A New Jersey developer is seeking to leverage public opinion to force the hand of the Morris County and Morrisotown zoning authorities into allowing him to build townhomes on land surrounding an iconic mansion known alternatively as The Abbey and Alnwick Hall. If he doesn’t get approval, or other relief, he says he may be forced to tear it down.
Without the townhomes, the developer and owner of the property, Tom Maoli, says he wants to save the mansion but cannot afford to pay the property taxes associated with maintaining it as is.
The building was recently renovated by area designers for a fund raising event for the Women’s Association for Morristown Medical Center. The event, Maoli says, raised several millions of dollars for Morristown Hospital.
The Abbey in Morristown, also known as Alwick Hall, faces the threat of demolition because of the taxes on the property. “I am hoping the town will work with me to allow me to develop the property into a financially viable project, but if not, the sad reality is that the Abbey may have to be dismantled off for agricultural salvage then torn down,” said Maoli in a statement, adding, “It is no longer affordable to have the building sitting there paying the exorbitant taxes and costs to maintain the property.”
Maoli notes that at this point his plans for a townhouse complex have being reviewed by the Morris township zoning commission but does not yet have a green light from them. He does, however, have the paperwork sitting on the corner of his desk for a permit to demolish the Abbey and construct something else.
“It’s amazing, everywhere I go in the USA, from Palm Beach, the Hamptons, Boston to Beverly Hills, you tell someone you’re from New Jersey and they ask ‘where?’ You reply Morristown as a point of reference and somewhere in the conversation the Abbey comes up and they all know it,” said Maoli.
Built in 1904, Alnwick Hall hasn’t been a residential building for nearly 100 years since the death of Edward and Rosaline Meany, the original owners of the Abbey. In the subsequent years, the Abbey has served as a Lutheran church, a bank and, most recently, an office building.
Maoli is set to begin a “Save the Abbey” campaign in an effort to convince the Morristown zoning board how much the community feels about the demolition of one of the area’s most iconic and last remaining mansion on “Millionaire’s Row,” which dotted Madison Avenue 100 years ago.
