Owners of disheveled condos frustrated with Lindenwold

The tennis courts are overrun by vegetation, and the adjacent swimming pool is crumbling and filled with trash.

Discarded furniture and construction debris are piled along a chain-link fence, waiting to be picked up.

In nearby buildings, utility rooms are locked to discourage their use for prostitution and drug transactions, and plumbing backups have been known to fill the basements with sewage.

Across the Arborwood I, II, and III condominium development in Lindenwold, the evidence of decay is everywhere - and many owners blame the Camden County borough for the downward spiral, which they say escalated in 2004 when the council designated the area a redevelopment zone.

The possibility that the complex of 38 two-story buildings might be razed for new housing, shops, and offices led many Arborwood residents to sell their properties cheap and renters to flee, owners said.

Slumlords purchased units at bargain prices, then rented them to people with criminal records and poor credit, owners said.

"I just want Arborwood the way it was," said Pat Green, 68, a longtime resident of Arborwood III who paid $40,000 for her one-bedroom unit in 1992.

"I don't see the borough working with the tenants and management. But it's not just the mayor. It's the slumlords and people not paying their condo fees."

The property manager said she could not keep up with the repairs and maintenance because owners had failed to pay more than $800,000 in monthly condo fees over the last few years. Owners of only 135 of the property's 620 units regularly pay the $194 fee, she said.

Making matters worse, the condo association said, the borough has refused to compensate it for more than $71,000 the owners paid for trash removal in 2007. State Superior Court ordered Lindenwold to remit the expenses, but it has appealed the case.

Borough Solicitor John Kearney said the town did not owe the money because Arborwood residents did not recycle between 2003 and 2006 and cost Lindenwold 24 percent more for refuse services.

"If you do the math, they owe us money," he said. "How is $71,000 going to solve their problems when they're owed more than three-quarters of a million dollars by the unit owners?

"They've got big problems over there," Kearney said. "Everything that could go wrong with a condo project has gone wrong."

Arborwood filed a court challenge to the town's plan to redevelop the site and was removed from the zone last year. Three other apartment complexes in the Gibbsboro Road corridor remain in the zone, Mayor Frank DeLucca Jr. said.

DeLucca said a deal he expected to sign with a developer in the next couple of weeks could change the face of the borough. He said planners would plot the future of 50 acres, some of it abutting Arborwood.

"Where do they [Arborwood] expect to be in five years?" the mayor asked. "They're going to fall on their own. I'd like to see them part of the redevelopment."

Despite Arborwood's court victory, the community was changed. Fewer and fewer residents have paid condo fees, and Arborwood's management company had begun to maintain only units that had not fallen in arrears.

"If you're delinquent, your services are suspended," said Lesa Passarella, owner of the management company, Mattison-Raymond Group Inc. "We have to focus on the people who are paying."

Passarella said she was "blindsided by the attitude of the homeowners and borough" when she took on the job more than year ago.

"We can only put so many [workers] on the site because we don't have the cash flow," she said. "It's difficult to do the things" that the condo association wants done.

Passarella looked at a pile of discarded furniture on Success Drive. "We clean it up as fast as it gets dumped," she said, exasperated.

The debris was from "a single weekend," said Jennifer Karge, Arborwood's on-site property manager. "It's a constant."

Deborah Pysz, who owns eight units, blamed the problem on illegal commercial dumpers, landscapers, and contractors. "We get all kinds of outsiders," she said.

Pysz, of Gloucester Township, said four of her units probably would not be vacant if the properties received better care.

"This place could really be nice if the condominium association got the money that it's owed," she said. "The community is like an aging model: She's got good bones, but she was neglected for a dozen years. But if you look at her, she's got great potential."

The association would like to "clean up the pool and get it running again," Passarella added, "but we keep chasing our tails. . . . All we're doing is cleaning up trash and fixing plumbing.

Arborwood, she said, has been plagued by slumlords who have filled their units with "unqualified tenants. But there are positive things here, and we want to emphasize those things."

Leo Cuff, 48, sees hope for Arborwood, especially since area law enforcement agencies have been targeting and arresting drug dealers who do business in the community.

"I've lived here five years, and I think it's becoming more peaceful," he said as he sat outside his unit. "I would like to see older people living here."

Fellow condo owner Pat Green said she simply wanted the borough and the landlords to do what was best for the community.

"If we got the mayor working with us, and people paying their fees, this place would look like Voorhees, a place the mayor could be proud of," she said. "But we've been fighting a long time, and I'm tired."