11/01/02 - Posted 12:21:36 AM from the Daily Record newsroom

Above, members of the Ward family, and others who work for them, show off the Spartan Gas Station on Knoll Road in Parsippany. Karen Fucito / Daily Record

Parsippany should stay away from this business
By Abbott Koloff, Daily Record

Some Parsippany officials have said that gasoline might one day leak out of an underground tank, run downhill from Iris Ward's gas station and pollute the Rockaway River, 800 feet away.

That could be said of dozens of other gas stations in the county, some closer to rivers, streams or wetlands than Ward's Spartan Gas Station on Knoll Road, or sitting on top of aquifers. No one talks about closing any of those other gas stations because one day they may or may not cause a problem.

Parsippany officials have said they'd like a nice, green stretch of land adjacent to the entrance of the Knoll Country Club, a township-owned park. Ward's gas station does have dozens of cars parked on its lot, along with several tow trucks, so to some township officials, it apparently looks a little messy.

OK, so Iris Ward's no Leon Hess -- the late billionaire owner of the New York Jets and Hess gas stations who was known for being compulsive about cleanliness. Ward's business includes gas pumps, a towing operation and a Midas transmission franchise.

"We have a busy business," said Egbert Ward, 40, one of Iris' five sons and manager of the station.

Township officials have asked for $340,000 from the Morris County open space trust fund to help buy the land on which the Wards' gas station sits. That money usually goes toward purchasing land in danger of being developed. Township officials have talked about digging up the underground gas tanks and bulldozing the main building.

They talk about how much nicer the entrance to Knoll Country Club would look but say almost nothing about putting Iris Ward out of business.

For the people making the decisions about how to spend money for open space, the Ward family isn't an issue, but it's worth knowing something about them.

Iris Ward, a 70-year-old widow, came from Jamaica more than three decades ago, worked as a housekeeper, then went to school and worked as a nurse's aide in a physical rehabilitation for 20 years.

She said she purchased her gas station for $35,000 three years ago to supplement her retirement income, incorporating it as D&I Automotive, which stands for Desmond, one of her sons, and Iris. She has six children, all of whom went to college, and 14 grandchildren. Three of her sons work at the gas station, along with several of her grandchildren, some part time while going to school.

The Wards were all set to buy the land for $450,000, according to attorneys' letters, although they didn't have a contract, when all of a sudden the township expressed an interest. The Wards' lease runs out in March, and they have been looking for another property large enough for their towing business but said they haven't found anything.

"We'd probably have to shut down and declare bankruptcy if we can't buy this land," Egbert Ward said.

He said that the township outbid him after he and the seller agreed on a price -- although Parsippany officials say they're actually going to pay the same price. The final cost will be $465,000, said Gabe Yaccorino, Parsippany's grants administrator, who also works on open space issues, only because attorneys' fees and other closing costs are anticipated to be another $15,000.

"We would clean up the property and make it more presentable," Yaccorino said.

But even without calculating the human factor, there must be a better use for open space money than making a half-acre piece of land more presentable.

That's why Rosemary Agostini, a member of the township council, said she's against the purchase. So far, she's the only township official to take that stand. In a recent Parsippany Democratic Party newsletter, Agostini was characterized as the only council member to vote against a proposal to buy land with county open space funds.

The newsletter neglected to say that the money was not to buy open space for preservation, but a gas station.

"Why would you buy a building on a piece of land that's paved over?" Agostini said. "Money for open space should be precisely that. How much is this going to cost the taxpayers to make it green?"

While some township officials might not like the way the gas station looks, there's no reason to believe it's an environmental hazard. A spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection said this week that there have been no complaints of leaking gas at Ward's station. Every gas station in the state had to upgrade its underground tanks in the late 1990s, installing monitors that check for leaks.

The township will find out if it will get the open space funds next week. The county committee that makes recommendations about how to spend open space money, which comes from a county tax, recently voted on what projects to fund with the $10 million they have available over the coming year but won't reveal them until Wednesday's county freeholders' meeting.

Walter Krich, the county planner, said open space money usually goes to purchase vacant land, but there's no reason it couldn't be used to reclaim a commercial property, as long as there's a willing seller. In this case, the willing seller is John Squeri, owner of Spartan Oil in Dover.

The Wards said that they were close to a deal to buy the land from Squeri before the township became involved over the summer. Squeri, who was unavailable for comment, wanted $475,000, according to letters sent to the Wards, but was willing to take $450,000. The Wards said they didn't have a contract but that they were negotiating the sale when they read in newspapers that the land might be sold out from under them.

The Wards said that they're still negotiating for the land, trying to hold onto their business.

They said they don't sell much gasoline since they're on a road without much traffic but they do a good business in towing and auto repairs. Egbert Ward manages the station and does some of the mechanical repairs. Iris Ward sits at a desk and handles the phone, dispatching calls to tow trucks. At one point last week, seven members of the Ward family were working at the same time, along with several other employees. Cars were being repaired in the bays; tow trucks were coming and going.

All of that might look a little messy. But the open space trust fund was meant to preserve land and slow down development, not to put families like the Wards out of business, just to make things look a little tidier.

Abbott Koloff can be reached at akoloff@gannett.com or (973) 989-0652.