'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' Actress Leads Community Meeting Over Proposed Redevelopment in Montclair

MONTCLAIR, NJ - One of Montclair’s resident celebrities, stage and television actress Janet Hubert, was the star of her own show at the Montclair firehouse.

On September 23, Hubert organized and led a community meeting to deal with the plans for an eight-unit townhouse development at 400 Orange Road, the site of the former Wallwood Gardens nursery.  Hubert, whose house is across from Wallwood Gardens, and several of her neighbors have been opposed to the planned development, and many of them feel that the Montclair Zoning Board of Adjustment and Planning Director Janice Talley have been unresponsive to their concerns about the developer, who is a defendant in two lawsuits.  Hubert had her lawyer, Clarence Bauknight, present.

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Hubert noted that when she came to Montclair, she had nothing to her name upon settling in the working-class South End, and now she finds herself dealing with the town and with a developer at a good deal of expense.  She acknowledged that many people think her celebrity has made her well off.

“I played a rich woman, but I’m not,” the renowned actress said, referring to her role as Vivian Banks in “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” “When they say we’re a ‘working class neighborhood,’ we’re working, but we have class.”

Hubert recalled how she first came to Montclair to seek peace and quiet after her career cooled, and she started having problems with developer Simon Klepner after his application had been dismissed but it was subsequently approved by the Zoning Board of Adjustment without a public hearing or even a notification.  She had made numerous efforts to get Klepner to clean the refuse in the property, cut the grass and weeds on the property, and remove equipment from it, as she had done with the previous ownership.  She had also asked Klepner to show humility as an outsider toward the neighborhood with regard to the state of the property and his plans for it. According to her, Klepner had responded with utter disrespect for her and her neighbors’ concerns – both in regard to the planned development of the townhouse complex, which many South End residents believe would be out of character with the neighborhood, and the upkeep of the currently dilapidated property that Hubert calls a “piece of hell.”

The planned redevelopment of Wallwood Gardens is the latest in an apparent move by developers to gentrify the Fourth Ward and the South End and the Eastern Gateway sections of the ward in particular.  While construction of new houses and rehabilitation of the existing housing stock on the residential blocks just south of Bloomfield Avenue and east of Elm Street have revitalized a partially blighted area, the rent and/or asking prices on the newly available units have been beyond what longtime residents can afford.  There have been seventeen applications filed with the Zoning Board for properties along Mission, New, Washington and Wheeler Streets, and all of them have been filed by and belong to the same developer. Residents have gotten notices of applications for some properties but not for others, due to some applications having been carried over because counsel for the applicant has asked for an adjournment and do not have to notify the public when their applications are rescheduled for hearings.

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Resident and housing activist William Scott noted that there had been eight townhouse units for 400 Orange Road proposed with approval pending on a long list of conditions, but Klepner’s limited-liability corporation, Montclair Sky BNC, kept asking for adjournments and the application was ultimately dismissed.  Once it was dismissed, Scott said, the reapplication process that would be standard procedure did not happen but it still got approved behind closed doors.

A resident asked how such an approval could have happened.  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Hubert replied.

Hubert also read part of a rap sheet on Klepner, revealing that in March 2023, a group called Artists Alley Townhomes LLC got $5,645,000 in a construction loan for a townhouse project in Delray Beach, Florida.  A few months later, another entity advanced $965,000 on the construction loan, at Klepner’s instructions, and improperly transferred that sum into an account held by Klepner’s Sky Developers company in Florida, which has no relation to the Artists Alley project.   According to Hubert, it was alleged that these funds were employed for Klepner’s personal use and that $965,000 sum might have funded his purchase of the Orange Road property.  Klepner is being sued in Florida by Artist Alley and UNB Delray Project LLC for damages resulting from “gross mishandling” of the Delray Beach project and also for intentional and concealed misuse of project funds and for Klepner’s efforts to sell the project without UNB Delray’s consent.  In addition, she stated that he bought the Wallwood property for a bargain price - $271,000.

“If I had known it was that cheap, I would have bought it,” Hubert joked.

Hubert said that Planning Director Talley would have to be the prime suspect for allowing shady developers like Klepner to build dubious projects in Montclair.  Director Talley, Montclair’s chief planner since 2010, has overseen numerous projects since the township’s redevelopment phase began, and relations between Director Talley and Hubert have been anything but cordial.  The planner has stopped accepting Hubert’s calls, and according to Hubert, Talley dismissed her concerns about the Wallwood Gardens project in a cavalier fashion.  At one point, Hubert stated that she asked Director Talley who she was working for – Montclair or developers – and wondered aloud to her if she was on the take.  Director Talley claimed to have recorded one of their telephone conversations because of some incendiary comments Hubert had supposedly made, but Hubert said she was unfazed by such threats.

Resident Bonnie Fogel, who called the planned Wallwood Gardens development an “absurdity,” added an additional wrinkle that perhaps the planning director may be legally ineligible to continue in her job.  A former Montclair resident, Director Talley not only moved out of town in 2018, she has also moved out of state – and she now lives in Esopus, New York, 94 miles from Midtown Manhattan, in Ulster County, Fogel revealed.  The New Jersey First Act of 2011 requires most state and local public employees to live in New Jersey, and Hubert and her neighbors were left wondering why their town planner is a New York State resident making decisions affecting their township while potentially being legally ineligible to remain in her office.

Bauknight, Hubert’s attorney, said that the community should offer up an alternative to the townhouses proposed, and there was general agreement that there should be four detached houses on the property, as there had been before the nursery was built, in keeping with the R-1 zone for the area.  There was also agreement that Klepner was not the one to develop anything on that property under any circumstances, given his inexperience as a developer.  Hubert stated that she feared that he would start the townhouse project, walk away from it, and leave the community with nothing.

Fogel also noted some unsettling comparisons to David Placek, the proposed redeveloper for Lackawanna Plaza, who also has no development experience.  A resolution designating Placek’s company BDP Holdings as the redeveloper for Lackawanna Plaza is up for a vote before the council on September 24.

Fourth Ward Councilor Aminah Toler was also at the meeting but only as a resident, and she made it clear that Hubert was fully in charge.

Bauknight had told Hubert and her neighbors that they could meet with Klepner if they so desired, but the consensus went against that idea; Bauknight said he would notify Klepner and his attorneys that no such meeting was forthcoming.  He and Hubert advised the residents to go to the Zoning Board meeting for the Wallwood project and speak out forcefully against it.  That meeting is scheduled for 7:30 P.M. on Wednesday, November 6.

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