TARIQ ZEHAWI / THE RECORD
Environmentalists are split on Xanadu. Hackensack Riverkeeper "Captain Bill" Sheehan, above, supports the marshes for Xanadu trade-off. Left photo, the Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel, left, has questions.Posted on 05/07/2004 9:48:42 PM PDT by Coleus
| Friday, May 7, 2004 |
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TARIQ ZEHAWI / THE RECORD Environmentalists are split on Xanadu. Hackensack Riverkeeper "Captain Bill" Sheehan, above, supports the marshes for Xanadu trade-off. Left photo, the Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel, left, has questions. |
Fourteen months ago, environmentalists were popping champagne corks.
The deal to build a $1.3 billion consumer playground around Continental Arena also meant that 600 acres of wetlands would be permanently preserved. After a decade of fighting, a developer would get to build, but local activists had also saved a marsh in the heart of the Meadowlands.
Now, with the massive Xanadu project steaming ahead at the arena, it seems victory is in the eye of the activist.
The marshes-for-megadevelopment trade-off has opened a rift among environmentalists, between those who see it as a good compromise and those who smell a sellout.
On one side is the group Hackensack Riverkeeper, led by "Captain Bill" Sheehan, the cab driver-turned-environmental crusader who supports Xanadu and has even advised the would-be builders on ecological hurdles. On the other side are activists who fear they're getting a huge, ugly mall and traffic nightmare - and wonder why Sheehan isn't more skeptical.
"We frankly told Bill we're quite concerned about the magnitude of the project," said Lori Charkey of Westwood, a longtime ally of Sheehan in Bergen County's open space fights. "We don't know if it's maybe too much of a devil's bargain."
The debate has become particularly personal between two men one activist calls "900-pound gorillas" of New Jersey environmentalism: Sheehan, the media-savvy, blue-collar activist who's come to personify the Meadowlands in the public eye, and Jeff Tittel, the media-savvy, well-tailored executive director of the state Sierra Club who's a fixture in the halls of power in Trenton.
Tittel calls Xanadu "a stupid idea" that will create "gridlock in Bergen County."
Sheehan says Tittel should butt out. "I spent the last nine years of my life dealing with the issue of wetlands in the Hackensack Meadowlands," he fumed. "The one person that I've never seen at any of those meetings is Jeff Tittel. For him to come in at this point in the process and be a critic - if he was so damn worried about it, why wasn't he here?"
Saving 600 acres of wetlands in exchange for building on the arena's parking lots, he argued, seems a good bargain.
"A good general has to know when to declare victory," he said.
At issue is a sprawling office, retail, and entertainment complex. The Mills Corp. and Mack-Cali Realty plan 2 million square feet of office space and 600,000 square feet of stores around the East Rutherford arena, including a 20-story artificial ski slope, a culinary institute, a luxury spa, and a minor league baseball park. As part of the deal, Mills would preserve the 600-acre Empire Tract in Carlstadt, where it had been trying to build another mall against the bitter opposition of environmental groups.
Sheehan has publicly supported the project. But while other environmentalists were pleased to save the Empire Tract, they also see a traffic and pollution nightmare in the making in Xanadu. Tittel claims the project could add 125,000 more vehicles to the roads daily in the area, breeding more traffic jams and pumping more exhaust into the air. Critics also oppose plans to pave over 7.5 acres of wetlands next to the arena to accommodate the building.
"For a lot of environmentalists, when they see Xanadu, they kind of have the same animosity in their gut that they had with the [Empire Tract] project," said Dennis Schvejda of North Haledon, the state Sierra Club's conservation director. "It's not popular. Nobody is jumping up and down saying we wish this is going to happen."
Tittel has threatened to sue, though he added, "Nobody's saying nothing should get done there. What we're saying is, whatever's done there should enhance and complement the region and not just make it into a huge parking lot."
