Embattled mayor ponders his future

Lindenwold Mayor Frank DeLucca has never lacked for ideas when it comes to the crime-ridden apartment complexes that line the town's main drag.

Turn them into housing for casino workers from Atlantic City, a 50-minute ride on the PATCO train line that passes through town. Or persuade the Campbell Soup Co. to leave Camden and take them over as corporate headquarters.

"I told them, 'We'll change our name to Campbell's City if you come here,' " said DeLucca, a 61-year-old former state police officer. "You've got to have out-of-the-box ideas. If we could find a developer to come in, I'd leave tomorrow."

But years of stalled deals and a sluggish real estate market have for now all but killed the South Jersey town's hopes of redeveloping the area, putting the mayor's political future in question.

Constructed in the 1970s for young, upwardly mobile families, the low-rise apartment complexes are now home to drug dealers who engage in violent shoot-outs just down the street from bucolic suburban life.

DeLucca has spent most of his 15 years in office trying to bring a developer in to tear down the apartments, but litigation from the buildings' owners, the economic downturn, and a hesitancy on the part of developers have left a string of failed deals.

"The war zone, we call it. We're right on the edge, with the helicopters flying overhead," said Cliff Mitchell, a longtime resident of the town who manages a seniors apartment building across the street. "The rest of the town is like a little hamlet. It's a shame."

Against this backdrop, DeLucca is embroiled in a vitriolic feud with most of the Borough Council, all Democrats with whom he was once aligned.

A range of allegations, some personal, some professional, have been thrown back and forth both by the mayor and the council members opposing him. In August, the council voted to demote DeLucca from a full-time to part-time mayor and proclaimed his days in political office finished when his current term expires next year.

"Up until a couple of years ago, he was the best mayor I've ever seen," Councilman Robert Roach Jr. said. "But in the past two years, it's nothing. He goes to court once in a while with the attorney about the redevelopment zone. We all sat there and said if this was anybody else we would have fired him a year ago."

DeLucca's opponents have plenty of ammunition.

The New Jersey Department of Labor is examining whether the borough violated prevailing wage rules on a project to build offices for administrative staff, Lindenwold Solicitor John Kearney said.

The Labor Department would not confirm that investigation.

To cut costs, the borough has acted as its own general contractor on the project and purchased precast foundations and precut trusses that could be assembled on site, avoiding the hiring of union carpenters and masons.

The council has now called a work stoppage on the project while it awaits word from the Labor Department, Kearney said.

"Am I trying to circumvent the unions? Yeah, but it's 50 percent cheaper," DeLucca said. "Right now, the staff is sharing the Borough Hall with the police, and we got trailers out back and no locker room for the female officers."

A silver-haired grandfather with a fondness for trains, DeLucca is the sort of small-town mayor who keeps a police scanner running on his porch and goes out to calls if his presence is needed.

"Like him or don't like him, his whole life is this town," Mitchell said.

But after so many years of failed efforts to woo developers to the town he grew up in, even DeLucca wonders whether he shouldn't call it quits.

"After 16 years in office, if I can't do it, maybe I should give it up and let someone else try," he said.