Brick Council Introduces Special Zoning Overlay For Camp Osborn

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township Council introduced an ordinance Tuesday evening that would establish a special zoning overlay for the barrier island area dubbed Camp Osborn.

It's a step that aims to help property owners in the barrier island community rebuild their homes in an area that has been an incessant source of controversy for more than five years.

On Oct. 29, 2012, wind, waves and fire swept through the bungalows and beach homes that made up the trio of property sections on the barrier island portion of Brick. Camp Osborn, the century-old community that was left in ruins in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, remains mostly patches of sand nearly 5-1/2 years after Sandy hit, as the homeowners associations that govern the parcels — and in some casess the homeowners themselves — have wrestled with Brick Township's zoning ordinances and their own membership over what would happen with the properties.

Owners of properties on the bayfront have rebuilt. But for those who owned parcels on the median strip on Route 35 and who owned parcels on the oceanfront portions, the struggle has been nothing short of a nightmare.

The zoning for the area, R7.5, is a residential zone that provides for lots of 75 by 100 feet. In 1990, the township approved an ordinance defining a conditional use for the entire area, called a beach cottage community, "for structural alteration or rebuilding of these residential buildings only."

The conditional use, created to allow Camp Osborn residents to make repairs without having to seek a variance every time they did work on their homes, had a provision that eliminated it after Sandy and the natural gas-fueled fires wiped the cottages off the map.

It has led to nothing short of a quagmire for those who owned cottages in the Camp Osborn development, some of whom were full-time residents.

The ordinance introduced Tuesday night would reinstate that beach cottage community overlay, which would then allow some plans that are in the works — including plans that the Osborn Sea-Bay Association, a homeowners association that collectively includes 78 homes, has been trying to get approved for months — to potentially move forward.

Efforts to rebuild another piece of the oceanfront have been mired in Board of Adjustment battles and lawsuits over concerns about fire safety; some have fought rebuilding based on the former overlay over concerns that if another fire happens, homes will go up like tinderboxes again if they are packed too tightly. A development proposed by RTS IV LLC on another parcel that is part of Camp Osborn has been the subject of repeated hearings, including one as recently as Feb. 28, and lawsuits but no resolutions.

"I know our board has been working toward that overlay zone for a while now," said Nick Honachefsky, who has owned his sliver of Camp Osborn, a parcel on the median, since 1998. "I am hopeful that this is a step in the right direction."

The ordinance that received initial approval Tuesday night goes before the Brick Township Planning Board on Wednesday, March 14. That meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the Brick Township municipal building.

If the Planning Board approves, the ordinance will be on the council agenda for a second reading and potential approval vote on Tuesday, March 27.

"It's a sense of relief," Honachefsky said. "But there's still a lot of work ahead."

Camp Osborn, seen in October 2014, has changed little since Superstorm Sandy destroyed the century-old cottage community in 2012. Photo by Karen Wall, Patch staff