NORTH WILDWOOD — Mayor Bill Henfey has long worked to dedicate the area of land lining Hereford Inlet from Anglesea to John F. Kennedy Drive as open space since his election as mayor in 2006.
A 75-foot-by-100-foot waterfront lot is the last piece of the puzzle, but Henfey knows the city’s plan to purchase and preserve that last parcel of land will be complicated, to say the least.
Council President Patrick Rosenello inherited the property that the city had been eyeing for years. That means the city would be paying its council president for the land.
Henfey said he knows their will be scrutiny from the public and wanted to keep the process as “open as possible.”
The property on First Ave, is comprised of two lots, and Henfey said it is the rear section, which abuts the city’s newly constructed seawall, the city wants to buy for fear that the old beach house would be torn down in favor of the giant shore mansions.
“I don’t want what they have in Avalon here,” he said. “I want to preserve it.”
“North Wildwood doesn’t have much access to open space,” Henfey added as he pointed to a bird’s eye view of the property. “We have to act when we can in order to give future generation access to it.”
The Friends of the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse also support the city’s plan to purchase the land that would be in direct line of sight of the lighthouse and, in a Jan. 12 letter to the open space board, the group cited the need to “curtail or remove developmental intrusion into this scenic, natural and historic part of the city.”
“The inclusion of the Beavans property would help to provide more of a buffer behind our historic site as well as unbroken view of the Lighthouse from the ocean. It would also be the last piece of land needed to complete a long stretch of preserved land that would en-compass half of the beach front along the Hereford Inlet,” the group wrote.
Development, the group noted, would be their biggest fear.
The Audobon Society also wrote their own letter supporting the city’s purchase of the property and urging the county to accept the proposal.
Henfey said that he began talking to the open space board in Jan. 25, 2006, twenty-five days after taking the oath of office, in regards to an adjacent parcel, called the Florimont property. The city completed a purchase early this year of that property for about $350,000.
The difference between the two, Henfey said, was that the land was zoned conservation and was not buildable and the tract is landlocked. In this case, the land is buildable and sits in the R-1 residential zone.
Since then he has met with the open space board informally, and in March 2009 a review board sent Henfey a letter the board deemed the site a viable open space parcel. The land was also reviewed by two appraisers, with the highest valuation coming in at $1.1 million.
The process involves having the city bond for the sale price, expected to be at least $950,000, paying for the property and in turn selling it to the county to be preserved as open space. The city also would vacate the end of Atlantic Avenue, and that would be added to the lot.
The previous owner Harriet Beavans was not interested in selling her one-bedroom wooden beach house that she had lived in since 1972. The Beavans had lived across the street from Rosenello when he was a boy and the families became close. When Harriet Beavans died in 2008 she left the property to Rosenello.
Henfey said Rosenello has not been involved in any city talks related to the sale and added that the matter will come before the public a number of time before the matter is settled.
“There will be plenty of opportunity for people to ask questions,” Henfey said. “You don’t have to wait to speak only a public meetings if you have a concern. Come talk to me about it and I’ll go over everything.”
City Council is expected to introduce an ordinance permitting the purchase on Aug 4. Public hearings will be held at a later date on that ordinance and on another ordinance re-quired for the city to finance the purchase.
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