Monday, July 27, 2009

Dilapidated shopping plaza eyed for redevelopment


Sept. 7, 2004

By Ken Tarbous

EAST BRUNSWICK: For years drivers have been passing the blighted Meyer's Shopping Center on Route 18 south, wondering what happened to the once-vibrant strip mall that held popular sidewalk sales and auto shows.

The last two tenants of the run-down plaza are preparing to leave and the future of the property, owned by the Branciforte family, is still in question.

Large gas tanks have been removed from the ground near the shuttered Mr. Good Lube on the site of the dilapidated strip mall.

The Oreck Floor Care Center has plans to move on or about Sept. 15 to the former site of The Bridal Center across the highway.

The Middlesex County Republican Organization has its headquarters in the plaza next to Oreck.

"We know that ultimately we'll be moving out, we're not certain when that's going to occur," Joe Leo, the Middlesex GOP's chairman, said. "We are expected to be vacating fairly soon. We're hoping that we will not have to move until the election."

Even the last Atlantic City bus has left, now picking up its daily passengers at the nearby American Harvest Gourmet Market.

A 10-year-old appraisal puts the property's assessed value at $2.913 million, according to township records. A portion of the 18.4-acre tract, approximately 3 acres, is protected wetlands and has water easements and encroachments and cannot be developed because of land-use restrictions.

The 2003 township tax bill, sent to "C. Branciforte et al" at a post office box in Milltown, was $184,152.

Robert Rafano, an attorney representing an unidentified member of the Branciforte family -- the four siblings, Gene, John, Carmella and Carl -- confirmed the property is for sale.

"Extensive negotiations are going on with a prospective purchaser, which we hope will be concluded shortly," Rafano, a New Brunswick-based lawyer, said last week. "We're at a very critical stage."

Luigi Branciforte, a local banker and businessman who owned the property, died in August 1997 at 79, leaving the site to his children.

The family has not responded to requests to tell their story of dealing with the business interests since their father's death.

Rusted tanks from a gas station once located on the site and mounds of dirt covered by tarp, evidence of the excavation, can be seen from the highway.

The pothole-filled front parking lot of the shopping center, also known as the Grand Plaza Shopping Center, is littered with papers, empty cigarette packs and other trash.

The rear lot is strewn with plastic garbage bags, empty soda bottles and other debris and has become a hidden parking spot for at least one tractor-trailer.

Faded signs -- some with exposed fluorescent lights -- for GMI Designs Custom Furniture, the East Brunswick Pub and others are remnants of better days at the one-time shopping mecca, which opened in 1955.

Meyer's Discount Store was the centerpiece, selling dolls, toys and bicycles to generations in the local community. The toy store, founded in New Brunswick in 1914, held its 60th anniversary celebration in 1974, an event featuring an antique-car show and a three-day outdoor sale by the 15 stores at the plaza.

Today, the tall highway sign, visible up and down Route 18, is barren except for the Oreck Floor Care Center enticement to sales and service for the vacuum-cleaner and air-purifier dealer.

Cushman & Wakefield of New Jersey Inc. is the exclusive agent marketing the property for sale, the real-estate company confirmed. David Bernhout of C&W referred questions to the owners' representative for the sale, James F. Hyland, a judge and attorney based in East Brunswick.

Hyland, said to be a family friend of the owners, did not return numerous calls over the past year seeking comment.

Calls to New Brunswick-based attorney Carl Branciforte, one of the properties' owners, seeking comment were not returned.


The 57,600-square-foot one-story strip mall, fronted by the Mr. Good Lube building, has about 350 parking spaces, according to promotional materials from C&W's East Rutherford office. Rent on the Oreck space is $2,000 per month and the Mr. Good Lube location rent was in excess of $3,600 per month, according to C&W materials.

"That's probably the last great site available in East Brunswick," Adrian Kroll, president of Kroll Commercial Realty, said Wednesday. "The most desirable highway to be on in the Central Jersey area is Route 18."

The property could easily fetch $1 million per acre, even up to $1.4 million per acre, and would make sense for a retailer that needs to be on Route 18, he said.

"If somebody wants to be here, there's not a lot of choices." The tract, with 15.4 acres available for redevelopment, could sell for more than $20 million at that rate.

Kroll, whose East Brunswick firm has brokered more than $20 million in sales so far this year, said his office constantly gets calls about the Meyer's Shopping Center.

" 'I can't believe somebody has kept that site vacant that long.' This is what I hear daily," he said.

Wal-Mart and Wegmans Food Markets are conspicuously absent from East Brunswick, he added.

"I see a national company coming in, one of the big boxes. I think that building has to be razed, and a brand-new, multimillion-dollar structure has to come in," said Kroll, who has run his commercial brokerage specializing in retail, office and warehouse space for 13 years. "We have a tremendous amount of capable buyers out there who are ready, willing and able to act."

The access along Summerhill Road, the jughandle onto Arthur Road, and the huge Route 18 frontage makes it a wonderful site for a retailer, he said.

On Thursday, East Brunswick Mayor William Neary, a Democrat, pledged to immediately investigate any property-maintenance issues at the site.

The mayor said using eminent domain to take the property is unlikely.

"I've been very reluctant to do that," he said. "Our retail corridor is so strong it doesn't need the heavy hand of government."

The mayor said there are many opportunities for land owners in town, pointing to Lowe's, which has received Planning Board approval for a home improvement store at the East Brunswick Plaza, near Kohl's and Circuit City.

Neary said he feels confident a full proposal for the Meyer's site eventually will come before the Planning Board.

"The township itself understands that the property is valuable, and we figure the private owners will be able to make a deal, they haven't done it yet," he said. "Meyer's isn't being forgotten." Ed Cohen, head of economic development for the township, has been keeping a watchful eye on the valuable piece of land.

"The property has been up for sale for 7 years," he said Wednesday.

He has heard dozens of times that the tract had been sold, he said, adding that just because tanks have been removed doesn't mean a sale is imminent.

"It's 7 years since this administration has been here," he added. "The month that we took office 7 years ago is when Meyer's (toy store) closed, and that thing's been going downhill."

The Summerhill Marketplace, home of the A&P Food Market, is another Branciforte family property suffering from vacancies -- two stores in the 83,856-square-foot center are empty.

The Daisy Fair, a spring benefit for a township-run program for children and adults with disabilities, had to be postponed until July because of negotiations between the Branciforte family and a Pennsylvania-based firm, organizer Ronnie Wisniewski said in July. Wisniewski said then that the parties should be near a closing date.

Retailers snap up prized space

HOME NEWS TRIBUNE
September 7, 2004

By Ken Tarbous

EAST BRUNSWICK: A Lowe's home-improvement store is coming to town, more proof that the Route 18 retail corridor is one of the most sought-after locations in the state, real-estate experts say.

"It's the law of supply and demand," said Adrian Kroll, president of Kroll Commercial Realty. "There are little sites on 18 that are going for twice what they did four or five years ago."

The limited amount of available rental retail space and land for sale contributed to the rise, Kroll said, and spots on Route 18 are very desirable.

"People from Marlboro, Manalapan, Old Bridge, and even Colts Neck take 18 to get to the Turnpike in the morning." Kroll represents the owners of the old Quality Auto store property. A 5,000-square-foot center is planned there, and two of the three stores have been leased, he said Wednesday.

"We're getting very high rents here, higher than I had anticipated." The names of those two tenants were not available.

Arte Kitchens, a high-end store, also has signed a lease for an 8,000-square-foot space at 280 Route 18, near Gabowitz TV & Appliance Co., Kroll said.

Kroll, whose East Brunswick firm brokers commercial sales and leases, helped bring to town a new 100-room Holiday Inn Express on Naricon Place behind the Brunswick Hilton at Tower Center and a 66-room Comfort Suites on Old Bridge Turnpike, both expected to open in the fall.
Business is indeed booming along the five-mile stretch of highway in the township, Mayor William Neary said.

"Right now our biggest problem in East Brunswick is trying to find enough places to accommodate the businesses that want to move in," the mayor said Thursday.

As evidence of the thriving business environment, Neary pointed to successes such as the renovations at the Mid State Mall, the $15 million makeover at Brunswick Square Mall, and the arrival in town of Kohl's and Best Buy since he's taken office.

