The Borg siblings to Hackensack: Drop dead!

The Record's eyesore property in Hackensack, above and below, stands in stark contrast to the flattering photo that appears on Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily today.

A developer likely will pay more than $20 million for North Jersey Media Group's 19.7 acres along River Street. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed in The Record's story.

No dumpsters in this view, similar to the A-1 photo.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

If developer Fred Daibes follows through on plans to raze The Record's old headquarters and build apartment buildings, Hackensack's public schools won't be able to accommodate the children who live there (A-1).

The residential development would be the third to be built in the city in three or four years, and the schools are already bursting at the seams.

Avalon, a Hackensack Avenue complex, is now renting, and another developer just broke ground on a 222-unit State Street building.

The Borg family's North Jersey Media Group gave Hackensack a good screwing in 2009, when it abandoned the city where The Record had prospered for 110 years.

Now, the Borgs are telling city and school officials to drop dead.

Better uses for land

The wealthy publishing family could have offered the 19.7 acres to another developer, Richard Pineles, defusing a huge legal battle over a 19-story acute-care hospital  proposed for a small Prospect Avenue parcel.

Or, they could have sold the land to a retailer, such as Costco Wholesale, which is rumored to be leaving Hackensack to build a larger store in Teterboro.

Questionable deal

Instead, they are selling to Daibes, a restaurant owner and bank founder who has allegedly violated numerous state and federal regulations, and who has been treated gently by The Record. 

Publisher Stephen A. Borg claims in today's story,  "There always has been, continues to be, and always will be a separation between the business side and editorial" (A-7).

But that doesn't go for friends, lawyers and others who do business with the Borgs, judging from all the promotional stories about them in recent years.

Just the other day, Jon F. Hanson was identified as Governor Christie's chief adviser on the retail-entertainment monstrosity known as American Dreams Meadowlands (Sunday, A-7).

Hanson also is a real estate mogul who co-owns a private jet with his best friend, Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg.

Apartment plan

Daibes will need all the public relations skills of his politically connected spokesman, Alan Marcus, to market what today's story describes as "upscale high-rise apartment buildings along the Hackensack River."

The Record's old 4th-floor newsroom afforded a sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline in the distance -- as long as you overlooked a hulking industrial building and oil tanks in the foreground, and the elevated New Jersey Turnpike in mid-distance.

No pollution?

Also in today's story, Jennifer A. Borg, NJMG's vice president/general counsel, pledges there are "no environmental issues that will prevent redevelopment."

Christie budget

The $33 billion state budget approved by the Legislature doesn't include expanded preschool acess, women's health care or a tax credit for the working poor (A-6).

The Borgs and LTACH: Perfect together

Teaneck police stopped the driver of this Porsche on Main Street in Hackensack, in front of the Sears Auto Center, on Wednesday. Two other Teaneck police cars responded, below. As for traffic stops in Hackensack, they are not that common, and drivers seem to speed and roll through stop signs with abandon. This morning, a young woman in a Toyota Corolla crossed the double-yellow lines to pass my car on Spring Valley Avenue near the Maywood border.

 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

At a forum in a Prospect Avenue high-rise on Wednesday night, all 11 candidates for Hackensack City Council pledged to stop a developer who is fighting a zoning-board decision that rejected his plan for a 19-story hospital.

The long-term, acute-care center -- known as Bergen Passaic LTACH -- would be built between Prospect and Summit avenues, near Golf Place, outside the city's hospital zone.

A coalition of Prospect Avenue residents fought the plan for about three years before the zoning board decided the matter in January 2012.

In a basement meeting room at The Whitehall luxury co-op, independent candidate Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record, was seated between his opponents -- two 5-member slates that call themselves Hackensack Citizens for Change and Hackensack Coalition for Open Government.

Sasson felt like he was being asked to part the Dead Sea.

Where was The Record?

No reporter for The Record covered the forum, the first of four planned at Prospect Avenue high-rises near the proposed site, which is zoned residential.

Citing the tax-exempt status of Hackensack University Medical Center, Sasson said there is no way of knowing whether developer Richard Peneles would apply for non-profit status after his hospital was built and stop paying property taxes.

Go to the river

An appropriate place for such a hospital is the 20-acre River Street parcel owned by the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group, publisher of  The Record, which abandoned Hackenack in 2009.

The property has become an eyesore. Now, wire is being stripped from the four-story building in anticipation of its demolition.

Sasson urges Pineles and the Borg family to get together and work out a land and money swap that would pave the way for construction of LTACH in a commercial zone with access to highways.

Because NJMG's land is in a flood zone, LTACH could take the form of a dry docked hospital ship -- with parking below decks -- and be dubbed Borg's Ark. 

Then, when the next Sandy hits, LTACH would be able to ride out the storm.

Another appropriate place for the 19-story hospital is also on River Street, at Kansas Street, land occupied by Costco Wholesale, which is rumored to be leaving Hackensack in about a year.

Today's paper

Superstorm Sandy unleashed unprecedented coverage of the Jersey shore, as two stories on today's front page show.

Now, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, have an excuse for not covering Hackensack and many other towns.

Paramus officials seem blind to the possibility that merchants who allow their sign lights to burn after 11 p.m. are contributing to public safety and deterring burglaries (A-1).

Big local news

Readers will find major Hackensack news on L-2, where a photo shows a street-light and solar-panel pole that was knocked down by a bus in front of police headquarters.    

The photo caption says only the pole fell "on State Street."

Was the NJ Transit driver cited? Readers have no clue.