A historic Tudor Montclair home that a previous owner sought to demolish due to a significant asbestos issue has been renovated and bought by a new family.
The home at 109 Union St. was previously owned by Stephen and Leah Meranus. They bought the home in 2017 but renovations to fix a bathroom leak led to asbestos being spread throughout the house.
In 2019, the township passed an ordinance granting the Montclair Historic Preservation Commission authority to determine whether certain historic structures can be demolished.
The Meranus family requested a demolition permit due to the home being too costly to repair but were denied by the commission. The couple sued the township, the Historic Preservation Commission, and the Zoning Board in 2022. The suit was dropped a few months later.
Hidden Potential
A new owner, Ike Ibeh, purchased the home in February 2023. Ibeh said he was aware of the home’s history and asbestos but still saw its potential.
Ibeh had previously done renovation projects and at first, aimed to buy the property and flip it, but his family “fell in love” with the property, citing its closeness to a library and space in the backyard.
“They [Montclair Historic Preservation] were happy that I was keeping the house, renovating it, and not looking to knock it down,” Ibeh said.
Javier Fuentes, an architect working with Ibeh, said that the interior of the house was completely stripped down. Testing for asbestos came back clean.
Working with Fuentes, Ibeh built a new addition to the back of the house to make the kitchen and pantry bigger to accommodate his family.
Fuentes designed the rear addition to the home to resemble the original property design and then had to get the changes approved by the Montclair Historic Preservation Commission and the Zoning Board.
“It was important for us to take a lead on having that conversation with Historic. We wanted to make sure that we were being respectful to the architecture,” Fuentes said. “They thought right away how much of a difference we were making in the design that actually benefited the architecture and honed in on features that a normal Tudor would have.”
Ibeh said he was happy with his new home and found no challenges with the township.
“There weren’t any hiccups and it was a good process from start to finish considering the size and the scope,” Ibeh said.
This was not a situation of Government over reach. The HPC and Township acted appropriately here. The article left out (how could a new to town reporter know) that the previous owners seemed to want to split up that lot and attempt a development at the site IMO. And that perhaps the entire interior really did not need to be stripped of all details to the point of then asking for a demo permit — again IMO. Which is based on assisting one of the owners in non-asbestos insulation situation, in another old house they rented, and observing the behavior.
I would add the HPC review & determination was subjected to an appeal to the ZBA resulting in their finding to reject the appeal. The process followed our ordinances and the Municipal Land Use Law.
This was resolved as law prescribed, unlike the illegitimate, incomplete process used for Woodman Field. The ZBA Chair, Mr Harrison, is unwilling to accept this obvious and fundamental deviation from law, as he should. So when people speak out over the constant litigation or threat of such that Montclair finds itself facing, let’s not omit this case because what the Township did will likely come back and bite us in the rear. Oh, and how is that new field working out? Surpassing every expectation? Has anyone bothered to ask?
Gorgeous home. Certainly meets lifestyle demands of today’s market. Given its location so close to other historic homes it’s great that they kept the façade. Commoditized goods unfortunately don’t sell for as high of a price. And the direction to the market is still postured upward. Of course I speak as a realtor and an investor, so I like the direction that this is moving in given the limited supply and the extraordinarily high demand we have for homes in Montclair market.