More recently, Lowe's has received Planning Board approval for a store at East Brunswick Plaza, near Kohl's and Circuit City.

The township is about to begin modifications to improve traffic flow at the intersection of Route 18 and Tices Lane that will help local businesses, Neary said.

Patrick Delaney is a real-estate veteran with Jeffery Realty, a firm representing Mid State Mall and Village Green East on Route 18.

"Route 18 is a good regional market," Delaney said. "It has good, strong demographics, and also it's a heavy commuter road."

Delaney, whose company specializes in leasing, sales and development of retail property, also said available space is limited on the Route 18 corridor.

The 377,211-square-foot Mid State Mall, where Best Buy, ShopRite and Borders are located, is 100 percent occupied, Delaney said Thursday.

"Probably for the first time in 15 years," he added. "The owner there did a phenomenal job, renovated it, made it attractive, made deals with national tenants." Village Green East, home to Vitamin Shoppe, also is 100 percent occupied, he said.

Jeffery Realty, based in North Plainfield, also represents the 18 Central Shopping Center on Route 18, where the Gap is located.

Office Depot is doing construction on the old Kids R Us space and plans to open in October, Delaney said. A gourmet grocer has signed a lease for The Wiz space and a dessert shop has taken the space formerly occupied by Wells Fargo Financial, next to the Gap.

The former storefront of Party City, 12,800 square feet, and the Office Max space, 33,000 square feet, are still vacant, he said, and talks are proceeding with potential tenants, including a seafood restaurant.

A proposed $30 million redevelopment of the Golden Triangle -- a 31-acre parcel that includes Sam's Club, the Transportation and Commerce Center and the Route 18 Market -- is in the works.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

N.J. pension system considered a dinosaur

Home News Tribune
5/10/05

By KEN TARBOUS
Gannett New Jersey

In the back offices of the state Treasury Department, a small, nondescript division has had a huge impact on the state's public pension funds.

In a little more than two years, the state Division of Investment lost nearly $18 billion - enough to run New Jersey government for six months.

Those losses, along with diminished investment returns, have forced state taxpayers to contribute nearly $200 million to the pension system this year and an expected $1.5 billion in next year's budget, which could be spread over five years.

New Jersey is a dinosaur among pension funds, the lone state that has bureaucrats rather than outside investment professionals managing billions of dollars each day.

Even after the disastrous loss of $18 billion from first-quarter 2000 to July 2002, changes that would make the division more efficient and more responsive to moves in the market have been slow, according to state Treasurer John E. McCormac.

McCormac blamed an archaic system and the State Investment Council, the division's board of directors that oversees the pension investments, for the extended period of losses that drained the once self-sufficient state pension fund from a high of $85 billion in March 2000 to $68.9 billion today.

“There was a reluctance to change. It was ‘buy and hold,’ and it was ‘stay the course.’ Quarter after quarter of negative results was met with, ‘Don't worry. It's only temporary,’” McCormac said. “But three years of bad performance is not temporary.”

James W. Karamanos, 60, of Highland Park is a part-time substitute teacher not enrolled in the state pension system. He's been following the debate over retirement financing and is unhappy with the state’s pension fund.

“Whether it was the bad investments or not, I'm not too pleased,” Karamanos said. “As a taxpayer that directly affects (me).”

He acknowledged the value of his own investments has been drastically reduced in recent years, but he thinks the state must change its outlook.

“The situation leaves something to be desired. We are not fiscally responsible, whether it's the Republicans or the Democrats,” Karamanos said.

State, county and municipal employees, teachers, police and firefighters pay about 5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund system, which invests the money.

Regulations and laws limit the investment portfolio. The fund's market value constantly changes. Portfolio gains and losses are combined with money flowing in from participants and the state, then are paid out in benefits.

As of June 2004, the state's pension fund was invested 66.5 percent in stocks, 26.4 percent in bonds and fixed income, 5 percent in cash, and 2.1 percent in mortgages.

A survey by the California-based investment-consulting firm Wilshire Associates found the median asset allocation of public pension funds to be 62.3 percent in stocks, 26.3 percent in bonds, 3.4 percent in cash, and 2.6 percent in alternative investments as of Dec. 31, 2004.

New Jersey's taxpayers have to support the fund if its return on investments drops below a five-year average of 8.25 percent per year. As of June 2004, New Jersey's five-year average return was 1.5 percent. The median in the Wilshire study was 3.66 percent over that same period.

The investment division, founded in 1950, and the investment council barely acknowledged widely accepted practices of investment and risk management, putting the money mostly in stocks, according to McCormac.

When the S&P 1500 Index, a large group of stocks used to measure how the overall markets are performing, plunged in the early part of this decade, so did the value of the pension fund.

“That's insane,” said Sheryl Gaugler, 50, of North Brunswick, a secretary at Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick. “We're a rich state, and we can't manage our money?”

Changes pushed

McCormac is pushing for investment diversification and external money managers to increase returns. He wants to move billions of dollars, up to 13 percent of the overall portfolio, out of stock and bonds and the hands of division employees.

McCormac's plan calls for placing that money into alternative investments like real estate and privately owned companies, using the services of private, fee-based investment managers.

The $17.9 billion collapse over two years – nearly a fifth of the total pension fund - and the condition of the pension funds' investment portfolio are the fault of arcane rules and procedures left in place from previous councils and administrations, McCormac said. The council does not invest the money, but rather, is meant to ensure the integrity of the division.

As an example of how poorly the system functioned, McCormac said, the department would meet each Tuesday on “trading day,” deciding which stocks to sell that week and leaving the funds at the risk of the markets' fluctuations for relatively long periods of time.

Bill Clark, the division's new director, said some criticism of the council’s operations is valid.

“In hindsight, it’s probably fair. We had a very good run in the ’90s, and we had pretty big positions (owning millions of shares of one company) in some tech stocks in particular,” said Clark, who has been at the division since 1999 and took over as division director in March. “We probably should have been more aggressive in taking some of those chips off the table.”

But a former division director said selling stocks is not that easy for the state.

The division may hold hundreds of millions of dollars in shares in a particular company, and selling off such a huge amount at once can drive the stock price down.

To stop such a sudden impact, it might take up to 20 days for the state to sell blocks of shares without disturbing the market, said Steven E. Kornrumpf, who served in the Division of Investment from 1971 to 2002. He spent six years as the deputy director and his last four as director.

For example, in the spring of 2001, as shares of New Jersey-based Lucent Technology Inc. nose-dived, the division took 30 days to sell 5.915 million shares at a loss of more than $35 million.

On March 20, 2001, the first sale of 200,000 shares was made at a price of $12.58 each, the highest sale price the state received over the period. The state’s sale price slid to a low of $7 on April 17, 2001. The last sale of the bulk of shares was made for $7.59 per share on April 18, 2001.

State policy defended

But all the finger-pointing by McCormac and current council members sounds like political rhetoric to Roland Machold, a former state treasurer and the director of the Division of Investment for 23 years before his retirement in 1998.

“It’s just dead wrong. We met once a week to make our major decisions,” said Machold, who served under both Democrats and Republicans. He came back as treasurer under Gov. Christie Whitman from 1999 to 2001.

The meetings would bring together all the brainpower of the division, but trading would go on throughout the week, he said. If special circumstances arose, such as adverse stock news or steep price drops, the director or deputy director could make decisions between meetings, he said.

“Remember, we're making long-term investments,” he said. "We were not traders; we were investors.”

Despite ups and downs in market value, the fund has a long life, with money deposited for workers today set to be withdrawn 30 or 40 years in the future, Machold said.

“Volatility over that period of time averages out. If you took the full period, the volatility would be minuscule. That's the reason we were willing to do that,” Machold said.

He presided over much of the fund's windfall years when the market value more than doubled, from $36 billion in 1994 to $85 billion in 2000. By the end of 2002, it had retreated to $58 billion.

Soon after arriving in Trenton, the McGreevey administration cleaned house at the top levels of the division and the council.

In September 2003, Independent Fiduciary Services Inc., brought in by the state to review the division’s operations, called for an overhaul, making about 80 recommendations for changing and updating procedures and policies.

