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Ambulance unit forced to sell HQ: $875,000 asking price a potential lifeline for cash-strapped squad

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

By STUART YOUNGS

of The Montclair Times

A little under 30 years ago, the 80-strong Montclair Volunteer Ambulance Unit (MVAU) paid just two of its members. A waiting list of people willing to donate their time and get on board was never short of names.

Fast forward to 2005 and the volunteer squad has become a whole lot more expensive.

Of its 27 workers, just four MVAU crewmembers are volunteers, contributing their time when they can.

The remaining 23 are fully trained emergency medical technicians (EMTs). While they might bring an increase in expertise, they also bring a greater financial burden — a burden that has become too great to shoulder.

With an annual budget of $450,000, the MVAU has been forced into the sale of its Valley Road headquarters, a site it has occupied since 1975.

“We need the money, it’s very simple,” said Montclair resident Renee Cohen, who chairs the fundraising efforts for the MVAU’s Board of Trustees. “Our costs have gone up so high because we have to pay people to ride to maintain a 24-hour service. We just don’t have the volunteers we used to.”

To offset its costs, the MVAU has been forced to try to sell its building, which sits on a 9,200-square-foot lot at the corner of Mountainview Place and Valley Road.

However, despite the asking price of $875,000, the fact remains that the addition of any such lump sum would only equate to a two-year respite before the need for cash rolls around again.

“That may be true,” said Cohen. “But if we don’t sell it, we have to close the doors. We really don’t have much of a choice.”

For the staff at Stanton and Stanton Co., Realtors, of Montclair, the sale of the property takes on a wider significance, a fact that did not appear to intimidate listing agent Andie Bertsche.

“I am very optimistic that we will be able to achieve the asking price on the property,” she said. “There has been a lot of interest already and it has only been on the market two weeks.”

Bertsche said that the property has been shown to perspective buyers approximately 10 times so far, and that at this point most of those potential buyers are looking to the building as potential office space.

“It’s actually laid out really well, so that one could do a minimal amount of work to convert it from its current use,” Bertsche said.

However, Bertsche acknowledged that those same buyers have been somewhat concerned by a hefty tax bill that comes with the property. Its assessed value of $1.26 million equates to a yearly tax bill of $61,127, an expense that did not apply to MVAU due to its nonprofit status.

For Cohen and her fellow board members, the hope will be that the specter of a looming property revaluation in the town will be enough to allay those fears for one buyer sufficiently to part with the $875,000 being asked. And, while the future funds may not yet have already been spent, Cohen made clear that there is a clear plan in place should the right buyer turn up.

“If we can get what we are hoping for, we will be able to float an endowment,” she said. “From that point, the hope is we will be able to increase that amount with all of our regular fundraising drives.”

While the MVAU is set to relocate to its new base in the old Walnut Street firehouse by the beginning of September, the squad’s fundraising efforts will continue as normal.

A letter soliciting donations will be sent out to Montclair residents in the week following Labor Day; although, for now, hopes are that eyes might be more concerned with the e-mail pitch that has been circulating in real estate offices throughout the area.

It reads: “Let your imagination fly! In OR-3 zone, uses permitted: garden apartment, office building, mixed-use residential office ... Building in excellent condition.”