Upper Township Mayor Rich Palombo makes announcement at Monday night’s committee meeting
UPPER TOWNSHIP – Mayor Rich Palombo announced the sale of the B.L. England site at Monday evening’s Township Committee meeting.
“It’s a great opportunity for the township,” he said about the more than 350 acres on which the defunct plant sits.
“It’s thanks to the leadership of the mayor,” Committeeman Ed Barr said.
The sale, some four years in the making, is another, big step in what will be a massive project for a marina, shops, restaurants, a hotel, seasonal villas and some sort of boardwalk, Palombo explained.
Beesleys Point Development LLC is the buyer. In a followup interview Tuesday morning, Palombo said the sale price was not announced, but most of the cost comes down to remediating the site.
“Quite frankly that’s where the sale comes in because they estimate it will cost between $13 (million) and $15 million … to tear the buildings down, clean up everything that needs to be cleaned up,” Palombo said. “Without giving a (sale price), that gives you some idea of the estimate to clean this place up.”
Palombo gave credit to township attorney Dan Young and Municipal Engineer Paul Dietrich.
Palombo said Beesleys Point Development LLC is a group of individuals who have knowledge about this type of development. He said the settlement has been signed, but certain details need to be worked out.
“The biggest one is to make sure Atlantic City Electric signs off on the sale because they were the original owners before RC Capital,” he said. “They also have one loophole to get through with the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) knowing that the place will be cleaned up. The bulk of the sale is the responsibility of cleaning up the site.”
“This is just a great opportunity for the future of Upper Township that the property will be developed in a way that it will have a positive impact on the township and the county and, frankly, the whole area,” Palombo said. When he described the parts of the development project, he noted exact plans are not ready, but once the settlement is finalized, he is going to ask the parties to produce some artists renderings.
The mayor said there were some potential developers who talked to township officials, but they didn’t like those plans. This is a big turn of events not just for the township, but also for the mayor, who is leaving office after 22 years. He decided not to seek re-election in November.
“When I tell you we’ve worked on this for close to four years, I’m not exaggerating,” he said. “When we knew that the plant was ultimately going to close, we certainly had to determine what was going to go there. Some of our original developers that came in to talk to us … had a lot of industrial uses and even had some transfer with the trains to do some recycling of trash. It’s not what we had in mind for the township.
“I didn’t want to be involved with any of that. We wanted it to be cleaned up environmentally. We don’t want to put any industry in there that could cause more of an issue, more pollutants,” Palombo said.
B.L. England was a major factor in Upper Township for nearly 60 years as a source of jobs, electricity and funding, providing the township with energy tax receipts of more than $6 million a year. The township received the money for hosting the plant.
Palombo said he remembers the plant from the time he was a child growing up in North Wildwood and traveling into Atlantic County. “I’m 66 and I remember going over the single-lane parkway. It was there as long as I can ever remember.”
The owners of B.L. England had hoped to switch the plant from being coal- and diesel-fired to natural gas, which would have depended on a controversial pipeline that went through part of the Pinelands. Environmental groups fought against the pipeline. The owners dropped those plans in February of 2019.
“We ultimately threatened to take legal action to have the site originally repurchased because they (RC Holdings) were actually going to close it down about 10 years ago,” Palombo said. “It was an important asset to the township.” Township officials supported the plant switching to natural gas after that, but that didn’t work out.
For over a decade, the 447-megawatt plant was under an order to meet emissions standards or close down. The state Department of Environmental Protection gave the order to then-owners Atlantic City Electric in 2006. The company sold B.L. England to RC Cape May Holdings LLC that year for a reported $12.2 million.
At the end of 2020, the Upper Township Planning Board supported designating the B.L. England site as an area in need of development. That designation gave Upper Township broad powers to redevelop the site, parts of which were vacant for decades. Planning consultant Tiffany Morrissey said some buildings including the cooling tower – one of the most visible landmarks in Cape May County overlooking Great Egg Harbor Bay – would have to be removed, as would the smokestacks and oil storage facilities.
Ørsted, the Danish company partnering with PSEG to build the proposed Ocean Wind 1 wind turbine farm off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties, plans to connect the transmission cables bringing the electricity from the wind farm to the power grid at the B.L. England site. The company plans to run the lines from the wind farm 15 miles off the coast through Ocean City and along Roosevelt Boulevard to Beesleys Point.
Pancoast sworn in
The commitee also swore in its newest member, Mark Pancoast. By statute, Pancoast was sworn in immediately following the final tally of votes as he is assuming an unexpired term. Pancoast thanked his family, who joined him as he took his oath of office, as well the community for their support.
Pancoast is a lieutenant with the Ocean City Police Department. He successfully ran for office on a ticket with incumbent Committeewoman Kimberly Hayes and Jay Newman.
With the holiday season under way, Committeeman John Coggins commended the work of township public works for their decorations. He also noted that the Saint Maximillian Parish in Marmora will be running a food pantry and gift drive for the needy.
The committee passed a number of resolutions without comment. Among them were authorization of payments from the Township Affordable Housing Trust Fund, approving a Rescue Squad coin drop, and cancellation and refund of tax on three exempt properties. The committee also appointed Surenian, Edwards, & Nolan as Special Legal Counsel for affordable housing matters.
As for new business, the committee moved to retain OceanFirst bank for the remainder of their current contract as they offered the best interest rate. They also discussed bids on dredging at Beesley’s Point Park. There were five bids ranging wildly from $94,000 to $274,000. The project is expected to be completed by March. It was also announced that the Township would receive $56,000 from the County Joint Insurance Fund.
The next meeting will be held Monday, Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m.
– By KYLE McCRANE and DAVID NAHAN/SENTINEL STAFF
Editor’s note: This story includes information from past stories about the B.L. England plant that have appeared in the Sentinel.