The independent study recommended adding staff. The division handles $68.9 billion with only seven portfolio managers and 10 investment analysts, an addition of one each since the report.

Proposals for growth

Regulations still handcuff portfolio managers from selecting appropriate investment vehicles, according to McCormac. Nearly three years after its $17.9 billion loss, the division is undergoing a slow makeover to streamline procedures ranging from electronic trading to analysis of real-time financial data as suggested by the IFS report, he said.

McCormac said the state has difficulty attracting investment professionals because state employees’ income is based on salaries, not on commissions and bonuses that can top millions of dollars at private investment firms.

McCormac wants to allow outside managers to handle money and diversify the portfolio by placing money in investment classes such as private companies, hedge funds, and real estate that are riskier than stocks or bonds but sometimes have produced larger returns in recent years. When added to a portfolio of more conservative investments, these riskier investments can moderate losses in tough economic times.

“We knew the No. 1 issue was diversification early on,” McCormac said. “Every state around us, every state in the country, had implemented some form of diversification. We had not.”

In late 2002, Orin Kramer, a New York-based hedge-fund manager with significant investment experience, joined the Investment Council. He was named chairman in September.

“There is not another major fund in the United States which is 100 percent internally managed and has no alternative investments,” Kramer said.

Diversifying the portfolio by adding riskier asset classes would reduce overall risk to the pension fund, he said.

Since 2002, the current council has changed the trading and investment procedures to make the division’s work more visible and responsible to the public. As a result, the ups and downs of the fund’s value and the risk of loss have declined, Kramer said.

“The process didn't meet the standards that are expected of major public funds in terms of public disclosure,” he said.

Forcing managers to defend their work at regular meetings reduces risk, he contended. First-rate investors can lose money, he said, but that is not the standard by which investment professionals should be judged.

If 15 percent of the portfolio had been invested in alternative investments over the 10-year period ending last year, the state would have been $9.2 billion richer, Kramer said.

And it wasn't until Kramer's arrival in 2002 that the state became involved in shareholders- rights and corporate governance issues.

New regulations permitting the division to move money out of its control and to private investment firms are still pending, McCormac said.

But the view that outside managers can do a better job has drawn some heat, and there is disagreement as to how much latitude the council has and whether the Legislature has barred certain types or categories of investment.

The New Jersey Education Association, with its 188,000 members paying into the system and drawing pensions, has resisted some of the state’s actions and has filed two lawsuits against the state, NJEA spokesman Steve Baker said.

Baker contended that although the pension fund is sound, the state has not properly been paying its share.

Given the severity of the pension-fund crisis, which will become obvious over the next few years, the structure of the investment portfolio must change, Kramer said. “It would be derelict of fiduciaries to ignore everything everybody knows about modern investment theory.”

Jobs Promise Not Met


Home News Tribune
February 28, 2004

Edison plant's workers challenge claim of offer to transfer

By KEN TARBOUS
BUSINESS WRITER

EDISON: When Ford Motor Co. employee Bob Levy read the news yesterday, he got angry.

As a skilled tradesman, a pipefitter, at the automaker's Edison Assembly Plant, he hadn't been offered a transfer to a new job, contrary to what the company and the union local had said.

“I was offered absolutely nothing,” said the Edison resident, who has 25 years of service with the company, which ceased production in Edison Thursday.

Very few of the electricians, millwrights and pipefitters transfered to other Ford locations across the country, he said.

Levy, whose father retired after 30 years with Ford and whose brother is a 30-year employee, isn't happy with a layoff.

“I just want to work,” said Levy, 43, who made more than $100,000 last year with overtime. “I don't want to sit home and collect a free paycheck. I'd rather go and work.”

The father of two, who blames Ford executives in Michigan for his job problems, said he will get about half his weekly pay while on layoff. “It's a big pay cut for me.”

The United Auto Workers of America contract guarantees 95 percent of base pay, combining state unemployment and supplementary company benefits throughout the 40-week layoff period.

Alan Evans, human resources manager of vehicle operations at the Edison facility, conceded his statement that all employees at the Route 1 facility had the opportunity to transfer was “technically … not exactly accurate.”

“Technically, those 50 guys didn't get job offers; they're right,” Evans said.

Approximately 50 of the 260 Ford workers going on layoff Monday are skilled tradespeople, he added. About a dozen skilled workers previously took advantage of a limited number of job openings.

“The only people that really didn't get offered opportunities to go were the skilled tradespeople,” Evans said. “There were some limited opportunities, and some of them are transfering, but we didn't have enough opportunities for all of them to transfer.

“We're not happy with the fact that there aren't more skilled-trade openings,” Evans said. “We wish there were.”

Once on layoff, those skilled workers who had done production work would be able to take nonskilled work positions, according to Evans.

Thomas Gonzales, 33, of North Brunswick is a pipefitter who has worked for more than 11 years at the Ford facility.

He said he was offended by previous statements that all workers could have taken transfers. “It makes it seem like we're lazy and we don't want to go anywhere, when we weren't offered anything.”

Gonzales said he wants to work.

“I’d rather have a transfer, I don't want to collect unemployment,” he said. “I have no choice.”

The father of two, who makes $28 per hour, said some people have painted a rosy picture of the workers' benefits and job guarantees under the union contract, which ends in September 2007. “When you've got kids and a mortgage, it's not a good deal.''

Tony Capriglione, benefits representative for UAW Local 980, also confirmed what the skilled tradespeople said about the lack of transfer opportunities.

“It's not just us,” Capriglione said. “Unfortunately, there are skilled tradespeople all over the country sitting (on layoff).”

Local 980 President Jim Shaw has said a job was available for every worker who wanted one. He was quoted in yesterday's edition of the Home News Tribune as saying, “We could have taken care of all of our members.” He was not available for comment yesterday.

Ford announced in 2002 that it would cease production at the Route 1 facility as part of a reorganization plan.

Of the more than 800 workers from the plant, 750 hourly and 93 salaried, 350 have retired and 150 have taken jobs at one of 11 other Ford facilities, all in the United States.

As part of the realignment, the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker has shifted production of the Ford Ranger and Mazda B-Series compact pickups from Edison to its St. Paul, Minn., factory.

The Edison plant had been putting out 288 vehicles a day beginning last year. Since 1949, when the first Lincoln-Mercury models were built in Edison, more than 6.8 million vehicles have been produced there.

Shares of Ford (F) close up 9 cents at $13.75 on the NYSE yesterday.

Sports companies teaching lessons

Home News Tribune
Monday, September 25, 2006

By KEN TARBOUS
STAFF WRITER

Sports and athletics aren't just about getting the win or taking the top spot in the standings.

"For fun and teamwork and good sportsmanship and good character development, those are all good reasons to participate in youth sports," said Sally Johnson, executive director of Florida-based National Council of Youth Sports, an industry group looking out for youth sports organizations such as Little League Baseball and Pop Warner Little Scholars.

Johnson said young people join athletic activities because they want to have fun and be with their friends.

"But while they're doing that, they're not only are being physically active but they are learning skills for life, skills they can take with them on and off the field," she said. "There's good social skills and character building that take place while they're learning the Xs and Os."

The council's 2000 survey on youth sports trends and participation found more than 38 million kids, 18 years old and younger, involved in some form of organized sports programs. Of that total, about 63 percent were boys and 37 percent were girls.

In Central Jersey, there's no shortage, either, of enterprises, from former coaches to corporations, providing young athletes with training and instruction in the fundamentals that build character and make champions.

Head over Heels Gymnastics, Dance & Cheer Center, in Sayreville and Middletown, caters to clients 18 months to 18 years old, providing classes and instruction in gymnastics, dance and cheerleading and adults in some dance classes.

Gail Boyce, president of Head over Heels, is a former competitive gymnast, and most staff members are former and present gymnasts, coaches and cheerleaders.

"Our main goal is to teach children that learning is fun, to equate taking on a challenge with being able to accomplish it instead of seeing a challenge and being afraid to try," Boyce said.

In business for 25 years, Head over Heels has its share of fierce competitors, like world-class trampolinist 16-year-old Steven Gluckstein, who trains with Russian champ Tatiana Kovaleva at the Middletown gym.

