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The New York Times
Altercation Over an
Addition
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Rob Bennett for The New York Times
Plainfield neighbors assembled at the former nursing
home they fought to preserve, from left: Kenneth Philogene, Arne
Aakre, Gerry Heydt, Rowand Clark and Dottie Gutenkauf. |
By ANTOINETTE MARTIN,
nytimes.com on the Web, August 19, 2007
PLAINFIELD, NJ -- ONCE a piece
of history is gone, it will never come back,” said Dottie Gutenkauf, a resident
of one of 10 designated historic districts in this town.
“That is why we had to persist,” she added, describing a battle to prevent
construction of a large addition to a nursing home in her Victorian-era
neighborhood. “The character of the building the nursing home was in, and
that of the streets around it, was going to be obliterated,” she said.
A house was to be surrounded on two sides by the L-shaped expansion of Abbott
Manor Nursing Home, which had operated in the neighborhood for 20 years; also,
the three-story addition would loom close to a Tudor that serves as an Episcopal
rectory.
So in 2000, when the nursing home’s owners first applied for a zoning variance
to permit the construction, Ms. Gutenkauf and others in the Van Wyck Brooks
Historic District organized to oppose it.
They researched zoning ordinances, gathered documents, testified at hearings and
declared success when the application was denied in 2002, as Ms. Gutenkauf duly
reported in her blog, called the Plaintalker, at the time.
The nursing home owners, a company called CPR Holdings Inc., moved residents
from the nursing home in 2005, settling them in a similar facility it owns in
Scotch Plains. But despite that, Ms. Gutenkauf’s declaration of victory
proved premature.
In 2005 the zoning board abruptly reversed itself, granting the variance after
CPR sued the town. Its argument was that without the modern addition,
handicapped residents were being denied their right to fair and adequate
housing.
It was at this point that Ms. Gutenkauf and her neighbors filed a suit of their
own — one that took until late last month to resolve. “And our legal bill
is very, very large,” said Gerry Heydt, a plaintiff who is also president of the
district residents’ association.
Superior Court Judge Walter R. Barisonek rejected the nursing home owners’
argument that federal fair housing law protected handicapped residents’ right to
live in that particular spot.
Steven C. Rother, the Roseland lawyer who argued for CPR, said in a recent
telephone interview that the company declined to comment because it might
appeal.
But William Michelson, the lawyer for the neighborhood residents, said he viewed
an appeal as unlikely. “Judge Barisonek’s careful and detailed analysis
will surely give them pause,” he said.
That analysis, according to Mr. Michelson, contained an element that could be
significant to preservationists in future cases: The judge rebuffed CPR’s
contention that the existing legal recognition of nursing homes as of
“beneficial use” to a community automatically supersedes preservationist
concerns.
“The ruling was the first time a New Jersey court has declared the validity and
importance of historic districts, and described what their effect should be on
land-use applications,” said Mr. Michelson, a resident of Plainfield who once
served on its planning board and helped write its master plan.
Along with the four neighborhood residents named in the lawsuit — Ms. Gutenkauf;
Ms. Heydt and her husband, Arne Aakre; and Kenneth Philogene — Mr. Michelson has
taken the position that the vitality of Plainfield as a whole is at stake in the
fight over historic-district standards
Twenty-five years ago, he said in a recent interview, the town was in a state of
serious decline and headed toward “even worse.” Local officials decided at
the time that the one likely path to salvation was to protect the community’s
chief asset: its ample stock of wondrous old structures.
Mr. Michelson and his partner, Victor Quinn, had been among a first wave of gays
drawn to Plainfield by the opportunity to buy Victorian diamonds in the rough
and restore them as showplaces; they restored one, and then another, both in
historic districts.
Ms. Gutenkauf and her husband, Joe, who also moved to Plainfield in the early
1980s, bought a converted barn dating to 1889. Although she claims it
still has the faint smell of hay about it, it is now in pristine condition,
listed on the National Historic Register with others in the Van Wyck Brooks
district.
The man who gave the district its name, a critic and literary historian and
Plainfield native son, was born not far from Ms. Gutenkauf’s house, around the
time it was built, she said.
Plainfield today is an urban sort of suburb, ethnically and culturally diverse,
with its own symphony orchestra, a lively arts scene and delis, bodegas and soul
food restaurants. African-Americans once made up a majority of the
population, though they have now been surpassed in number by Hispanic residents.
A gay presence is large and well established, and there is an annual tour of
historic homes owned by gays and lesbians. Former Gov. James E. McGreevey
and his partner, Mark O’Donnell, live in a Plainfield home with gardens
retaining their original historic design by the firm of the Central Park
architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
“The historic districts make this a rather unique place to live,” Mr. Michelson
said. “Not just the exceptional architecture, but people are given a way
to buy into a community that feels like a real community, where you have
something in common with everyone around you.”
Mr. Michelson and Ms. Gutenkauf each remarked on the depth of various neighbors’
involvement in the Abbott Manor issue. Mr. Aakre, a trained architect,
probably provided the coup de grâce, they said, with his scale models of the
nursing home before and after expansion.
“The judge gasped when he saw them,” Ms. Gutenkauf said. “He picked them
up, held them side by side, and I think it really made a splash.”
The ornate yellow-brick nursing-home building, which has a columned wood portico
and was originally a private home, is now looking distinctly forlorn, seemingly
not kept up since the residents vacated. None of the neighbors know what
will become of it.
“What we hope, of course,” Ms. Heydt said, “is that it will be restored, and
rejoin the other beautiful buildings in the district.”
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