In July of 1995, I spoke to a crowd of citizens who were fighting a proposed mall next to a development of residential homes and an historic district known as Beattystown. The developer, Green Eagle Property Resources, took nearly four years to land. They were chased off again and again by angry citizens trying to protect their homes and their communities. The citizens did manage to scare off Home Depot, which was reportedly an early tenant in the project when it was 356,000 s.f. Green Eagle eventually clipped its project’s wings down to 299,000 s.f., but the project remained too large to fly in Mansfield. Critics of the proposed Mansfield Commons put up an uncommonly strong fight, that led to several political battles in town, and millions of dollars in lost revenues for Green Eagle. The Beattystown Community Council, which takes its name from a 1762 settlement in town, went to court to try and get the project sent back to the planning board for review. The citizens said that NJ Dept.of Environmental Affairs officials did not try to mitigate the impacts the mall would have on nearby Beattystown. But an Appellate Court ruling recently supported the DEP decision. “We don’t want to say its over for good, but it looks that way,” said one resident. “They’ve got more money than we do.They can fight longer.” The project is expected to have an adverse impact on property values at the abutting Kensington Estate residential project. The Beattystown Community Council kept the eagle from landing for four, long years. That represents as much as $160 million or more in lost sales to Wal-Mart. That’s a lot of green eagles…
Can you guess why they call the company “green” eagle? Send your answer to: Green Eagle Property Resources, 3 Manhattanville Road Purchase, NY 10577-2117. Tell the eagle to take its claws out of Mansfield.