But for many of the other 2,000 students who visit Head over Heels each year in both locations, competition isn't the motivator.

"For your regular once-a-week students it's the activity of gymnastics, it's not really the sport of gymnastics," she said. "It's a physical activity. They're learning some coordination and building strength for physical fitness. We just use the venue of gymnastics."

At the younger ages, the make up of classes is usually close to 50/50 boys and girls, Boyce said, but most older students are girls.

"Gymnastics is a good basis for any sport," Boyce said. "The boys, if they've decided not to be gymnasts, they've done the stretching (and) coordination thing in order to to be good or better than they would have been at baseball, football, or whatever sport they choose."

Classes usually run in 8-week "terms," starting at $92 per term, with other programs and levels of instruction and coaching available.

Families across the region are more than willing to commit their resources to help their young athletes and players improve their skills.

Frank Grippo brings his 13-year-old son to the Basketball Shooting Academy in Edison because his boy likes to play ball.

The younger Grippo, Greg, a seventh-grader at St. Matthew the Apostle in Edison, signed up for 20 half-hour lessons at a cost of $400. He's not alone.

Since BSA opened this summer, more than 100 individuals and 20 teams have signed up for coaching sessions or to use the half and full courts, shooting and rebounding guns, and other equipment designed to improve a player's game, said Mike Allocco, BSA's owner and a former NBA player.

Instruction focuses on repetition and muscle memory, with analysis and ball-return equipment that can help shooters manage up to 1,500 shots per hour.

"You really can see the results," Allocco said, pointing to certain players who've upped their shooting accuracy from 35 percent to 75 percent using the intense coaching and documentation provided by BSA's staff of former pro players, high school coaches and other basketball people.
BSA lessons run from $35 per half-hour to full court rentals of $100 per hour.

But if young boys or girls in his programs don't show passion for the game, Allocco said, he doesn't want to take parents' money.

Addressing expectations, then, is important.

"You're definitely going to be better when you leave," he said. "I'm not going to say you're going to play in the NBA."

The elder Grippo said the basketball lessons' value goes well beyond sports, helping the teen build leadership qualities.

"I just try to put him in the best position I can to give him the benefits wherever he plays," Frank Grippo said.

Sean Economou, director of indoor baseball and softball training facility All Pro Academy in Edison, said parental demands aren't the problem they might have been in the past.

"We tell them right in the initial signup that it is quite unrealistic to think that their son or daughter can come in for one or two lessons and be fixed and be a .400 hitter. It doesn't work that way," Economou said. "I think there are enough of these facilities out there, and enough of the whole lesson concept out there. Most people are pretty realistic."

Getting instruction takes a commitment of time and money. All Pro has lessons and clinics to develop offensive, defensive, pitching, catching skills for boys and girls starting at age 4 starting at $40 a half-hour or 10 lessons at $325.

Jack Cust Baseball Academy in Flemington is often-cited by many in the baseball-instruction community as one of the most popular softball and baseball training facilities in the region.
Over at the Baseball Warehouse Instructional Academy in Highland Park, Director Kevin Connolly said serious-minded players are usually the ones who sign up for instruction.

"Ninety-nine percent of the kids love it. They get to play the game they love," Connolly said.
Marc Moreau, owner of Leading Edge Lacrosse in Far Hills, said that sport is exploding in popularity with high schools adding varsity programs every year, at last count 145 school teams statewide.

Leading Edge runs camps, clinics, leagues, and travel teams and creates, produces and sells instructional lacrosse videos.

With 35 coaches — most former Division I college players, and many from past and present teams at Rutgers University — and the majority coaching at youth or high school level, Leading Edge has seen more than 2,000 boys a year.

"We start them as young as 4 years old in a program we call Mini Laxers, which is a very basic introduction to lacrosse, all the way up to our most high-profile program, our elite travel teams for the summer," said Moreau, the head coach at St. Joseph High School in Metuchen and a former two-time All-America at Rutgers.

Leading Edge, started by Moreau five years ago, enrolls middle schoolers who play in rec leagues and high school seniors.

Leading Edge creates training and instruction programs for boys in kindergarten through fourth grade because countless young athletes go into other sports.

"Now with soccer being almost a spring sport at the youth level, and Little League baseball being there, and the fact that you can start those sports at much younger age . . . by the time these kids get to fifth grade they're entrenched in soccer or baseball."

For the Mini Laxers program, 4- to 6-year-olds, usually the parent played lacrosse at some point in their life. "They want to get their kid introduced to lacrosse, but more than anything they just want them to have fun," Moreau said.

In instructional leagues, and travel teams that require tryouts, parents are looking for a solid grounding in the fundamentals and a higher level of coaching and play than in other youth programs, Moreau said.

Lacrosse is where soccer was about 20 years ago, Moreau said.

Holding back lacrosse's popularity is the cost of equipment, which at about $300 to get outfitted head to toe, is prohibitive for many players, he said.

But money or skill don't necessarily relate to the fun and enjoyment players get from another sport. All Pro's Economou said the academy is considering a new league for adults still interested in taking the field.

"Basically about every single guy I've spoken with, I mention the words "Wiffle Ball' and their eyes pop out of their head and they say: "Do it. Get it running.' "

Co-owner of diner shot to death


SWAT team arrests man


Green Business: N.J. utility authorities turn waste into profit


Green Business: Firm employs worms to create its prime product


Colorblind

Home News Tribune
February 27, 2005

BY KEN TARBOUS
BUSINESS WRITER

“You have to learn to do business in this country colorblind, because money is only green,” said Bernice P. Venable, co-owner of Alphagraphics in Edison.

The majority of African-American professionals and entrepreneurs attending a lively panel discussion at the Home News Tribune on Feb. 10 agreed that, although some unique obstacles still linger, black-owned businesses face the same basic challenges as every other small business in America.

Concerns common to all business owners … learning business dynamics, raising capital, establishing a presence and a reputation, marketing to a customer base, and putting revenue in the till … are foremost in any professional’s mind, the panelists agreed.

Phillip B. Lewis, an accountant from Metuchen, said businesses owned by African-Americans are no different than any other business.

“We’re here to make money,” he said.

But two of the professionals on the panel have experienced in-your-face obstacles.

Renee Anthony, a distinguished New Brunswick attorney who specializes in family, criminal, real-estate and municipal law, said judges, prosecutors, and colleagues outside her home base of Middlesex County present the biggest stumbling blocks.

“If I had a broom and a mop in my hand they’d be fine, but a suit and briefcase … that’s the problem,” she said.

Lisa Herbert, a family physician who runs the Piscataway Medical Group, said some of her first-time patients appear uncomfortable when they find out she is black. But it’s some of the other professionals who pain her.

“There are nurses and physicians in the hospitals who literally sometimes can be very disrespectful, and I’ve had to report some people,” Herbert, 37, said.

Darius V. Griffin, owner of Port Africa on Stelton Road in Piscataway, said he is creating a community destination at his business. Griffin sells authentic African art, and has a hair salon with stylists and a masseuse on site. He also offers math and reading classes to students grades 2 through college level and preparation for standardized tests.

Griffin, out of Lakewood High School and a Rutgers alum who played basketball for the university for four years, said getting a hold of equity is a hurdle.

“The biggest problem, not only with black businesses but businesses in general, is the lack of resources,” Griffin, 45, said.

He criticized the Small Business Administration as ineffective and wanting people to risk too much, putting up their homes as collateral, to get financing.

“The SBA is full of it,” he said. “I’ve gone to all of their functions. I went from town to town, from college to college, following this SBA New Jersey dream. It’s not there.”

SBA New Jersey District Director James A. Kocsi, contacted after the panel meeting, defended the administration’s record. The SBA made 43 loans for $4.6 million to African-American owned businesses from Oct. 1, 2004, to Jan. 31, 2005, Kocsi said by phone.

“We’re not giving away money,” Kocsi said, adding that personal guarantees are common for business loans.

Lewis, president of accounting and tax services firm Phillip B. Lewis & Co., acknowledged that securing funds is a big challenge for a lot of businesses, especially minority businesses that might not have the best credit or the contacts. But he has never had a problem finding money.

“Because of my contacts, because of my business dealings with my clients or friends, I’ve been able to establish a venture capital network,” Lewis, 48, said.

