Avalon built luxury Edgewater, Hackensack units cheaply

The Avalon at Edgewater apartment complex after Wednesday's devastating inferno, above and below. The tower of Riverside Church in Manhattan can be seen through the haze. This afternoon, tow trucks were removing cars from the garage, and crews were putting up fences and restoring utility lines on Undercliff Avenue, where some of the homes opposite the apartments sustained water and smoke damage.

The Avalon luxury apartments had a brick facade and elevator towers made of cinder blocks, above, but were built mostly of cheap lightweight wood construction. The fire was blamed on a maintenance worker's blowtorch, a 15-minute delay in calling 911 and the wood construction, which allowed the flames to spread quickly. The Edgewater Volunteer Fire Department is being praised for rescuing more than 500 people from the burning building.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's follow-up coverage of the Edgewater apartment inferno will be read most closely by lawyers preparing negligence suits and residents of Avalon Bay buildings in Hackensack and other towns.

More than a dozen reporters -- including the local obit writer -- three photographers and one columnist tackle second-day coverage of the fire that displaced 1,000 borough residents.

No interviews

Although the so-called Avalon luxury apartment complexes in Hackensack and other towns were mentioned, no one thought to interview tenants on whether they worry their lives are being endangered by the cheap lightweight wood construction (A-1, A-6, A-10, L-1 and L-2).

Avalon at Edgewater rents were $2,100 for a one-bedroom apartment, $2,485 for a two-bedroom unit and $3,195 for a three-bedroom apartment, but some tenants paid extra for parking.

The first paragraph of today's lead Page 1 story says more than 500 people were left homeless, but inside, readers learn the apartments of 500 tenants were destroyed and an additional 52o were displaced temporarily from nearby buildings (A-6).

Rare byline

Staff Writer Jean Rimbach was brought out of her state of animated suspension in the Woodland Park newsroom to report on "so-called lightweight wood construction" or what she calls "a cheap, faster and legal style of building" by complex owner Avalon Bay Communities (A-1).

Fire officials have long said a safer way of building such apartments would be to use cinder blocks and concrete to stop fire from spreading.

Still, after the original Avalon complex on the same Edgewater site burned down in less than a half hour in August 2000, when it was still under construction, apparently no move was made to strengthen the state building code.

Lawsuits pending

Negligence lawyers are probably itching to get their hands on the names of the Avalon maintenance workers who set the building on fire with a blowtorch and then tried to put out the flames themselves, delaying a 911 call for 15 minutes. 

Potential defendants include those workers and Avalon Bay Communities, a real-estate investment trust based in Arlington, Va. (A-7).

Thanks in part to the cheap construction methods used in tens of thousands of units nationwide, Avalon Bay investors are getting rich, with "returns averaging above 14 percent a year since 1998," Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn reports today (not "Flynn" as I wrote originally).

Better coverage?

Today's coverage improves greatly on Thursday's in terms of photos showing the flames and devastation, even though readers saw many of those images on TV or Cliffview Pilot.com on Wednesday.

One new element readers don't need today is another long-winded column from Staff Writer Mike Kelly, who tells us fires "wound a town, too" (L-1).

Kelly doesn't focus on the cheap construction or whether a booming Gold Coast town such as Edgewater should have a professional fire department.

Instead, he latches onto Al Burke, who drove from his home in Boonton to the borough where he grew up, and "gazed at the smoke and water for silent seconds."

"For silent seconds"? Doesn't Kelly mean "in silence"?

Then, Kelly reports, "His [Burke's] eyes walked up River Road, taking in the caravan of emergency vehicles...."

"His eyes walked ...."???!!!?!@#$%^&!!!

What crappy writing from a columnist who has been churning it out -- merely pushing words around -- for more than 20 years. What a disgrace.

Why no fish?

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung pans Lan Garden 88, a Chinese restaurant on Route 46 in Ridgefield, but doesn't explain why she didn't order any fresh fish (BL-14).

For many, there is no better Chinese dish than a whole flounder or sea bass steamed with ginger and scallion.

Instead, Ung raves about the "standout fresh egg [custard] tarts," which are made with sugar, heavy cream and egg yolks.

She reports Lan Garden opened in the building that formerly was home to China 46, but doesn't mention a third Chinese restaurant, Pheonix Garden Too, preceded China 46.

She calls the Dungeness crab at $29.95 "one of the most expensive dishes," but lists entrees costing up to $58.