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Naugle HouseDevelopers often get upper hand in N.J. historical preservation Last updated: Sunday April 24, 2011, 9:53 AM
BY STEPHANIE AKIN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
A 250-year-old stone house in Paramus is listed on local, county, state and national historical registries, but registries are no match for bulldozers in New Jersey.
DON SMITH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The borough of Fair Lawn recently bought the historic Naugle House from a developer in an effort to save it.
The struggle to save the so-called Zabriskie Tenant House, which could end with a vote this week, highlights what historians and preservationists throughout Bergen County say is a weakness in the state's patchwork approach to historical preservation. And while it may be too late to save the Zabriskie house, many hope that the case will spur changes that will save other historic properties in the region before the earthmovers roll.
"This might be the time; this might be the thing that will grab everybody's attention, so that we could really leverage this in a positive way," said Michael Trepicchio, president of the Bergen County Historical Society and chairman of the Historic New Bridge Landing State Park Commission. "We could maybe leverage this as a battle cry."
The threats facing the Zabriskie house are common, local preservationists say: The owner can't afford to keep up the house; the developer sees it as an eyesore on an attractive piece of land; preservationists working to save it found out about the contract only after it had been negotiated and local public officials say they have no money and little legal standing to save it.
"Putting these things on registers, all it does is acknowledge the fact that it's a significant property," Trepicchio said. "Private property owners can still buy them and still knock them down."
The Zabriskie house, which was built by a wealthy farming family and is thought to have once been used as tenant housing for its freed slave employees, was among 204 selected as significant examples of the region's unique Jersey Dutch architecture in a county survey that, in 1982, became the basis for the group's selection in the National Register of Historic Places.
Dependent on town
Local historians say it is hard to say how many of those buildings are still standing because no one has kept track of them, but certainly some have been sacrificed to the region's unceasing development over the past 30 years.
That's because national and state registries have little power to prevent private owners from altering or even destroying historic properties, leaving that authority to local governments.
But New Jersey's municipalities take such different approaches to historical preservation that a property's survival largely depends on which town it is in.
Owners of historic properties in towns like Ridgewood and Closter, with some of the strictest regulations in the county, must get approval for changes as small as putting up a sign, and can even have tax liens put on their properties if local officials find they are being neglected.
In towns with fewer regulations, the public drive to save a property often surfaces only after it is threatened, preservationists say.
"You're trying to tell the story as the wrecking ball is going through the building," Trepicchio said.
In Oradell, for example, officials are racing to raise as much as $2.29 million to buy the historical Blauvelt Mansion before the company that bought its delinquent mortgage, Care One LLC, builds an assisted-living facility on its sweeping lawn.
Tim Adriance, a Rutherford-based historian who has been active in the opposition to the Zabriskie demolition, said the Paramus historic preservation ordinance is the worst he has seen.
"It's so open-ended it's ridiculous," he said.
Paramus lists the Zabriskie Tenant House as one of 22 properties included in its historical preservation zone, but requires only that the borough impose a six-month waiting period before their demolition. During that time, borough officials are required to consult "civic groups and public agencies" for advice about how to preserve the building.
"If they asked the Shade Tree Commission, the Elks and the Girl Scouts what to do, they would be in compliance with their law, however absurd that may be," Adriance said.
Borough code passed in 1987 also provides for a historical preservation commission that would advise officials.
But the commission, which was formed partly in response to the destruction of a historic house on Spring Valley Road, has been vacant for at least 10 years, former Mayor Cliff Gennarelli said.
Opponents to the Zabriskie sale are seeking an attorney to challenge whether the borough can legally approve the developers' proposal without a historical preservation commission.
But Paramus officials said the commission's existence is beside the point. Rather, the law was written with the expectation that public agencies that could afford to sponsor the rehabilitation of a historic property would come forward, a possibility that is no longer economically realistic.
"When the ordinance was drafted, there was more public money around," Planning Board Attorney John Ten Hoeve said.
Developer's dream
Although there can be no question about the Zabriskie property's historic value, Ten Hoeve has said the borough would have no legal standing to deny the developer unless another buyer could come forward with the same offer and a promise to put a deed restriction on the property prohibiting future development. Making the matter more complicated, the developer, Paramus-based Sal Petruzzella, has declined say how much he has agreed to pay.
Even if there were another buyer, stopping a developer at such a late stage can be pricey.
Fair Lawn recently bought a house, known as the Naugle House, just across the Saddle River from the Zabriskie Tenant House for $1.2 million after a five-year legal dispute with a developer who originally paid $960,000.
"The developer made a steep profit," Trepicchio said. "If I was a developer, and I saw that, I'd be looking for every stone house out there that I could buy."
Public acquisitions of historic properties also put heavy burdens on taxpayers or non-profit institutions to rehabilitate and maintain properties long after the initial purchase, Trepicchio said. And while making historic properties open to the public is an admirable idea, he and other historians said, the region only needs so many house museums.
Instead, Trepicchio wants municipalities to consider rewriting their ordinances to provide property tax breaks for people who buy historic homes and restore them as private residences.
Such incentives could be combined with heavy fees imposed on developers who want to knock them down. A similar system has been successful in California, he said.
"If someone wants to buy a 200-year-old sandstone house and knock it down, there should be a cost to that," he said. "It wouldn't be saying, 'You can't do it'; you just make it economically unattractive to do so. I don't know if that would save every place, but it would go a long way to taking the burden off the public taxpayer."
Trepicchio's ideas, which he aired on a Bergen County historical preservation Internet forum, have been greeted with interest from others in his community, and the Bergen County Historical Society is preparing a countywide campaign to help municipalities rewrite their legislation to make it more effective.
Kevin Wright, a past president of the Bergen County Historical Society, said towns should be encouraged to think of historical preservation as something that can raise property values and contribute to a sense of place.
"You have to consider it as part of the fixed assets of the community," Wright said. "If you diminish them, you're diminishing the value of the surrounding properties."
As for the Zabriskie Tenant House, opponents are seeking a buyer who could make a counteroffer before the borough makes what is expected to be a final decision on the developer's application on Thursday.
E-mail:
akin@northjersey.com 