A former Johnson & Johnson employee, Lewis got a $25,000 commitment from a 13-year client he had never met, for a deal that was later abandoned.

He asserted that to be successful, business people must be adept at marketing and networking and identifying opportunities. He emphasized that businesses are built on relationships.

“I’ve been very blessed with excellent friends and contacts,” said Lewis, who has two bachelors from Rutgers.

Lewis travels to sporting events, such as this year’s Rose Bowl in California, and alumni gatherings, making his social life a source of business opportunity.

Carl A. Venable, co-owner and general manager of the Alphagraphics design, print, and copy franchise in Edison … and Bernice’s husband … said an organization’s fortune rises and falls on the work it provides to the general community.

His printing enterprise, which he called “a very personal type of business,” is built on trust, taking another person’s idea and finding solutions.

“Those of us who are seriously in business, we really try very hard to provide a quality product or service to our potential clients,” Venable, an elder statesman of the group, said. “As a business person I think you have to always strive to provide that top-notch quality product or service.”

Darnell Bacon, owner of Commercial Insurance Solutions in East Brunswick, voiced a similar opinion.

“You must be very good at what you do,” said the 53-year-old Bacon, who has an MBA from University of Detroit.

Griffin, of Port Africa, said he knew his customer base, mostly Asian-Indians and whites, before he turned the key on his operation. He was exposed to the art world during his two years in South Africa, and he did his “due diligence,” researching the Central New Jersey marketplace.

When it came to the big business L-word … location … he had to find a place where his clientele would feel comfortable shopping.

“That’s why I chose to open up my doors in an upscale, for lack of a better term, area at Hadley Center in South Plainfield, where we have some type of security,” he said.

There were other reasons for picking his spot, too, he said.

“If I chose to open up my gallery in an urban area such as Newark, Plainfield, New Brunswick … and I’m not saying anything bad about these places … I would have been out of business about a month after I opened up, because blacks are not going to support other blacks. That’s a major problem,” Griffin said. “Yes, I’m paying $26 a square foot, yes I could have gone into an urban area and paid $10 a square foot but I could have been giving my stuff away and white people would not even think about coming in to see it.”

The panelists expressed no specific preference for the race or ethnicity of their clientele but did differ on whether blacks support black-owned businesses or if they even need to do so.

Griffin contended it’s possible blacks have been conditioned by white society.

“When black people see (non-blacks) doing business with a certain business, now all of a sudden they have a stamp of approval,” he said.

And he dismissed the value of Black History Month in educating the masses.

“Hopefully as time goes on, as minorities, we’re going to appreciate not only Black History Month, but all 12 months. It’s not just February that you need to support the black businesses, because they don’t say that we don’t have to pay rent the other 11 months,” Griffin said.

In the diverse economic environment of Central New Jersey he admitted that black customers aren’t essential to survival. “It would be nice to have that sector but you can’t live and die by that.”

Bacon of CIS Brokerage, who sells trucking insurance, said it doesn’t matter what color people are. Ten percent of his clients are African-Americans, he said.

“We really try to serve the mainstream,” he said.

Herbert said her medical practice is located in the racially diverse town of Piscataway.

“I thought when I first started practicing my clientele would be predominantly African-American because I’m an African-American female, but my patient population is half African American,” the doctor said.

Lewis, when seeking out new clients, often jokes, “Why see H&R Block, when you can see H&R Black?” Carl Venable, saying that 95 percent of Alphagraphics clients are not from the minority community, added that self-supportive and self-sufficient black towns that thrived a century ago no longer exist.

“There’s no reason why we don’t have that same drive and mentality to do it all over again,” Venable said. “We have the economic potential, but we haven’t quite coalesced it to work for us.”

“He characterized the issue as a “family discussion” needing to take place in churches and homes.

Reginald Johnson, president of the Metuchen-Edison Area Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), disagreed with the notion that blacks don’t support black-owned businesses.

“There’s a large population of people that really do not know that these businesses are out there. When you look at (the panelists’) businesses, and I’ve been to each of their businesses, you wouldn’t even know that they’re African-American businesses, and that’s good.”

Johnson also cited the destruction of black-owned and operated businesses that had flourished in insular black communities in the days before integration.

“We got away from supporting our own,” he said.

He said a larger problem is the inability for minority owners to get into some mainstream sources of revenue.

Using pay-to-play no-bid government contracts as an example, Johnson said the bigger a business is the more access to money and opportunity it can get.

“This is one avenue that’s pretty much cut off to minority businesses because they’re not in the mix, they don’t have the connections on the political side to take advantage of a situation like this,” he said.

The NAACP monitors government and corporations to see what kind of work and funds they are making available to minority businesses.

Griffin said entrepreneurs must look to identify opportunities with larger business entities.

“Every white major player out there, they’re all looking to partner,” he said.

Bernice Venable, who has a doctorate in education from Rutgers, said she’s filled out every form necessary to partake in corporate diversity programs in a process that is prohibitively difficult.

“You have to find, as the owner of a black company, those mechanisms that are going to help you and I mean not just promise,” Bernice Venable said.

The New York/New Jersey Minority Purchasing Council and the Minority Suppliers Development Council were cited as entities that can help minority-owned businesses certify their protected status and help in finding work set aside for minority-owned firms and individuals.

Carl Venable, who received his MBA from Rutgers, said the “old-boy network” ties are still difficult to break but added some money may not be worth the effort.

“Set-asides can also give you a stigma that is very difficult to overcome …. (people might think) the only way you can survive is by the protection of the government,” he said. “We get some of the crumbs off the table instead of a bigger slice of the pie by playing that game. Some of us who are older think what the government does is a carry-over from the old slave mentality, just in a newer dress.”

He took a pragmatic view in his decision to go into business for himself.

“These are the challenges we are given. You can do one of two things: you can moan about it or you can go ahead and make the best of it and keep going and keep trying to do it.” he said. “There are nights that I lay awake wondering, ‘Are they going to pay me for all this work I’ve done?’ but any business owner goes through that scenario, it’s not a black or female thing.”

Attitudes in the black community must be transformed, Venable said, adding it’s an issue that must be addressed in churches and families.

Blacks need to seize the opportunity to enlighten other blacks about African-American-owned businesses and career options other than jobs in big corporations or the dreams of sports and music stardom, Carl Venable said.

“Because we don’t have a lot of role models in our community, we’re looking for a quick fix, and particularly some of the youngsters in today’s environment don’t see the value of persistence and study and discipline in making that model work,” Carl Venable said.

Alphagraphics has had some problems finding good, reliable help as a result.

“We are running into many young, educated blacks who in a drop of a hat would take a lesser-paying job somewhere down the street than work for a black corporation that’s trying to grow,” Carl Venable said.

Herbert pointed out that unlike her medical colleagues who have family members’ practices to join or take over, she and her family had no prior experience. “A lot of us are first generation business owners, so there’s not a foundation or basis for any of our young people to even have that drive to go into business.”

Bernice Venable feels the African-American community needs to emulate what goes on in other segments of society that support and encourage positive career investigation.

“We don’t have that groundswell, and the other communities, God bless them, you sit around the table, you’re talking to them about business … learning about relatives’ livelihoods,” she said. “We don’t do that enough in our homes at the dinner table. You rarely hear (young blacks) say ‘I want to own my own business.’”

But that lack of guidance has led to poor career choices for many minority youths. A large percentage of New Jersey’s prison population is young black and Latino males who were lured into the lucrative world of illegal drugs, Johnson of the NAACP said.

“That is their business,” Johnson said. “Great minds, they can juggle figures better than I can …. Many are trapped into the fast money and microwave success stories.”

Carl Venable, who grew up in Prince Edward County, Va., during the county’s defiance of court orders to desegregate its schools, said society still needs to go through some changes.

“Whether or not we can succeed at that I think depends on what I call ‘cultural indoctrination’ that we have to try to overcome,” he said. “And maybe we’re hitting our heads up against a brick wall with some cultural things that haven’t yet taken place as much as we think should have by this time in our societal evolution.”

