BREAKING NEWS: New owners plan to restore swim club Sale of Aberdeen pool and tennis club for $750K pending BY ERIN O. STATTEL Staff Writer The Strathmore Bath and Tennis Club in Aberdeen has gotten a new lease on life with its sale to new owners who have big plans for the facility. The board of directors of the club on Lloyd Road entered into a contract of sale with Frank and Tammy Ward, of Matawan, the Wards confirmed Monday. According to Ward, the sale of the pool and racquet club for $750,000 is pending due diligence. "My wife grew up in Aberdeen and has been a longtime member of the pool club," Ward said. "We always enjoyed the club and when the opportunity to buy it came along, we jumped at it." According to Ward, a designer has already been retained to redesign the club and restore it to its former state. "We will be opening June 21 and will start the redesign process," Ward said. "And in the fall we will start renovations." Ward has a production company, Altered Image, in Matawan and the family has lived in the area since 1993. The club is owned by bondholders who learned about the sale in a letter dated March 12 signed by Lori Gleason, president, on behalf of the board of directors. The Strathmore Bath and Tennis Club was owned by bondholders (members) and managed by a board of directors. However, according to the Office of Deeds and Mortgages at the Monmouth County Clerk's Office, the deed for the 8.5-acre swim club did not reflect any changes since 1964 when it was recorded under the name of developer Levitt and Sons, which built the Strathmore development and swim club facility. It is also deed restricted for recreational use only. According to BunceAtkinson, ofAtkinson and Debartolo and attorney for the pool club, Levitt transferred the deed to the Strathmore Bath and Tennis Club Inc. on August 10, 1964. Calls to Levitt, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., went unanswered. The letter stated that the Wards plan to keep the facility a swim club. Bondholders were asked to agree to a proxy vote on the sale of the facility last month, via the letter. The letter gave notice that a special meeting of the club board on the sale would be held March 21 at an undisclosed location. The letter also addressed an $80,000 mortgage that the club has struggled to pay off. Some members of the Strathmore Pool and Tennis Club were upset that a public meeting was not held to address the sale and said they had only received the letter a day before the March 21 meeting. "We cannot believe that our board of directors did not call for a general membership meeting including bond- holders to discuss the situation and options with us," said Strathmore resident and club bondholder Theresa Westover. "A meeting should precede a proxy vote to accept the bid from one bidder; then the bondholders should be asked for a vote,"Westover said in a response to the board's letter. "We are original bondholders of the club and we only received a letter around March 20 from the board of directors informing us that the club had received the offer," Westover said in an interview last week. "Bondholders were to vote on the matter and return their votes within a fiveday period after receiving the letter. It just seemed a little too quick." But members of the club's board of directors were closemouthed about the sale, declining comment. "I cannot comment on that," Therese Keegan, a member of the board of directors, said last week about the letter to bondholders. Asked if the club would open on time or if there is an opening date, Keegan replied, "I am not at liberty to discuss anything that is going on at this time." Phone calls to directors Debbie Sohn and Lori Gleason were not returned. According to the letter to bondholders, after all the bills of the club have been paid, including taxes from the sale, the club's attorney will assist the board of directors in the dissolution of the not-forprofit corporation and its assets will be distributed to current bondholder members. According to the Aberdeen Township tax assessor, the property had been assessed at $782,700 during the 1992 revaluations and Aberdeen Township's ratio of assessment to market value is 37.94 percent, making the property worth an estimated $2 million, without taking into account of the condition of the facility. Westover and her husband have lived in their Levitt & Sons home since September 1963 and enjoyed the pool club as they raised their children. "You just remember all the wonderful years that our children had swimming and playing tennis," Westover, a retired schoolteacher, said. "It was a great neighborhood for our children to grow up in." Records on file at the township's Code Enforcement Office show recurring problems with conditions at the facility, which dates to early 2006. Summonses piled up over the past two years, one is dated as recently as April 1, citing the pool club for violations for overgrown vines, trees and weeds in the parking area, the presence of litter and debris and various cracked stairwells and foundations. According to the township tax assessor, in 2007 the total annual tax bill for the pool club was $42,320.59. The tax collector confirmed that the pool club had been delinquent with tax payments in 2007 with interest paid. According to the tax collector, the pool club is up to date on the most recent quarter's tax payments. The file also contains a letter to the board of directors from the former pool management provider, Pool Therapist, Staten Island, N. Y., stating that water loss in the main pool was an ongoing problem which left the company "unable to maintain adequate chemical levels to keep the water safe for bathers." The company's working relationship with the pool club ended before the summer pool season in 2006, said Pool Therapist manager Arnold Stuart Roaker. According to Roaker, the company was responsible for staffing lifeguards and managers and doing light repairs and maintenance at the facility. "We had to use exorbitant amounts of chlorine in order to keep the levels safe for people coming in," Roaker said. "And the main pool, which is Olympic-size, had a large leak which was supposed to be fixed by a contractor, but that fell through. The whole point of the contractor was to correct the leak which was causing chlorine loss and could potentially cause unsafe chemical levels." That contractor was RenoSys Corp. of Indianapolis, Ind. "We were contracted to resurface the pool to stop the leaking in 2006," said Gary Norvitski, a company representative. "The pool club cancelled the contract a couple of weeks before we were supposed to come out, and they said that they just weren't ready for the project." R oaker said that his biggest concern had been keeping club members healthy while they enjoyed the Strathmore Bath and Tennis Club during his six years of service at the facility. "Ultimately, we left because of safety issues," he said. Ward said plans call for keeping the club a family affair and restoring it to a first-class facility for residents. "We are really looking forward to redesigning and restoring the place," Ward said. "We always loved it there, and now we have the chance to restore it for the community to enjoy."