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DiBenedetto found his home, the way he says most of his friends in Asbury Park did, by knocking on doors.
“I wanted to find a house that works, with a yard. That’s how my friends got their houses they were never for sale.”
His current home was run down, with the windows clouded over with dirt. As he was looking at the premises police officers came by to ask him what he was doing. They told him the woman who owned the house had died on Friday.
“I badgered her son for three months, finally got two appraisals, and we came to a price,” says DiBenedetto, “and I hadn’t seen the inside yet.”
But it appears that fate played a hand in the acquisition. After finally getting inside he said the house turned out to be identical to a house his father, a builder, had built for the family years ago in Orange.
“It (the layout)) was identical, except for the two porches.”
He payed $250,000 for his house, which sits across from Sunset Lake.
Sitting on an upstairs deck he has since added, and with the morning sun glimmering off the lake, he says, “I wouldn’t take a million for it now.”
DiBenedetto served as a municipal judge in Orange and ran twice unsuccessfully for public office, so his interest in joining the planning board is understandable.
“I’ve been here from the beginning of the redevelopment, it’s incredibly exciting, it’s the rebirth of a city. That is the beauty, the bones of this city.”
Part of that redevelopment includes Cookman Avenue, which is the central business district. Its success is due in part to the UEZ status.
DiBenedetto credits his fellow Planning Board members for the city’s success.
“There are incredible people on the Planning Board,” he says, mentioning Sarah Anne Towry, who acts as architectural consultant and Matt Berman, a Manhattan architect who recently won the Sustainable Design Competition, from the company Brad Pitt has been working with to design “green” or environmentally safe housing in New Orleans.
DiBenedetto says he is in no hurry for redevelopment if it takes away from the vision that planning board members have for the city’s future.
“It’s better to be slow,” he says.
DiBenedetto remembers when developers would come before the planning board with the attitude “you’re lucky we even want to do anything here.”
His answer to them collectively is, “We don’t want you here it (Asbury Park) is too cool.”
DiBenedetto sees the city’s shortcomings as well and acknowledges, “We need to do something about parking and we will.”
He also said the UEZ committee will use funds to purchase garbage cans for Cookman Avenue.
But for DiBenedetto the most important thing is belief in the ideals of Asbury Park’s rebirth.
“You have to believe because it’s happening, he said.
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Published every Thursday.
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