Community center on hold - for now
Loss of Ice Palace has not dampened Acropolis' love of job
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer

BRICK TOWNSHIP - Township officials will not consider any new plans for a community center for the near future, Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis said.

"It's dead," the mayor said. "Done. I think if anything gets built in the future, it will be done in the future."

Administrations both Democratic and Republican, past and present, have been talking about a community center for the last eight years. Three different locations were proposed - the 13.34-acre Ocean Ice Palace property most recently, the Foodtown site and the property behind the post office.

The township came closest with the landmark Ocean Ice Palace property on Chambers Bridge Road. But owner Joan Dwulet cut off negotiations with the township and decided in early June to consider offers from other buyers.

Acropolis said any new plans for a community center will probably be done with a referendum, or during an election, when candidates run on their platforms.

"We will probably have some more information on that after the first of the year," Acropolis said.

Dwulet stopped talking to the township after more than a year of newspaper articles about the proposed purchase. Her decision came little more than two weeks after the group Stop OverSpending gathered enough signatures to put the $5.25 million purchase on the November ballot.

Dwulet and the township had reached a verbal agreement on the purchase in spring 2007. But she got "tired of waiting" because of the township's lengthy quest for financing, Dwulet's attorney, Stephan R. Leone, said after negotiations collapsed.

The proposed Ocean Ice Palace property purchase became an issue in the 2007 mayoral election between Acropolis and Democratic Mayor Daniel J. Kelly. Last summer, Kelly and Councilwoman Kathy Russell, the lone Democrat on the Township Council, both repeatedly called for a referendum on the purchase.

Acropolis and members of the GOPdominated Township Council nixed the proposal. Acropolis, who was council president last year, said the November 2007 mayoral election would be the referendum on the Ice Place property purchase.

"It's difficult to run government on referendums," Acropolis said recently. "I'm sure the two people running for mayor next year will have to come to terms with it [the community center]."

But neither the loss of the Ocean Ice Palace property for a community center nor the fusillade of criticism from Democratic opponents has quelled Acropolis' enthusiasm for his job.

"I am having a blast being the mayor," he said. "It's more fun doing this than probably anything else I've done. Why give up something you really enjoy doing?"

He fully expects the criticism and derogatory letters to the editor to continue.

"Their plan for the next two years is just to beat up on me," he said, "so their candidate will have something to run on. I'm still going to run. It doesn't matter to me." Acropolis' term is up in November 2009. He won the mayor's seat over Kelly in November 2007. The two-year unexpired term was to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former longtime Democratic Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli. Kelly was appointed in January 2007 to fill Scarpelli's slot until the November election.

Scarpelli, who was elected to an unprecedented four terms, resigned in December 2006. One month later, he pleaded guilty in federal court to accepting bribes from an unnamed developer. He has now served almost one-third of his 18-month sentence in federal prison at Fort Dix.