Paul Bass Photo
Fawn Street, before the crackdown.
A Fair Haven auto-wrecking operation is back in legal business after a crackdown forced its owners to clean up its act and reapply for a special permit. But it received another warning to keep its junk off a city street it had illegally taken over.
The City Plan Commission voted unanimously to give another five-year special permit to Elm City Properties Inc., which has been operating the motor vehicle junkyard at 46 Middletown Ave., but with several conditions attached.
Following the Independent’s reporting of violations by the owners, city Building Official Jim Turcio in July issued a cease and desist order to the owners because he discovered that they had created an illegal junkyard on adjacent Fawn Street, which is a city street. It turned out that the illegal junkyard was not only violating the terms of a special permit that the city granted the business in 2007 — but that the permit had expired in 2012, meaning it had no right to operate on its own property either. (Read more about that here, here and here.)
Turcio ordered the owners to get Fawn Street cleaned up and re-apply for the special permit if they wanted to keep operating their business.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
On Wednesday night, Stuart “Sal” Saslafsky (pictured above at left), the principal of the business, and attorney Bernard Pellegrino (pictured above at right) appeared before the commission to accept the conditions of the new permit, which include the following requirement: “No trailer, trucks, or equipment directly related to the scrap metal operation may be stored on Fawn Street. Any parking of employee or other vehicles on-street shall be parallel to the street.”
In all the commission imposed 12 conditions. They require that cars be stacked no more than two high and crushed cars no more than 12 feet high; that “no municipal solid waste, hazard waste, or materials [be] accepted/handled/stored at the site”; and that the fence along the perimeter of the site be maintained and “in good condition both structurally and aesthetically.”
The special permit is not transferrable without the commission’s approval.
Pellegrino said on behalf of his client, who did not speak, that the conditions were similar to those imposed in 2008. “We have no objections to those conditions,” he said.
The permit expires Oct. 21, 2020.
Saslafsky is shown in the video ordering a reporter off Fawn Street when he claimed the public had no right to enter it, then trying to run him over.
Congratulations NHI....my head is officially exploded.