I wonder what the CC PR plan was? I wonder if they even had a such a plan. Because it would seem to me the right public relations plan would have really altered individual perception and lead to changed behaviors among his new RT audience.
Mr. Whiney must have seen the Rev as a easy mark, told the Rev what he wanted to hear and the Rev wrote the check. The Rev with all his degrees, didn't realize that his effort must require more than giving toys to RT kids, BS news releases, his police escorts to the bathroom, refusing to meet with RT residents, and his other talk show tactics didn't equal quality public relations.
It appears that no payoff has materialized for the money he has spent on all of his PR stunts. Notice we haven't heard of any welcome bounces of 140 GPR visits by RT residents; no RT membership applications on the rise; I don't see any politicians and legislators beginning to look at the Rev as a key member of the business, non-profit or association communities; no RT residents or businesses actually doing business with him; and no RT community leaders are beginning to seek him out.
Since we know that his PR firm monitors nj.com and this message board it appears that they are not capable of using any compelling, persuasive and believable dialogue about CC. They rather have their supporters resort to lies and non-factual statements to try and change perception/opinions about this church. It's apparent that the Rev rather ignore the lies and hate being spoken for his benefit and not speak out. Good thing he wants to be a good, caring neighbor. Image if he didn't?
With a guy like him around, who needs any enemies.
I personally have not seen a more dismal failure at Public Relations in my life. What did the Rev get for his money? Transparent lies, childish pranks on a message board? A Christmas stunt that was so veiled in selfish intentions that made it beyond laughable!
I wonder whose side Whiney is on sometimes! What on earth went thru his head to have an armed escort amongst his new neighbors?!?!?! WOW! Or have the two hired goons blocking the doors at the Municipal Building!
Whiney came close (if not succeeded in) to non-profit violations when he proclaimed they swayed voter opinion. HOLY CRAP! What a bush league move, Whiney! That is illegal Whiney if you didn't know.
His quotes in the papers are thinly veiled lies that all but the Bouffant Haired reporter and the Daily Rag sees right through (yes, Whiney real papers like Star Ledgar see right thru you).
Whiney and his company are the single most inept ameteurish incompetant PR hacks I've ever seen.
What he got for his money was the "PLANTING" of his church in RT despite 99 percent opposition by its residents. It seems like a pretty good deal to me. He won, and we lost due in large part because we completely lacked a PR stratedgy to offset his.
OK rAt...in your infinite wisdom. How do you stop the church if they don't alter the property at all and simply move in? You can't. They have won nothing in regards to their grand scheme.
Rational wrote: What he got for his money was the "PLANTING" of his church in RT despite 99 percent opposition by its residents. It seems like a pretty good deal to me. He won, and we lost due in large part because we completely lacked a PR stratedgy to offset his.
I'll respectfully disagree on this one as they have purchased the property, and moved their offices to the site, but still have a long way to go before they ever start renovations and changes to the buildings. Why do I say this, quite simply, as someone who has built commercial property in my past, I can tell you the hoops that must be jumped through are enormous. First you have to have a NJ certified architect draw up a set of plans, surveys must be done, next, a wetlands determination study must be done, then you have a soil permiation study that must be completed (this part is time consuming at the very least), drainage studies, paving plans, waste water plans, and finally a copy of the building plans themselves must first be submitted to the planning board. Every time there is a change in the plans submitted, each sub plan must be changed accordingly, then resubmitted to the board for approval. When all of this information is gathered, resubmitted, then approved (this can go on for as long as 4-6 years depending on the amount of changes that a developer wants to make to the exisiting footprint), the developer must then get approval from the zoning board for the conditional useage approvals. Once again, this can be a very time consuming item. Once work has begun on the property, should a need for a change in the plans arise, the whole process may have to come to a complete halt while new plans are drawn up and the whole approval process starts from scratch. If the current owners of 140 Green Pond Road want things to go smoothly, then they must first submit a set of finalized plans for approval. Since they have continued to change the plans submitted to the local planning board roughly 60% of the time they have been before the board, they themselves are causing the delays in what may or may not be approved. As for the PR games being played out both online and within the newspaper community, those have been seen, read, and found to be quite lacking in actual substance.
In general, you are absolutely correct in you analysis, but for one little fact that you ommitted. This is not an ordinary developer - - - it is a church. Most of the stuff that you mentioned goes out the window as soon as you plug that simple fact into the overall equation. Besides, the courts will demand that cc be allowed to develop that property as they see fit at the end of the day, IMHO. The RT PB will have nothing to say about any of this.
