Pave the roads, Jack

If you could ask Jack Morris a question, what would it be?

Unless you're a local politician with some developable land in the town in which you govern, chances are you may have a better chance of talking to God than to multi-millionaire developer Jack Morris.

Yet, Morris walked into the Brick Township Council meeting July 11 to present some preliminary plans for his Laurelton Mobile Home Park on Route 88.

Morris was polite at the meeting despite some residents allegedly cursing at him under their breaths.

Conditions at the dirt road mobile home park have been less than favorable for years, with residents experiencing their sewer pipes bursting on a weekly basis, often leaving them with piles of feces and whatever else comprises raw sewage beneath their mobile homes.

The transformation Morris said he has planned for the mobile home park sounds a lot different from what's there today - Morris described a bucolic setting where residents can feed squirrels from a park bench. Open space and affordable housing for the senior residents were phrases also dropped at the meeting.

Visual aids are always good to have when you present something, and Morris came prepared. He showed what he said were preliminary plans for the mobile home park, a site map that consisted of little rectangles representing the mobile homes and one big rectangle representing a strip mall. A closer look at the plans was not allowed, and Edgewood Properties has not yet submitted any paperwork regarding the mobile home park to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, board secretary Christine Pappa said.

Morris also said he "believed in all communities keeping people off the roads in an already congested area," a good thing to say after his Parkway-70 Plaza project on Route 70, also in Brick, ran into problems with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) regarding Edgewood Properties' traffic designs. The state DOT said the design just wouldn't work, said township engineer James Priolo after a recent Planning Board meeting.

Edgewood just successfully obtained an easement from the Lakewood Township Committee so he could build a Shorrock Street extension road to help with those plans.

But Morris wouldn't allow residents to ask him any questions at the untelevised council meeting. Nor would he answer reporters' questions. Usually he has a public relations firm answer the press' questions, but they're not commenting anymore.

That's not surprising, since Morris his been ignoring his tenants' constant requests for communication since he purchased the site in January of last year.

Shortly after purchasing the property, residents received a letter stating that park maintenance would be improved but residents' rents would increase as a result.

This seemed acceptable to residents at the time, and they were excited to actually have some pipes that didn't leak raw sewage.

Months later, Morris made good on half of his promise - the residents' rents did increase, by almost 40 percent, but sewer pipes were still breaking on a weekly basis, and the dirt paths they call roads in the mobile home park were still kicking up plenty of dust, residents said.

Add to that dust some PCB-tainted fill, which Edgewood Properties dumped there to fill potholes, and you don't have a very happy tenant base. Edgewood maintains the company was told the fill was clean. Ford Motor Co., which gave the fill away for free, said the developer knew what he was getting.

Morris apologized to residents at the meeting, saying he may not have handled the situation too well. No kidding.

Perhaps Morris will come through with those vague plans he presented at the council meeting. Maybe none of the residents of the once age-restricted mobile home park will lose their homes.

But given his past history with the park, when Morris says he wants to work with residents, it sounds more like Morris may be full of the same stuff found under some of those mobile homes.