Languages of love

Home News Tribune Friday, March 16, 2007

Teacher helps children explore the origins of words and their uses in the world today

By KEN TARBOUS
STAFF WRITER

Waving his arms, his deep resounding voice rising in pitch as he speaks, Tom Hunt seems more like a student than a teacher.

Towering over his students at 6-foot-4, with receding wavy salt-and-pepper hair, the veteran of almost 40 years on the education scene has known since high school that his life's work would be teaching Classic languages. Most notably, his current gig is teaching Latin to the private-school set.

Wearing a bow tie, blue button-down shirt, dark-blue vest sweater with glasses slung around his neck, pleated khakis and brown loafers, Hunt, 59, chair of the World Language Department at the Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison, leads the foray into language instruction — Prima Lingua (that's Latin for "first language").

The sixth-grade Classics language course, developed by Hunt — who says he never sits behind the desk — and his teaching partner Katy Cedano, integrates Latin, Spanish and French with linguistic history and cultural context for words and their derivations.

The course covers the history of languages, specifically Indo-European languages with a focus on Romance languages and the way the Romans and their native tongue spread across the globe.
The sixth-graders enrolled in Prima Lingua, all dressed in their required Wardlaw-Hartridge uniforms, are joined today on step-up day by fifth-graders, checking out the class for next year.
Cedano explains that Hunt helps the children explore the origins of words and their uses in the world today.

"We have an introduction to modern languages with a foundation in Latin," she says. "We try to make connections in all the languages."

The day's lesson is on Latin words for the human body, or corpus humanum, a subject Hunt says is of great interest to all the future doctors in the class. (Wardlaw boasts that 100 percent of its graduating students go on to college. Junior- and senior-year tuition costs $22,900.)

Hunt is not your mom and dad's stern Latin teacher with wooden ruler in hand. He has built a rapport with his students. Before class he discussed some of the kids' pets names and foreign-language words for certain domestic animals.

"How would I know you have a dog?" he teases one girl.

"Because I told you," is her retort.

"Oh," he replies with a smile.

Hunt, Cedano and the 19 pupils in attendance today run down the Latin list of human body parts and the vocabulary they echo in English, French and Spanish.

"There's a city in Texas," Hunt tells the class, as he begins the Latin lesson list.

"Corpus Christi," responds a girl.

The teacher, or magister as some student refer to Hunt, explains that "corpus" is the word for body and the city's moniker translates to "the body of Christ."

"Obviously named by some very religious people," Hunt comments.

He follows with English words that derive from corpus.

"Maybe back when your parents went to school they had corporal punishment," Hunt jokes.

On down the list the class goes.

Like Trenton or Albany, "capital" means "head," he says.

On the board the left-handed teacher writes "captain" and "decapitate" as part of the growing list of Latin-derived English vocabulary.

While a student asks a question about the vocabulary, Hunt clasps his hands together and listens. After Hunt's completes his answer with examples of "cabbage," "chief" and "chef," he makes certain the response has adequately told the student what she wanted to know, then adds: "A lot of these words have really cool stories."

Students respond to Hunt's prompting for answers throughout the 50-minute class. When he needs help with a Spanish word, he asks Cedano to step in with an explanation or example.

At classes' end, students and teachers bid each other adieu for another day with smiles and waves.

Back in his office, which also serves as a seminar room for smaller classes, beside the computers and nestled under the window are teddy bears and a figure of the Greek god Zeus. A photo of his wife, Ellen Masten, adorns a bulletin board. Masten, daughter of legendary California poet Ric Masten, comes from a family deeply involved in teaching. She's also an educator, studying for her second master's, this one in counseling at The College of New Jersey. An innovator in her own right, the one-time Wardlaw teacher created the Lower School language enrichment program "Puentes" — "bridges" in Spanish — for preschools through grade 5.

Hunt, a New Englander by birth, comes from a working-class family.

A Classicist — he's studied Greek and Roman culture and its languages since the '60s — Hunt was the recipient of a 1986 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. But he's also been in the vanguard embracing technology and been recognized as a 2002 Alan Shepard Technology in Education Award winner for spearheading the use of high-tech tools like the smart board in the classroom.

Hunt returned to teaching after a stint as an administrator, having come to Wardlaw in '95 as head of the Upper School, grades 9 to 12.

"At this stage in my career, I wanted to get back in the classroom because this is my first love," he says.

Back in high school he was inspired to teach the Classics by Bertha Beardsley, who he affectionately refers to as "a little old lady with blue hair" who taught him Latin back in Burlington, Vt.

Wardlaw's Head of School Andrew Webster marvels at Hunt's vibrant style and passion for teaching, and the school's chief administrator praises his work ethic and dedication to the students and their educations.

"He's regarded as both somebody with veteran experience but who's never stale," Webster said.

N.J. sues to get old U.S. bonds


Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Lawsuit, upgrades fuel rate hikes

Home News Tribune October 3, 2005

Agency official defends projects as money savers

By KEN TARBOUS
STAFF WRITER

Ratepayers of the Rahway Valley Sewerage Authority will see a dramatic hike in the cost of sewer service as average yearly rates rise by an estimated $150 by 2008, according to the man in charge of the authority's daily operations.

The average rates are expected to go from about $100 this year to nearly $250 per year by 2008, said Executive Director Richard P. Tokarski. Rates will remain in line with those paid at other sewage authorities, he said.

About 95 percent of the $230 million expenditure for the authority's capital-improvement projects is meant to satisfy the requirements of an October 2001 settlement of a lawsuit brought by state Department of Environmental Protection.

Tokarski said the projects are the right thing to do, regardless of the lawsuit.

“As a settlement, we agreed to do certain things rather than go through (the legal process) and potentially having a much more costly settlement,” he added.

More than 300,000 residents and businesses in 14 municipalities in Middlesex and Union counties get their sewer service for the authority.

In 1998, the state DEP sued the authority over the sewage system and its discharge the state said was being released into the Rahway River during times of heavy rainfall.

“It was a technicality,” Tokarski said.

The upgrades and new construction at the authority's wastewater-treatment plant in Rahway fall into three projects.

The eight-year Comprehensive Strategic Plan, at a cost of nearly $190 million, will bring the authority into compliance with the lawsuit's Judicial Consent Order, Tokarski said.

The work will increase the plant's capacity to handle waste water from about 63 million gallons to 105 million gallons per day, close the combined sewer overflows that spill into the river, upgrade the facility's overall system, and address other elements of the process, Tokarski said. The normal flow is 23 million gallons to 30 million gallons per day.

The $25 million Cogeneration/Sludge Drying project will reduce the volume of sludge, waste product left over after treatment, by about 80 percent, Michael J. Brinker Jr., the plant's chief engineer, said.

The sludge-disposal savings will be about $1 million per year, according to authority estimates.

The treatment facility will use methane produced in the drying process to run equipment, reducing the need to buy energy from outside sources, and maybe one day producing enough power to sell in the wholesale energy market, Tokarski said.

By utilizing the waste heat, it makes the process economically sound,'' he said.

But with the construction still under way and the quickly changing energy prices, Tokarski said he was unable to estimate how much money the authority might save by generating its own electricity or take in from selling any excess.

“It's a total guess,” he said.

Major upgrades to other portions of the treatment plant and process, the third project, carry an $11 million price tag.

Engineering and other project costs add about another $4 million to tab, Tokarski said.

And the authority must meet the scheduled completion date in mid-2009 while continuing 24-hour, seven-day-a-week treatment-plant operations, Tokarski said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection is closely monitoring the progress of the work.

“This massive project is going well, it's on schedule, and the authority is in compliance,” DEP spokesman Fred Mumford said. “This is going to improve the handling of the high flows during rainstorms, and that will protect the area waterways so you won't have raw sewage mixing with rainwater and being discharged.''

Some of the loans for the project come from the Environmental Infrastructure Trust, which provides low-interest funding for projects with water-quality components, Mumford said.

Clark, Cranford, Garwood, Kenilworth, Mountainside, Rahway, Roselle Park, Scotch Plains, Springfield, Westfield, Winfield Park and Woodbridge, and parts of Linden and Fanwood are served by the authority.

The project is scheduled to be completed by 2009.

Rutgers to join the Pepsi generation

Home News Tribune
June 10, 2005

By KEN TARBOUS
STAFF WRITER

RUTGERS: Get ready for another Pepsi generation.

