THE BORG’S WOODS EFFORT, 1986 - 1995

THE PRESERVATION OF BORG’S WOODS AND IT’S LONG-TERM IMPACT
UPON THE CITY OF HACKENSACK AND THE COUNTY OF BERGEN

By Eric Martindale, June 10, 2004

In the heart of Bergen County, only a half-mile from the towering high-rises of Prospect Avenue, lies a nature preserve where few people would believe that over 15 acres of preserved woodlands could exist. The best access is from Fairmount Avenue one block west of Summit Avenue, although natural dirt trails also lead into the woods from Byrne Street in Hackensack and Woodland Avenue in Maywood. Visitors will find a largely unspoiled woodland filled with large trees, wetlands, and diverse wildlife. A trail system exists, but its primary deficiency is two very muddy wetland crossings that deter all but the hardiest of users from walking the trails in a loop fashion through the site.

One of the purposes of establishing the presence of Borg’s Woods on the Internet in 2004 is to bring about the creation of the Children’s Nature Trail @ Borg’s Woods. Existing and proposed trail maps, as well as trail design criteria for this project are only a mouse-click away.

In brief, the plan is to have county officials facilitate the involvement of scouts or scouting groups to create a very low-key loop nature trail. The guiding philosophy behind any improvements is simple: If it’s a project that has to go out to bid to professional contractors, that means it’s too intense a use for this preserve. If scouts are doing it, they can be trusted. They have a great track record working on projects like this all over the country.

Borg’s Woods is no second-growth forest. It was documented as a 200 year old forest in 1977 (over 225 now), although some individual trees may be far older. The canopy averages 100-120 feet, and a great many trees are in the range of 8-10 feet in circumference, with a few reaching over 12 feet. Mature specimens of Beech, Oak, Hickory, Tuliptree, Sweetgum, and Sugar Maple can be found. A very large vernal (seasonal) pond over 700 feet in length runs through the center of the woods, surrounded by wetland forest, and then by upland forest. Coles Brook runs along the western border, and the hillside of the Summit Avenue ridge along the eastern side.

Although the site is surrounded by suburban development and it is relatively small by nature preserve standards, Borg’s Woods is buffered from surrounding homes to the west by Coles Brook, to the north by Fairmount Avenue, and to the east by the steep hillside ascending to Summit Avenue. This allows visitors to enjoy the preserve without a feeling that adjacent homes are intruding upon the environment, or vis versa. The large trees, the buffers, and the diverse rolling nature of the terrain give the impression that the site is much larger.

Borg’s Woods could have been destroyed many, many times in the past, but somehow it beat the odds. In the 1930’s, Record publisher John Borg bought an estate at the corner of Summit & Fairmount Avenues. Three years later, John Borg directed his corporation, the Bergen Evening Record Corporation, to purchase the adjacent woods. Many publishers of that era were the leading philanthropists of their day. According to local legend, his intent was to establish a bird sanctuary. By the 1950’s, suburban development largely surrounded the woods. Numerous builders sought the land, but Donald Borg (son of John Borg) wouldn’t sell.

In the beginning, the idea of preserving Borg’s Woods was met by some people with hysterical laughter. Who in their right mind would believe that three local residents with no money and no political connections would stop the largest corporation in the City of Hackensack from developing a piece of property, with the full support of the Mayor & Council behind them. "The Record will squash you", they said, noting that the woods was owned by Macromedia, Inc., the parent company of The Record. In the mid-1980’s, Malcolm Borg (grandson of John Borg) came under increasing pressure from City Planner Eugene Duffy and other city officials to develop Borg’s Woods for townhouse condominiums. Malcolm Borg, a Commissioner of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, offered on multiple occasions to sell the land to the city before settling in on the condo plan. The Borg’s Woods Preservation Coalition was founded in the spring of 1986, and continued until 1995 under the direction of it’s three founders, Eric Martindale, Barton Knight, and Anthony Iacono.

After a 9-year effort, the County purchased 14.2 acres from Macromedia, Inc. in July 1994. Hindsight indicates that the effort came perilously close to failure at the very end. Schuber made an 11th hour appeal to the Freeholders to authorize the actual purchase. By the end of 1995, real estate values began their great and historic rise that continues to this day. This would have derailed the effort had it not been completed.

The story of Borg’s Woods is a fascinating saga of strategy, politics and coalition building. In many regards, the struggle for the preservation of Borg’s Woods was a modern-day epic tale, complete with a clash of ideology. Along the way, many things could have derailed the effort, but by luck and pure determination, it didn’t happen.

Thousands of pages of original documents have been preserved from the 9-year struggle, and some day a book will be written. Hundreds of people filled out membership forms and donated thousands of dollars to the Borg’s Woods Preservation Coalition. The scope of the struggle reached far beyond the neighborhood, and became a public-policy debate on the county level, despite the newspaper coverage the issue received. Many people involved in the struggle remain active in community affairs over a decade later. Members of the Borg’s Woods Preservation Coalition became mayors of Hackensack (John F. "Jack" Zisa), Maywood (Tom Richards), and Rochelle Park (Phyllis Strohmeyer).

Joseph Pizza, a self-made millionaire who bought a house on Summit Avenue in 1987, played a major role in developing strategies and organizing community involvement. Pizza even led a drive to recall the Cerbo administration in 1988. Adequate signatures to force a recall election were quickly collected. Petition signers had to sign five sheets, one for each incumbent office holder. Each individual sheet had the recall question, the signatures, and the notary’s signature and seal. Nevertheless, the recall was challenged in court and lost on an absurd technicality – the petition takers didn’t use scrolls. It’s unlikely that such a court ruling would be issued today.

