AvalonBay tenants do a slow burn as investors celebrate

An aerial shot of the inferno that destroyed all 240 apartments in the Russell Building of the AvalonBay development in Edgewater on Jan. 21, 2015. Former tenants are still fighting for compensation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Nearly 19 months after the Avalon at Edgewater apartment inferno filled TV screens and front pages, former tenants are still waiting for compensation even as investors celebrate higher profits and dividends.

The Record's front page today reports that tenants' lawsuits are "still in the discovery stage and it could take more than a year before they go to trial or are settled" (A-1 and A-6).

Staff Writer Nicholas Pugliese focuses on such frustrated former tenants as Marina Rubinstein and husband Fedor Zakharov of Fort Lee, shown in a Page 1 photo with their dog.

However, the reporter doesn't address weak tenant-protection laws; lax building codes that allow AvalonBay to use cheap, lightweight wood construction that does little to stop fires; or lawyers who will walk away with at least a third of any damages tenants recover.

At the end of 2015, AvalonBay Communities -- the nation's second-largest exchange-listed apartment real estate investment trust -- owned or had interests in 285 apartment complexes with nearly 84,000 units in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

AvalonBay now has a total enterprise value of $31 billion, according to REIT.com's Anna Robaton.

Trump aide, ally

Today's A-1 story about wacko racist Donald J. Trump focuses on campaign manager Paul Manafort, and on the continuation page, a related story reports ally Rudy Giuliani's senior moment on 9/11 (A-5).

The New York Times reported handwritten ledgers found in Ukraine show $12.7 million in undisclosed payments to Manafort from a pro-Russia party. 

Manafort, who is guiding Trump's hate-filled White House campaign, denied any wrongdoing.

In an Ohio campaign stop on Monday, Trump said he would bar any immigrant who doesn't believe in the U.S. Constitution "or who support bigotry and hatred" (A-1).

Presumably, it's OK for citizens like Trump to base their entire GOP presidential campaign on "bigotry and hatred."

As for that moron Giuliani, he completely forgot that 9/11 occurred in 2001, when George W. Bush was in office and he was mayor of New York (A-5).

"In the 'eight years before [President Barack] Obama came along, we didn't have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States,'" Giuliani said Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, where he promoted Trump's national security plan.

Leonia's Keystone Kops

A story on the Local front doesn't explain why it has taken Leonia Police Chief Tom Rowe two full years after a pedestrian death to figure out a way to protect others "at the borough's most dangerous intersection" (L-1).

On Aug. 7, 2014, Leila Kan, a vibrant 60-year-old restaurant owner, was struck in the crosswalk on Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road, and dragged 71 feet along the pavement by a school minibus "whose driver failed to yield to her while making a left turn."

No police officer was stationed at the intersection to protect Kan and other pedestrians. 

Now, a new "red light phase at Broad Avenue and Fort Lee Road freezes all lights for 26 seconds to permit crossing at the intersection, used by thousands of cars and hundreds of pedestrians each day," Staff Writer Svetlana Shkolnikova reports.

'Cost prohibitive'

The reporter quotes Rowe as saying it would be "cost prohibitive" to post a police officer at the intersection, which is inundated by 15,000 cars a day from Route 95 whenever the George Washington Bridge is backed up.

But the truth came out two weeks after Kan's death in a 2014 Road Warrior column, where Rowe admitted only two of the borough's 17 officers were on duty at the time "and they were handling a domestic call."

Leonia Borough President Gil Hawkins also was quoted, blaming "a weak economy and declining tax base" for the loss of six officers "over the years."

Today's upbeat story doesn't explain why Leonia officials haven't hired more police officers in the two years since Kan's death.

Private concert

Staff Writer Jim Beckerman must have had blinders on when reporting on today's private master class and concert by Miri Ben-Ari, the young, glamorous Israeli-born violinist "and R&B, pop and hip-hop trailblazer" (Better Living front).

Ben-Ari will be stopping at The Elizabeth Morrow School, where her "Symphony of Brotherhood" -- a musical meditation on Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- will be performed on Thursday by 230 student violinists, age 4 to 13.

Isn't that rich? 

I guess Ben-Ari doesn't know or care Elizabeth Morrow is a private school on the East Hill, not far from the city's segregated elementary and middle schools.