The question is: Does Mr. Ireland realize that he would be in the exact same position he is now with or without the expensive PR firm. Actually, he may even have been in a better position. The PR stunts created more resentment from locals who may have otherwise given him the benefit of the doubt that he is doing good things.
IMHO: A church that talks through a PR firm and lawyers is not a church, but a business. Ireland is businessman, not a pastor (note I refer to him as Mr.) and at the end of the day, its all about the money. In the name of Christianity, PROVE ME WRONG MR. IRELAND, Please.
In general, you are absolutely correct in you analysis, but for one little fact that you ommitted. This is not an ordinary developer - - - it is a church. Most of the stuff that you mentioned goes out the window as soon as you plug that simple fact into the overall equation. Besides, the courts will demand that cc be allowed to develop that property as they see fit at the end of the day, IMHO. The RT PB will have nothing to say about any of this.-- Edited by karen at 03:17, 2005-12-03
Once again I'll respectfully disagree on this one. The laws and rules on basic building and development do not list any entity as being excempt from the process. Yes there are laws that specify religious development, but that is not what I was talking about. The process for building and redevelopment of any commercially based property is a long and tedious one. Look at how long it took for the developer of the old RCA property on route 46 in Rockaway to get his plans approved (3 years 11 months), while Dover Dodge also on route 46 got their approvals in under a year. The reason for the difference was in how prepared and detailed both of these development projects were when handed over to the appropriate boards for approval. One was a bit vague, while the other one had all of it's details in hand, again, which brings us back to the proposed development of 140 Green Pond Road. As stated in my other post, each time a developer changes his/her plans, they must start from scratch on the approval process. Each time a developer comes to a planning board meeting without the documentation they know will be needed for the process to move forward, the process is slowed, as that information is required by law. There are no excemptions for sloppy or incomplete plans, studies, or surveys no matter who the applicant is.. I'm working on developing a piece of property in Mt Olive right now, if you think Rockaway is a tough town to deal with when it comes to development, think again, as they are, in my personal opinion a far greater, well run organization than any of the 10-15 other municipal organizations I have delt with in the past 15 years. If you have a working knowledge of the approval process within the scope of this particular project, by all means, post it here, as I am always willing to learn something new.
In the mean time once again, I'm just calling it like I see it.
Again, I must respectively disagree with your assessment here. The courts, not the pb will make the determination about this so called church (which it is not).
Use this as evidence; the state has passed a comprehensive piece of legislation called the Highlands bill to protect the watershed areas of Northern NJ. 140 GPR sits right in the middle of it. Not more than 1 week after the bills passage, the state gave exemption to cc which is building a church for at least 20,000 congregants.
Further, as you shall see and despite legal action by RT, shortly the state will re-instate cc's exemption from the Highlands bill - - - probably within the month.
Now, if that were to have been any other developer other than a church, do you really think that the political dynamics of the situation would have played like that? The answer is - - - of course not.
I will agree with you on one thing. It will take cc about 3-4 years before they put a shovel in the ground over there. That is the time period that I estimate that it will take for the legal process to resolve the issue (in ire-lands favor).
But, at the end of the day, ireland will get his way and RT will get its Gigachurch.
Note: Gigachurches are defined loosely as those haveing memberships greater than 10,000, or so it seems. That will give RT quite a dubious distinction here in NJ.
Rational wrote: Further, as you shall see and despite legal action by RT, shortly the state will re-instate cc's exemption from the Highlands bill - - - probably within the month.
Don't be so sure, as the Feds are also looking into the exemption and why the Highlands commitee (run by an ex member of the Becket Fund) fast tracked the exemption through in the first place, especially without all of the documentation that was required for an initial hearing. They are also back to square one, as there was no required (by federal law I might add) public hearings on this exemption. All is not as it seems in the public eye right now, and the state (or the Highland Board for that matter) is not the only one involved in this fiasco.
I am familiar with "sunshine laws" pertaining to such issues. But clearly, the state is not the least bit concerned about violating the law on this particular issue - - - that is crystal clear to everyone. I think that the powers that be made a political decision and not one based on the law. That was most recently evidenced by the fact that, after being requested to review the cc Highlands exemption by the NJ courts, no public hearings were held despite an outcry by the citizens of RT.
Simply stated; the powers do not care about the law because of the demographics of this particular applicant.
"But clearly, the state is not the least bit concerned about violating the law on this particular issue
I am no fan of the Rev or Whiney, but what laws hasb the state broken in favor of CC? A beaurocrat made a dumb move at the DEP but that was corrected (hopefully on a permanent basis)
For someone who does nothing but pontificate from behind a computer, you have quite a few conspiracy theories.