The Rutgers University board of governors agreed yesterday to a 10-year, $17 million deal to sell exclusive beverage rights to the Pepsi Bottling Group, ending more than a decade of Coke domination at the state-run school.

"It's good for the university," Gregory S. Blimling, vice president for student affairs, said yesterday after the vote. "It will provide the university a partnership with an excellent company, provide a variety of beverages to the students, and also provide the university with a stream of revenue to support a number of activities and programs for students."

Blimling chaired the university's Exclusive Beverage Committee that reviewed bids by Pepsi Bottling, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Red Bull, whose limited offerings didn't meet the school's needs.

"Pepsi's proposal was simply stronger financially for the institution," he said.

Rutgers plans to use the revenues for a variety of educational and student activities such as scholarships for female athletes, academic and co-curricular programs, and faculty and staff initiatives.

Pepsi Bottling has also committed to hiring more Rutgers students and graduates as part of the agreement, Blimling said.

In response to a reporter's question, Blimling joked that Rutgers had not asked Pepsi to change the color of its trademark blue packaging to match the Rutgers Scarlet Knights' colors.

The deal covers Rutgers' Camden, Newark and New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses.

Somers, N.Y.-based Pepsi Bottling will be the exclusive supplier of soft drinks and other beverages for dining halls, vending machines and athletic-center and student-center concessions until May 2015. Negotiations on the contract's final details are likely to take a few months to complete, the parties said.

"We're very excited about this," Pepsi Bottling spokeswoman Amy Polacko said yesterday. "We're all about choice."

Pepsi Bottling supplies Pepsi-Cola, Diet Pepsi, Sierra Mist, Lipton iced teas, Tropicana and Dole juices and drinks, Aquafina bottled water, Gatorade, Starbucks Frappuccino and SoBe drinks.

Products shipped to the New Brunswick/Piscataway and Newark campuses will come out of the Pepsi distribution center on New Brunswick Avenue in Piscataway. Shipments to Camden will be made by a Pennsauken-based Pepsi bottling firm, Polacko said.

Pepsi Bottling sells its goods at Seton Hall University, Monmouth University and other New Jersey schools. The company also has deals with Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to provide beverages at the Meadowlands Sports Complex and Monmouth Park Racetrack, Polacko said.

Pepsi Bottling will establish a new scholarship for Rutgers students and work with the university on health and wellness initiatives, she added.

Rutgers' 10-year, $10 million agreement with the Coca-Cola Co. expired last year but was extended through May to give the school time to transition to a new vendor.

That Coke deal was the subject of student protests over alleged human-rights abuses at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia.

The Pepsi choice had nothing to do with those objections, Blimling said, because Pepsi
Bottling made the financially superior offer.

"It was not a factor in us choosing Pepsi over Coke," Blimling said. "It was a serious issue and we did discuss it, but we just never had to make a decision on it."

Kerry Kerr, a spokesman with the Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta, agreed the student protests did not influence the choice of a new beverage provider.

"We are continuing to work with the students to try to address their concerns and answer their questions,"Kerr said.

Latin Mass Not in Demand

Home News Tribune Online 10/14/06

By KEN TARBOUS
STAFF WRITER


"In
nomine Patris."

"In the name of the father."

Catholics could start hearing more of such phrases if Pope Benedict XVI decides to allow wider use of the old Latin Mass throughout the church.

But in Central Jersey there is little demand for the 16
th-century Mass, said Monsignor Michael J. Alliegro, the diocese's director of the office of worship and pastor at St. Bartholomew's R.C. Church in East Brunswick. The Latin Mass is celebrated only once a month in the Metuchen Diocese, on the fourth Sunday of each month at the Shrine Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in Raritan, with 30 to 50 people, mostly older Catholics, attending.

Rumors have been floating around since the pope's election 18 months ago that he would act to give general permission for priests to use forms of the Latin Mass, also known as the Mass of Pius VI and popularly called the
Tridentine Mass, Alliegro said Thursday. A news report this week quoted an unnamed Latin official as saying that the pope would soon issue a decree on the subject.

The 1962 version of the Latin Mass, which includes revisions by Pope John XXIII, was replaced in everyday use by the New Mass, or
Novus Ordo (New Order), around 1968, after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, he said.

"(Latin) Mass can be celebrated, but it needs specific permission of the local bishop,"
Alliegro said.

In the Latin Mass, the priest has his back to worshippers as he faces the altar, with more ritualized service in which the priest praying silently or in a low voice with little or no participation from those in attendance.

In the new Mass, the priest faces the congregation, lay readers and modern music are included, and the new form presupposes more participation by members of the church.

The Latin Mass in its traditional form takes about 30 minutes, whereas the New Mass takes closer to an hour.

But one barrier to use of the Latin Mass is that most people, including priests, don't understand Latin,
Alliegro said.

"Probably, today there are only a handful of priests who can do that (Mass),"
Alliegro said. "That's the piece that people are forgetting."

In the
Metuchen Diocese, Mass is regularly celebrated in 11 languages: English, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Hungarian, Slovak, and Italian.

Most of the drive for pushing the Latin Mass back into the forefront of the church repertoire has been emanating from European Catholics.

Linda
Mennella, 59, of Milltown remembers when the Latin Mass was a regular fixture of Sunday visits to her Catholic Church.

"I think it stinks. We didn't understand anything,"
Mennella said.

She doesn't believe Mass in a language virtually no one speaks fits in the United States, and she doesn't relish the thought of going back to the old ways.

"They changed so many things," she said.

Nancy
Messina of South Brunswick thinks bringing back the Latin Mass would be counterproductive.

"It's ridiculous," she said. "I need to go to church to understand what's going on to grow closer to God."

Young people have lost the respect and understanding that the church is Jesus' home, she said.

Monsignor Donald M.
Endebrock at St. Joseph R.C. Church in Carteret, who celebrates the Mass in Raritan, said the older Mass was more contemplative and got across the idea that something very special was happening.

"There was much more in the way of reverence shown to our Lord and the Blessed Sacrament (the Eucharist), because there were many more genuflections, now they're minimum,"
Endebrock said. "You get back to a mode of saying Mass that, I think, would help toward restoring a dignity to the Blessed Sacrament which has been kind of lost in recent years."

The old Mass was very much planned with the priest's actions the same from parish to parish, extending a sense of certainty and comfort.

Some old-timers say going to church a real spiritual experience, where everything was quiet, and even a bit mysterious,
Endebrock said. But much of that aura has disappeared. Today, Masses can sometimes be filled with distractions, like balloons or clowns, he said.

But
Endebrock said Pope Benedict's decree, if there is one, won't change the church.

"The Mass itself, from a Catholic viewpoint, whatever rite is said, is the same thing whether it's the old Latin Mass or the New Mass,"
Endebrock said.

Mike
Gigilio, 34, a Rutgers University student who said he has left his Catholic upbringing behind in favor of personal spirituality, said although the old Mass wouldn't draw him back to the church, he liked the idea of hearing Latin.

"It would be kind of cool," he said.

The new connection

Home News Tribune
November 21, 2004

By KEN TARBOUS
BUSINESS WRITER

EDISON: Vonage Holdings Corp. has put out the call for help.

The Edison-based Internet-telephone company is about to double its work force by adding another 600 employees to manage explosive subscriber growth.

“We're growing very, very quickly, and we've got to hire a lot of people,” Chairman and

CEO Jeffrey A. Citron said in an interview at Vonage's Route 27 headquarters on Tuesday. “Hiring those people and training and scaling up our personnel is an enormous logistical challenge.”

Branding itself as The Broadband Telephone Company, Vonage has the telecom world talking.

The company is fresh off a victory before the Federal Communications Commission, which ruled Internet phone service is not bound by state regulations. The company plans to take its aggressive expansion plans to the next level.

“The FCC's decision was very important for us because it allows us to make additional investments in deploying our services … we had halted our deployments for awhile pending this decision,” Citron said. “We just weren't sure if we were going to invest in new markets just to go take on and fight a state regulator.”

Founded in January 2001, the privately held firm serves more than 300,000 customers in the United States and Canada, with about 80 percent residential accounts.