Those black and Hispanic children haven't realized the dream of integration more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education. 

Editors don't dare compare daily Cuban life to violent U.S.

Lane restrictions on Main and Anderson streets, above, and Main and Passaic streets in Hackensack on Thursday and Friday had many drivers going in circles.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The biggest laugh line in Mike Kelly's Page 1 column on Cuba today is that many young people are "mired in low-wage jobs and unable to buy homes."

But isn't that exactly what The Record has been reporting for months about fast-food workers in the United States who have been calling for a minimum hourly wage of $15?

Kelly and Editor Martin Gottlieb, who sent the reporter to Havana, don't dare compare daily life on the Caribbean's biggest island to New Jersey and the rest of the United States (A-1).

No gun problem

For one thing, Cubans don't live with the kind of rampant gun violence that has taken so many innocent lives on the streets of Paterson, and in schools, churches and malls across the country.

Cuban youth aren't dying from the heroin overdoses that have become an epidemic in affluent Bergen County.

The 1956 revolution also ended discrimination against black Cubans -- the kind of equality that continues to elude black Americans -- and built schools and clinics in rural areas that had none.

Kelly does mention free universal health care and education in Cuba, but readers won't find a comparison of the two economic systems (A-8).

A Cuban friend standing next to one the beautifully restored American cars that tourists see all over Havana.

Low cost of living

Cuban wages are low, and so is the cost of living.

When I last visited the island in 2004, one of my hosts was paying rent equal to $1.35 a month, and after 30 years he became the owner of the apartment in Central Havana.

A typical monthly water bill in a Havana walk-up was 25 cents. A pound of tomatoes was 5 cents, and the government issued coupons for free food, toilet paper and other commodities.

For Cubans, tickets to the famed National Ballet were 10 cents, and they would often resell them to tourists for $10, the going price at the box office.

In 2006, The Wall Street Journal cited a study that estimated Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces controlled more than 60% of the island's economy -- from owning hotels and restaurants to leasing offshore lots for oil exploration.

In one of my visits, I saw a farmer's market in Havana selling organic vegetables grown by the military.

Greed victory

Also on Page 1 today, the Christie administration handed a victory to Avalon Bay, the real-estate investment trust that used cheap wood construction in an Edgewater apartment complex that burned down in January (A-1).

New building codes taking effect on Monday won't require more sprinklers, including in attic spaces; masonry firewalls between apartments (not buildings, as The Record says), and other improvements sought by residents, firefighters and lawmakers (A-8).

Bergen news?

Four major stories and two briefs from Paterson appear in the Local section delivered to Bergen County readers today (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

Readers looking for important local news on Page 1 were shut out by Gottlieb, who gave a sports columnist free reign to write about baseball.

Are Christie, legislators caving into real estate interests?

With Manhattan's Riverside Church in the distance, this is what remained of one of AvalonBay's apartment buildings in Edgewater two days after a five-alarm fire on Jan. 21 that destroyed more than half of the 408 units, above and below. Seven months later, no changes in state building codes have been made to require "sturdier material, firewalls and enhanced sprinkler systems," The Record is reporting today.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

It's hard to believe The Record could publish a long Page 1 story today on calls for a tougher state building code to prevent another devastating AvalonBay apartment fire, and not get reaction from Governor Christie.

Christie's name does appear on the front page today in a column from Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson (A-1), who reports the GOP bully leads all other presidential candidates in how much special-interest money he has raised in the Garden State.

Staff Writer Melissa Hayes and political Columnist Charles Stile have traveled with Christie on his campaign appearances in New Hampshire and Iowa, but I guess they had Sunday off.

Linh Tat and Minjae Park, the local reporters who wrote the story on long-delayed changes in the state building code, give the impression nothing is getting done in Trenton, despite a Democratic majority in the Legislature (A-1).

Big profits

AvalonBay is a real estate investment trust that returns big dividends to investors. 

Any changes in state building codes -- such as banning the use of cheap-wood construction -- to improve the fire resistance of AvanlonBay's proposed residential projects in Wayne, Teaneck and other communities would cut heavily into those profits. 

And today's story doesn't mention any improvements to existing AvalonBay buildings, such as those in Hackensack, where tenants have been losing sleep since seeing media images of the fast-moving fire that destroyed the Edgewater complex. 

Local news?

