Why was Newton Green gazebo torn down? County cites crime, homeless for surprise move

NEWTON — The crowd showed up for the annual reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Newton Green last week, just as their forebears might have nearly 250 years ago.

But this year's reading was different. Instead of gathering around the gazebo that's been the focal point of the park for decades, the crowd was forced to move to a nearby hillside to celebrate Independence Day.

Just days earlier, the gazebo was dismantled and its parts and pieces carted off to a landfill. The flowers that lined the base of the structure were still there, as was the path from the sidewalk along Park Place. But the white wooden structure − at least the third iteration to grace that spot −was gone.

"We were stunned," said Harry Kaplan, a former commander of the Newton American Legion post and an organizer of many events held in Newton. "Nobody told us. We showed up and it just wasn't there."

County got 'too many police calls'

The gazebo, which doubles as a bandstand for outdoor concerts, is owned by Sussex County, along with the surrounding park. On Monday, county Administrator Ron Tappan said officials had determined the structure was a nuisance that attracted the homeless and that there were "too many police calls there."

The 17-acre "Village Green" park is part of an area that also includes the historic county courthouse and adjacent public buildings, all of it on the National Register of Historic Places. Sussex County also owns Ginnie's House Children's Advocacy Center on the western end of the green, which provides services for victims of child abuse.

The park also has an natural spring that flows into a stone watering trough at the beginning of High Street. There are also memorials to branches of the military, a POW monument and a tall statue commemorating the Civil War. There are several large trees which provide shade over park benches where, on Monday, several people gathered.

"That was my home since I was 11," one of them, a middle-aged man, said of the Green. "I didn't live there, but I spent a lot of time there with friends."

A different scene at night

During the day, the gazebo, open for a refreshing breeze, offered a shady stopping place for mothers with babies in strollers or people out for a walk.

But it was at night that the scene changed and raised more concern, said Tappan. The structure became a gathering place for the homeless and drug addicts, he said.

Working with Newton officials, the county installed a traffic camera to watch over the structure so the Newton police dispatch center could monitor the area.

"The problems just wouldn't go away," the administrator continued. Most troubling, he said, was a reported rape earlier this year.

Newton report: 61 incidents over six months

Asked about the problems, Newton Town Manager Thomas Russo provided a police report which includes 61 reported "incidents" at the site between Jan. 1 and July 7. The list notes a "sexual offense" as well as 13 "ordinance violations," and 10 incidents categorized as "disturbance/disorderly" conduct.

There were also three "medical emergency" calls, though no other details were given, as well as eight calls for "suspicious activity" and six labeled "assist public."

An organizer of the July Fourth event said the group had reserved the gazebo through the county but got a notice at the last minute that the structure was going to be razed "because it was unsound."

Asked about the structure, Tappan cited the homeless and nuisance complaints but made no mention of an unsound structure.

County Commissioner Director Jill Space said she was aware of the pending demolition and took a picture in late June of what the bandstand looked like.

"Something had to be done," she said. "A woman being assaulted in there? Right behind Ginnie's House?"

As to the timing of the demolition, Space said it needed to be done as quickly as possible, and "who knows what could have happened over that long weekend."

Newton Green history

A wooden structure has stood on the village green since the mid-1800s, according to Wayne McCabe, formerly the official Sussex County historian.

While he understood concerns that the site had become an "attractive nuisance," there might have been other options explored, he said.

The site was also a place for political speeches in the days before radio and television made "barnstorming" a lost tradition. President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt spoke from "a platform" on the Village Green during a campaign stop in 1912, according to a New Jersey Herald account from the time.

The platform was built specifically for that event to hold Roosevelt and his entourage. McCabe used aerial photographs to come up with a date of origin for the most recent structure and said "it definitely wasn't there in a 1995 photo and is there in a 2005 one."

Tappan, the county administrator, said future events at the site won't have to require loud oratories, as Roosevelt's did. The county has no plans to replace the structure but it will provide for electrical connections for portable amplifiers and a level space for future organizers to set up pop-up tents, he said.

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