The 34-year-old chief executive, founder of brokerage Datek Online Holding Corp. in Iselin, is putting his golden touch on the home-grown Middlesex County firm.

“This quarter our goal is to add 100,000 customers,” Citron said. “We added 82,000 customers, approximately, last quarter, and we're shooting at 100,000 this quarter.”

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone-service provider is creating positions across the board in customer service, software development, engineering, training and other departments, Citron said.

More than half the company's employees work in customer service in the call-center and support groups.

Technical support manager Bill Carter said call-center employees have risen to their biggest challenge of satisfying the public's demand for Vonage services.

“There's a lot of talent here,” he said.

The call center handles up to 8,000 calls per day, said Carter, a Rahway High School Class of 1985 grad with a B.S. in business administration from Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.

Citron declined to make any predictions on the company's future, but with the aim of signing up tens of thousands of new customers every month Vonage could reach a half-million sometime early next year. “We don't put big stakes in the ground, we just try to go out and execute everyday,” he said.

Because residential and small-business customers traditionally have been underserved,

Citron said, the firm is targeting its home and SOHO (small office and home office) customers with online, print, and TV ads and marketing. “We at Vonage are trying to deliver value to these two sectors,” he said.

The IP telephony provider offers phone service using broadband, high-speed digital or

Internet connections through cable TV, Internet providers like AOL or EarthLink, and telephone companies.

“You can have any flavor of broadband,” Citron said, pointing to DSL and wireless connections. “There really are a lot of broadband options for consumers, and there are new options being created everyday.”

The adapters used to hook up phones to broadband connections, including routers and modems that enable the lines for VoIP calls, are sold through Radio Shack, Circuit City, Best Buy, Staples and other retailers. Rebates accompanying the purchases often bring down the retail price from about $60 to $10, and Vonage also gives away the devices on its Web site, Citron said.

“We work really well with our partners in putting a wide variety of products on the store shelves to give consumers a lot of choices,” he said. “The retail format is really good for that because we need that shelf space to show people the kinds of products they can buy that work with our service.”

Citron dismissed any suggestion that regular folks might be put off by sophisticated and complex products or services, saying installation typically takes the consumer 15minutes.

“I think people use ‘the technology fear’ too much, particularly nowadays with people so accustomed to seeing technology as part of everyday lives,” he said. “Yes, 20 years ago the personal computer was a pretty scary piece of equipment; today just about every single home has a computer.”

DVD players, computers in cars, and cell phones are just a few innovations that have become commonplace and transformed the way people view technology.

“That's been a real help for us,” he said. “It's really more about awareness and what Voice over IP means for you and how you improve your life than about any technical obstacles.”

The large numbers of consumers signing up for broadband every month, seeing the realities of pricing structures, is good for Vonage's business, Citron said.

“Most people who are on the Internet and don't have broadband yet, see the cost of their phone bill and the cost of Internet service . . . find that cost in totality is more expensive than going out and getting broadband and getting Vonage.”

Vonage has national flat-rate pricing regardless of where in the country the customer lives.

Residential and business packages range from $14.99 to $49.99 plus fees and taxes monthly.

For $24.99 per month, residential customers get unlimited long-distance and local calls in the U.S. and Canada. The $14.99 plan includes 500 minutes to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.

The small-business unlimited plan is $49.99 per month. For $39.99 per month, businesses get 1,500 local and long-distance minutes.

Voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, and call return (star 69) are among features included in the plans, and the service does support TTY devices. The company touts the ability to retrieve voicemail by phone, on the Web or by e-mail. Its Virtual Phone Number offering, featuring more than one phone number per line, allows a customer living in the 732, 908 or 609 area code to have a telephone number in places like New York City, London, or Mexico City for an additional $4.99 per month.

The service is valuable to businesses wanting to have a market presence with a phone number rather than a physical site.

People with families in Mexico, Canada, or England, where the service is available, can call a local number without incurring long distance charges and reach New Jersey, Citron said.

“We don't know geographic borders like states,” he added.

New markets for the company include areas in Ohio, North Dakota, Maine and Iowa.

Vonage also offers wholesale service to commercial customers and resellers.

Citron would not release sales or earnings figures but did say the company has raised $280 million in private capital.

The company has automated sites throughout the world, but the firm operates from 70,000 square feet on two floors at the Revlon building on Route 27, Vonage's lone major facility. The setup, the billing part, of every Vonage phone call – there are more than 5 million calls per week – passes through the Edison center. Most of the Internet calls must eventually move from broadband to traditional phone lines in the ""last mile'' connections to people's homes and businesses.

Jared DeNigris, director of systems operation, oversees the NOC, Network Operation Center, on the second floor.

“We basically monitor the whole network, keep track of service,” said DeNigris, a ’94 graduate of J.P. Stevens High School in Edison who has a bachelor's in engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken.

From the outset Vonage's challenge was to use telephones already in people's homes to provide at least comparable, or better, service.

“Obviously, making Voice over IP work for 300,000 people is not easy. It's not trivial; it's a really complex problem,” Citron said. “We spent all of 2001 building our technology so that people would have a very seamless migration from plain-old telephone service to Voice over IP, and that was important for us.”

Vonage plans to stay its course of adding subscribers with low-cost pricing as companies join competitors like Skype and Net2Phone in the field that is quickly getting crowded, Citron said.

Earlier this week San Antonio, Texas-based SBC Communications Inc. announced it will enter the VoIP marketplace next year to compete with Vonage and Verizon Communications Inc., based in New York. Long-distance giant Bedminster-based AT&T announced earlier this year it would cease its residential service, citing hostile state regulatory environments.

Cable television and high-speed Internet provider Comcast Corp. is preparing to roll out its own Internet telephone service some time early next year.

“Comcast is currently in trials in three markets with Voice over Internet Protocol to deliver voice services over our managed, private network,'' Robert Smith, a Comcast spokesman, said. “Those trials are designed to develop all the processes and procedures necessary to give our customers a great experience with the services.”

Not all VoIP is created the same, Smith said. One of the things that differentiates Comcast from Vonage and other IP telephony providers is the cable company's hardware.

“Our calls will not touch the public Internet,” he said. “Vonage is not a facilities-based provider like we are. They have no network. Their calls all ride on the public Internet.”

The Philadelphia-based cable company is testing in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Ind., and Springfield, Mass. Comcast will likely announce in the first quarter next year in which markets its telephone service will be available to complement its high-speed Internet and digital and high-definition cable offerings.

Smith emphasized that Comcast will offer professional home installation for its phone service, the same as its other services, in contrast to Vonage's self-install devices.

“We're working on features, we're working on packaging … we want to get it right,” Smith said.

Comcast has about 370,000 cable TV and Internet subscribers in Middlesex, Mercer, and parts of Union and Monmouth counties in Central New Jersey.

Vonage spokesman Mitchell Slepian had a counter perspective.

“Vonage runs its service over its managed network, where its Internet capacity is leased from its partners and managed through its data centers throughout the world,” Slepian said.

Verizon Communications Inc. has been offering its VoiceWing VoIP since July.

“We see Voice over IP as a critical part of our future, and we're pretty confident we can compete with any provider,” Verizon spokesman John Vincenzo said.

Verizon's ability to bundle its broadband with VoIP telephone service, and its video-entertainment offerings starting next year, makes its services more advanced and desirable than its competitors, Vincenzo said.

Verizon's DSL broadband is offered for $29.95 per month, and VoiceWing VoIP with unlimited local and long-distance calling is available for $29.95 per month for the first six months and $34.95 per month thereafter, he said. Self-installation is a simple process, he said.

Verizon did not provide subscriber figures.

The VoIP industry is in its early stages in a period of high growth, according to Kate Griffin, senior analyst at Boston-based communications and networking research and consulting firm The Yankee Group.

“At the end of last year there were about 130,000 subscribers,” Griffin said. “We estimate we'll near a million at the end of the year.”

Estimates show growth to roughly 17.5 million subscribers by 2008, she added.

Companies are developing their products, which differ from provider to provider, she said.

Citron said that even with all its growth, Vonage hasn't outgrown the Garden State.

“We are a New Jersey firm,” he said. “We're not going anywhere.”