What a soft Local front today -- deer, dogs and parkland dominate the section.

For the second day in a row, The Record covered a demonstration for Kevin Allen, a black Passaic city resident who was shot by police outside the Lyndhurst Public Library on May 29 (L-1).

The education stories from Paterson (L-2) and Butler (L-3) contrast with the embargo on school and Board of Education news from Hackensack.

'O Canada'

Travel Editor Jill Schensul publishes a belated column on eastern Canada, including Montreal, where a strong U.S. dollar means big discounts for Americans (BL-1).

And in contrast to detailed reports from restaurant critic Elisa Ung on all of the artery clogging desserts she has sampled, today's Better Living cover story explores restaurant owner Lisa Mayisoglu's fitness and healthy food regimen (BL-1).

Editors rediscover North Jersey's remarkable diversity

This 222-unit apartment building on State Street, a few blocks from Hackensack City Hall, is scheduled to open this year, becoming the first to test officials' belief that such residential development will revive Main Street businesses.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Editor Martin Gottlieb, Columnist Mike Kelly and others at The Record continue to try readers' patience with their repeated attempts to make something out of nothing. 

On Page 1 today, behold the second part of "AFTER THE FIRE," a series in search of a coherent theme.

Today, The Record celebrates "a remarkable diversity of people at the Avalon at Edgewater apartment complex" (A-1).

And, below that story, you'd think Kelly was writing about the Colosseum in Rome when he declares "an era had passed" with the closing of the Izod Center (A-1).

The wonder isn't that the burned-out word pusher had nothing else to write about, but that Gottlieb continues to give this kind of drivel front-page play.

From dream to nightmare

Staff Writer Nicholas Pugliese studied at the American University in Dubai and played pro soccer in Afghanistan.

So, I guess it's appropriate he was chosen to tell the story of the many educated immigrants displaced by the Jan. 21 fire at the Avalon apartment complex in Edgewater that exposed the danger of cheap, all-wood construction in a so-called luxury building.

But you wouldn't know that from his first half-dozen paragraphs -- yet another retelling of the American dream playing out in North Jersey, a really old story not worthy of all this flag waving (A-1).

The headline calls the Avalon tenants "a complex community," but that is certainly the wrong word. 

The text declares "its tenants hailed from nearly every corner of the globe," but names only four of them, including California.

What escapes Pugliese and whoever edited his overlong story into a parody of immigration to America is that tenants like those at the Avalon aren't invested in their community and few of them vote in local elections.

So, I'm glad none of them died, but really, the story of the Avalon inferno is how it exposed the inadequacy of state fire codes to protect apartment tenants from a fast-spreading, potentially deadly fire.

More road kill

Citing numerous mathematical errors in the March 15 Road Warrior column, the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers has a suggestion for the editors of The Record.

Buy Staff Writer John Cichowski a calculator.

And in his March 10 column, Cichowski more than tripled the number of potholes state officials said they were going to repair, according to the Bloopers editor:

"Road Warrior is once again frequently delusional, incompetent or memory impaired while continuing his misinformed and clueless trek for worst potholes.

"Road Warrior indicated that the New Jersey Department of Transportation will have filled 1 million potholes after completing their repair work from this winter based on what he heard at a DOT press conference.

"Yet, every other news report from that press conference indicated that the DOT commissioner had stated that the DOT will have filled 300,000 potholes after completing their repair work.

"While reporting about the number of potholes on Route 4, he indicated that this highway was also 'newly paved.'

"Route 4 has not been newly paved and readers are constantly complaining to the Road Warrior, who publishes their complaints, asking him when the pothole plagued Route 4 will be repaved."

Avalon: Edgewater building was designed to burn down

The 4-story Avalon at Edgewater apartment building collapsed into a pile of rubble after Wednesday's inferno, which was started by a maintenance worker using a blowtorch to repair a pipe. An elevator tower, made of cinder blocks, remained intact on Friday afternoon.

Flanked by wood columns, this Undercliff Avenue entrance was one of the few recognizable elements of the so-called luxury apartment building on Friday.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

"The purpose of those [fire and safety codes] is not to prevent the building from burning down, but rather to ensure that there is sufficient time and opportunity for all occupants to exit safely in the event of a fire. ..."