You really are a very stupid man. If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it is probably a f***king duck! You should learn to keep quiet 'cause when you try to say something, it really comes across as born out of total ignornce.
LOL! OK tool...because the word of a self inflated pontificating blowhard that blabbers on a message board yet never lifted a finger to help in real life is someone to listen to....gee, my bad.
Your post sounds like an ignorant "area p51-second gunman" pile of crap, that has not one iota of credible evidene to back it up and was written to accomplish nothing but incite people. Sorry, we're not all racist bigot scumbags like you. Some of us simply are concerned about traffic, environment and taxes and couldnt give a damn WHO the applicant is. You stir the pot of your own evil, and I want nothing to do with YOUR kind.
Man, if you ever think your are one bit better than Ted, you are sadly mistaken.
BTW- if you are going to use the word ignorance about someone....spell it right.
Please list, Oh Great One of Our Divine Worship, Dr. RT Concern all of your contributions and insights which have helped to keep CC Out. List them right here. I will even format it for you to make it real easy:
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etc.
Hmph, we see nothing posted. You must be busy tonight with other important matters.
Rational wrote: Please list, Oh Great One of Our Divine Worship, Dr. RT Concern all of your contributions and insights which have helped to keep CC Out. List them right here. I will even format it for you to make it real easy:
1.
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etc.
Hmph, we see nothing posted. You must be busy tonight with other important matters.
I did not want to beat my own drum, but here is my partial list:
1. Was the only one in town to actually get to the bottom of the size of the church that ireland is building at a planning board meeting. Got him into a corner in which he would not promise to limit the size of his church to 25,000 members. Nobody else was able to achieve that - - - not the Mayor or any of the lawyers involved.
2. Produced a tops down analysis of the growth model of cc based on previous growth history and projected its growth forward by calculating annualize average rates of growth based on previous growth. This can be found on this forum by looking back about 2 years or so.
3. Produced a bottoms up model to predict growth based on the financial needs of a 412,000 square foot infrastructure and obtained good correlation between the bottoms up and tops down growth models. This can also be found on this forum by looking back about 2 years or so.
4. Hired two land use attorneys so that I could obtain first hand an experts opinion on the probability of overcomming the problem at hand for RT. I presented those opinions here on this forum; essentially those opinions were that it is next to impossible to go up against a black church. In short, I was told that there are almost no options to deal with the problem.
5. Presented the opinions of my two land use attorneys as to the only viable solution to the problem with this application and how to solve it. The answer that both lawyers provided was the use of Eminent Domain. That was considered by both land use attorneys as the only reasonable alternative to the problem.
6. I spoke with several powerful "pols" in Morris county and explained to the people who watch this board that nobody in politics in NJ want to touch this application with a 10 foot pole. I will not reveal the names of those pols, but that is a fact. You can find this reporting on this venue by going back a bit.
7. I predicted that the DEP would exempt ireland and cc. I was correct. Go back on this venue to discover same.
8. I predicted that no other buyer would come forth to purchase the property in question. I predicted that correctly. You can find that on this forum.
9. I wrote letters to the Governor and the DEP complaining about the capricious exemption that was given to cc. I published those here on the board. I also published the "form letter" responses that I received. You will find them on this board.
10. I informed the township that ireland had told his real estate broker (someone that I came to know about via a third party) that he was "Going to Plant his Church in RT come Hell or High Water".
11. Furthermore, pertaining to number 10, I informed RT that after the contract had run its course, that ireland committed to purchase the property 6 weeks before anyone else knew about this. That information was published on this venue.
12. I recommended at that point in time that if RT did not exercise ED while the property was still owned by Agilent, the window of opportunity to condemn the property would pass. And it did and that is all documented on this board.
13 Recommended that ED could be used based on a recent SC decision in which local authorities can use tax loss as a reason for taking property. I pointed out that if a church took that property, that would certainly represent a tax loss and thus would make for a great argument in favour of that action. Since that is tested case law, I bet most people in RT wish that they had exercised that option when it was viable.
14. Pointed out that ireland would never pay a lick of taxes in RT. That is documented on this site.
15. And it goes on and on. Just go back and look at the record.
If you are really interested in understanding these efforts and my considered thoughts on these problems, just go back and look at the record. It is all right here. You will note that I have over 1000 posts here, more than anyone else. Clearly, I have been engaged in the discussion with intelligent and informed discourse on the issues.
Now, back to RT Concern - - - what have you done? Please list the items.