Of course, most of the arena site is a huge parking lot now. Saving the Empire Tract, on the other hand, has been the Holy Grail for Sheehan and other environmentalists for nearly a decade. It is the largest undeveloped plot of wetlands left in the Meadowlands.
Xanadu will protect the land for good, without the risk that Mills, with its $6.6 billion in annual revenues, could find a way to build, Sheehan said. His group has been pushing the developers to use state-of-the-art technology in Xanadu to conserve water and energy and otherwise protect the environment, he added.
Sheehan, Riverkeeper's executive director, met with Mills and Mack-Cali earlier this year to discuss environmental issues. He told them he expected a "platinum standard" of ecological commitment, he said.
"Our main thing is we're getting what we wanted," added Hugh Carola, Riverkeeper's program director. "Our victory was saving the Empire Tract."
"We're all for clean air," he said. "But to lose wetlands, to lose one way to gain another is not a fair trade. There are people who have pie-in-the-sky ideas about redevelopment at the arena."
The split among environmentalists hasn't escaped the notice of the developers. "We've done a lot of work and made a lot compromises with the likes of the true environmental leaders in the area like Bill Sheehan, only to have some others come in here late in the game and say, 'No, it's not good enough,'Ÿ" said Michael Turner, a spokesman for Mills and Mack-Cali.
"There are other people who, they're so wrapped up in their own rhetoric, they can't get beyond where they are to recognize it's a good move," he said.
Some think the differences are as much about the clash of two big personalities as the environmental issues at hand. Tittel and Sheehan come in different packages, but neither is a wallflower. Sheehan is a plain-speaking Secaucus everyman, most likely to be pictured in bluejeans and a baseball cap steering his pontoon boat through the marshes. Tittel, who grew up in Ringwood, is a suit-and-tie man who earns his money lobbying lawmakers and working the media.
Sheehan credits others for helping him defend the Meadowlands, but he's not coy about his own importance. "I'm just sitting here trying to run the watershed from behind this desk," he sighed in his Hackensack office recently.
Tittel has an endless supply of sound bite-ready quips for the media: He dubbed Xanadu "Zantac" for all the heartburn he says it will cause drivers. But some environmentalists complain he dives into some issues at the last minute, claiming the spotlight after local activists have spent months or years in the trenches.
They have a term for the supposed slight: "being Titteled."
"Jeff has this attitude about himself that nothing significant can happen environmentally in the state of New Jersey unless he has something to say about it," Sheehan said.
Tittel is more diplomatic, but he said Sheehan may be too concerned with saving his Empire Tract to see the bigger picture. "I think that the Captain, instead of criticizing me, should be looking more closely at the development," he said. "We need another mall like we need another toxic waste dump."
Verbal fireworks aside, both camps insist environmental groups are coming together. At hearings on Xanadu's potential environmental impacts last week, attorneys for Sierra and Riverkeeper both raised concerns about traffic, air quality, and water pollution.
Sheehan acknowledged the tensions, but said he won't give the developers a free ride. "People don't think I know what I'm doing," he said. "But I have good lawyers."
"We're on the same page," Tittel said, though he suggested it took some work. "We've kind of had a little intervention with him, just to say, 'Hey Bill, we won. Just don't let Xanadu kill what we won.'Ÿ"
More Info Plug in Xanadu for last 12 months
I like the charming swamp that greets me when my train pulls out of the hudson river tunnel. Its like the everglades without palms, alligators or charm...
Living in the area, I am fine with everything (What happened with the NASCAR racetrack that was also suppose to go there?) except the mall(s). Mill Creek Mall can't be more than 2 miles away (plus it's in Essex County where it can be open on Sunday where a future mall at the Meadowlands in Bergen can't) and the Garden State Plaza and Bergen county malls are within 5 miles and you could sort of count the Park Avenue strip in the town of Rutherford as an outdoor mall so with all these malls nearby I can't see any good reason to put another monstrous one up.
Isn't New Jersey the state that invented toxic waste?
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