You might be surprised who said this about the so-called Edgewater luxury apartment building destroyed by an inferno on Wednesday.

It's Michael Feigin, chief construction officer for complex owner Avalon Bay Communities, according to quotes in The Record today (A-6).

Of course, not all "occupants" reached safety despite the efforts of the Edgewater Volunteer Fire Department and all of the other forces that responded to the raging fire.

An unknown number of pets died, and their owners are devastated (A-6).

Cheap construction

The only luxury aspect of the Avalon at Edgewater building apparently is the high rents -- $2,100 to $3,195 a month -- which don't always include parking.

Avalon officials have acknowledged the destroyed building -- as well as those in Hackensack, Jersey City and other towns -- had cheap lightweight wood construction with a truss style of roof framing, but were built according to code.

CBS2's Tony Aiello reported the building's lighweight wood construction allowed the fire to spread, especially because attics and concealed spaces had no sprinklers.

Click on the following link to hear Aiello's report:

The blaze has been ruled an accident, but ...

Broken record

Feigin, Avalon Bay's chief construction officer, was quoted in Friday's paper, and his statement was repeated today, because an Avalon Bay representative refused further comment, Staff Writer Kathleen Lynn reports (A-6).

But state Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, a construction code official by profession, says he finds "deeply troubling" reports "the building's material and design may have contributed to the spread of the fire"(A-6).

Prieto says he is reviewing "the relevant building codes to find areas that may need to be strengthened."

Unfortunately, The Record's editorial page hasn't challenged self-serving statements from Avalon Bay officials.

Nor have reporters said how much more the company would have to spend, if it employed safer construction -- using cinder blocks and concrete to stop minor fires from spreading uncontrollably, as appears to be the case on Wednesday.

Avalon Bay Communities, a Virginia-based real estate investment trust, owns 82,000 units in 274 complexes on both coasts (Friday's A-7).

Community rallies

Today's lead story on Page 1 is a heart-warming tale of how "the community continued to rally around the hundreds of families left homeless and seeking help" (A-1).

Tenants were required to pay for at least $10,000 in insurance coverage on their belongings and furniture, plus $100,000 in liability insurance (A-1).

Any money recovered through negligence suits against Avalon Bay and its maintenance workers won't be realized for years, given the glacial pace of civil litigation in Bergen County.

And the lion's share of any award or settlement will be gobbled up by ambulance-chasing lawyers.

$1,000 from Avalon

After gouging tenants with high rents in what many view as an unsafe building, Avalon is refunding January rents and providing $1,000 in relocation aid.

But as one tenant notes, the $1,000 "would hardly cover the deposit on a new place."

Meanwhile, donations continued to pour into Edgewater, including more than $60,000 contributed to two funds.

Imagine how we could reduce the homeless population in North Jersey with this kind of response on behalf of people who lose their jobs or whose homes are foreclosed.

A PSE&G crewman, dwarfed by an elevator tower, restoring power to the neighborhood as other workers were putting up fencing and cleaning up water and smoke damage to Undercliff Avenue homes opposite the building that collapsed.

Another Avalon at Edgewater building, rear, appeared to have escaped damage. The building that was destroyed was on Undercliff Avenue, a long block from River Road in Edgewater. 

On the scene Friday were trucks from Public Service Electric and Gas Co., above; the chief's SUV from the Edgewater Volunteer Fire Department, below; and private companies restoring Undercliff Avenue homes, including clothing, that sustained smoke and water damage, and were showered with soot and burnt cinders from the raging fire.

Local news?

Today's Local section is chock full of court, police and accident news.

Kathleen Peet, 37, of Rochelle Park was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for embezzling more than $87,000.

Staff Writer Stefanie Dazio wasn't curious enough to ask what the woman did with the money (L-1).

Two dramatic photos on L-1 show first responders rescuing the driver of a truck carrying "brine solution," but the caption doesn't say whether the solution is for koshering chickens or removing road ice.

A Paterson official was fired for submitting false information on her application for home-repair funds (L-1), and a Clifton school board lawyer resigned after she was criticized "for undermining residents' free speech" (L-2).

And there's news about lawsuits, one filed by an ex-principal and another by a demoted police officer (L-2).

On A-2 today, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Deputy Dan Sforza and their minions acknowledge they were responsible for three major local-news errors Thursday and Friday.

How embarrassing.