Organizers of the Borg’s Woods Preservation Coalition, also known at the time as "The Coalition", had no problem drawing 100, 200, and even 300 people to public hearings, city council meetings, and even a Freeholder meeting. The battle redefined the political landscape of Hackensack. In fact, the entire governing body of the city became so thoroughly discredited that 3 of the 5 decided it was useless to even run for re-election. A new city council supported by the Coalition was voted into office in 1989.

But the real change to Hackensack brought about by the struggle over Borg’s Woods was not the change of leadership, it was the shift in the direction of city planning and a new public consensus on urban issues that put the new leadership into power. This began in the waning days of the Cerbo administration when the city administration was pressured to adopt a new site plan ordinance that required 15-foot landscaped setbacks and 2.1 parking spaces per unit, instead of 1.5. A Shade Tree Commission was also established, originally as a political gesture to try to mitigate the backlash that would accompany the leveling of Borg’s Woods. It’s good work continues to this day. An Environmental Commission was appointed by the new mayor in 1989. This Commission has worked to advance the river pathway, abolish high-rise incinerators, and oppose flight patterns to and from Teterboro Airport.

A new and iron-clad consensus arose to preserve the estates of Summit Avenue and to resist all zoning encroachments upon neighborhoods zoned for single-family houses. But that was just the beginning. The newly entrenching ideology was clearly one of suburban preservation, and this viewpoint looked just as unfavorably upon the spread of urban problems such as crime, graffiti, homelessness, poverty, and new social services as it did upon encroaching luxury apartment buildings. Although individual people sometimes had their own opinions to the contrary, the majority of Hackensack residents working on the preservation of Borg’s Woods shared this suburban preservation agenda.

The mid-1980’s simultaneously brought a new effort in which public and private agencies would provide homeless services in Hackensack for alcoholics, drug addicts, and mentally ill persons, instead of placing them in institutional settings such as Bergen Pines. In many people’s minds, this ran counter to the suburban preservation agenda. Thus the current conflict over homeless services for indigent people was forged.

The new public consensus was not anti-development; it was about redirecting development away from prime neighborhoods, and into areas "in need of redevelopment". Dozens of acres of blighted industrial properties have been redeveloped, and we now have Target, Pep Boys, Costco, and the Shop Rite Riverfront Plaza, to name a few. Development of multi-unit buildings has shifted to the city’s center. The year 2004 saw the groundbreaking on three new upscale condominium and apartment projects on State and Union Streets. These buildings appear poised to transform the identity of the downtown area.

In 1988, during the height of the struggle for Borg’s Woods, a few people with foresight discussed that the city was at a giant fork in the road in its history, with three possible futures. One was of intense development surging along the length of Summit Avenue, choking our finest neighborhood with buildings, cars, and congestion, and destroying the suburban quality of life. The second possible future was one of urban decline and abandonment, with surging crime rates, graffiti, property maintenance issues, social problems, declining school test scores, and endless proposals for new tax-exempt programs to serve the expanding population of those in need. For a time during the great real estate collapse of the early 1990’s, the latter destiny seemed certain despite all efforts to counter it. However, time has proven that Hackensack as a whole has not gone down either of those roads. We have stood firm, perhaps the only true urban center in New Jersey to preserve its quality of life.

History will record that Hackensack, as a city, reached this giant fork in the road and made the best of the three choices. This choice was not by blind chance, it was guided by the new public consensus forged by the politics and coalition-building of the late 1980’s. Much work remains to be completed to transform Hackensack into a thriving, prosperous, integrated community, which I believe remains its ultimate destiny.

The struggle for the preservation of Borg’s Woods also had an impact far beyond the borders of Hackensack. Borg’s Woods was one of the three key issues that united the environmental community of Bergen County. The collective pressure on county authorities for the preservation of Borg’s Woods, the East Hill of Norwood, and the Emerson Tract (owned by the Hackensack Water Company) succeeded where hindsight indicates that each would have failed individually. The struggles in Norwood and Emerson were a major factor in the preservation of Borg’s Woods, and vis versa. At the forefront of creating a unified environmental front in Bergen County was Richard Isaac of Maywood. Isaac, a member of the Borg’s Woods Preservation Coalition, had a meteoric rise as an environmental leader, quickly becoming Chair of the North Jersey Group of The Sierra Club. The lobbying pressure of the Sierra Club was strong, particularly their actions in interviewing candidates for political office and handing out endorsements.

In the end, it was the personal effort of State Senator W. Pat Schuber that made the difference. Schuber announced during his campaign for the position of County Executive that he would secure the preservation of Borg’s Woods if elected. It has been argued that Schuber, a Republican, sensed the rise of the environmental community in Bergen County, and reasoned that becoming a champion of the environment would help attract Democrats and Independent voters. This is not a bad strategy for any Republican; nevertheless, Schuber’s personal commitment to the preservation of Borg’s Woods should not be diminished. He worked on the issue for years as an Assemblyman and then as a State Senator. He wanted to actually make a difference, rather than simply being another politician filling politician’s shoes.

With a few up’s and down’s, the environmental movement in Bergen County has continued. Bergen County now has a dedicated open space trust fund, paid for by a special tax, for the purchase and preservation of lands. Nearly every town has benefited.

[Editor's Note: The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hackensack Now]