houses. It has been paid $230,714 for work already performed and $350,189 for jobs to be completed under the current contract, Maley said.

Maley described an increasingly difficult process that the township has faced in getting the New Jersey UEZ Authority to finalize spending approved by the local board for the business center. The state authority so far has approved $1 million toward the costs.

Under Gov. Christie, the state is making fewer UEZ funds available to towns as it faces budgetary problems and undertakes a review of the program's effectiveness.

New Jersey forgoes $100 million in sales tax revenue a year to fund 37 such zones, which aim to spur economic development in struggling communities.

A spokeswoman for the state UEZ Authority said in June that it was reviewing possible conflicts of interest in the Mount Holly program. The Inquirer reported that month that other companies owned by JoAnne Winzinger that operate in the downtown district had received at least $700,000 in UEZ funds during the time that her daughter had served on the board, though Audrey Winzinger did not vote directly for those companies.

On Monday, the township council did not reappoint Audrey Winzinger and several others to the UEZ board, which is being downsized from nine to seven members.

"They felt they needed some new blood on the board and they basically feel that if you're going to sit on the board that you shouldn't reap the benefit of the program," said Township Manager Kathy Hoffman.

She said officials also were looking at adopting a more stringent ethics policy for board members.