"How are these reorganizations handled?" I nervously asked a senior engineer who had seen it all before.

"Well," he confided, "the general theory is that upper management starts a rumor that there's going to be a reorganization.

"Immediately everyone panics, and within a few weeks there's ten conflicting rumors about how the reorganization will work.

"Management then selects the best rumor, and that's how they reorganize the department."

In the past several weeks, the beachfront redevelopment rumor mill has been churning out some real whoppers in Asbury Park. (My nomination for the most outrageous fabrication: "Redevelopment will force 75% of our current residents to leave town over the next 10 years." If that were anywhere near true, I'd be frantically scratching at the federal government's door, begging for admission into the Councilwoman Protection Program.)

If the City Council and Asbury Partners, our master redevelopers, have been unusually quiet about redevelopment since January 1 (and rumors seem to proliferate in quiet times), it's because we've been actively trying to lay the groundwork and work out the kinks in an amazingly complex process.

For example, the eight-member Technical Review Committee (TRC) that will review all beachfront building designs to ensure they mesh with the June, 2002 Waterfront Redevelopment Plan has been selected, and the group held its first orientation meeting this week.

Members include Planning Board President Ben Schneider; Councilman and Planning Board member John Loffredo; historical architect Michael Calafati (architect Sara Anne Towery will serve when Michael has a professional conflict); licensed planners Heyer & Gruel Associates; engineering company T&M Associates; NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) member Kevin Broderick; NJ Department of Community Affairs (DCA) member Michael Baier; and Asbury Partners representative Wayne Lerman.

In addition, council members and city professionals have been reviewing Asbury Partner's detailed engineering plans to rebuild our famous boardwalk - a major milestone, as anyone who has recently tripped down our decaying promenade can attest. Work should begin by late spring, with the entire section between Convention Hall and Ocean Grove scheduled for completion by year's end.

Council members are also reviewing Asbury Partners' conceptual drawings for the beachfront pavilions, boardwalk furnishings (including four new shaded gazebos), a proposed hotel just inland of the Casino, and the Palace Amusements complex (sorry, Tommy DeSeno - Tillie ain't dead yet!), and the public should get its first peek at these designs, prepared by Nory Hazaveh of SOSH Architects, in the next few weeks.

How do they look? After months of secretly praying that the boardwalk wouldn't end up looking like a Route 35 strip mall, Hazaveh's drawings have restored my faith in a benevolent, fun and delightfully wacky universe. If the final buildings are even half as imaginative as the drawings suggest, Asbury Park will have restored its reputation as a beachfront entertainment trendsetter, and families will be flocking back to our shores.

As for our existing beachside treasures, Councilman John Loffredo, Redevelopment Attorney Jim Aaron, and I have been meeting with the Asbury Partners team, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), and DEP representatives to hammer out the details of how buildings like the Casino and Power Plant, the Palace Amusements, and the Howard Johnson's Restaurant will be restored or rebuilt. (Both the Palace and the Casino arena are perilously near collapse, although the Casino's decaying boardwalk arcade and carousel house are holding their own.)

Because Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre are on the State and National Historic Registers and were traditionally city-owned, the New Jersey Historic Trust holds a historic preservation easement on them, and details of their historically accurate restoration by the redevelopers will be supervised by SHPO.

SHPO and Asbury Partners are already negotiating on how the historic but drafty Convention Hall windows will be restored, a redeveloper-borne cost that Asbury Partners (rightfully) assures us will be appallingly high.

Once our SHPO negotiations are concluded on the other seaside buildings, they will be folded into the much larger CAFRA (Coastal Area Facility Review Act) application which must be approved by the state. CAFRA law regulates almost all development activities along New Jersey's tidal coastline, and this is a major portion of the permitting process that Governor McGreevy promised to expedite for us.

As part of this approval process, the public will be given opportunities to comment on the application, and the dates will be announced as the application proceeds through DEP channels.

In addition to all these many projects (thankfully our professionals' fees are being reimbursed by Asbury Partners), the council has finally received a detailed draft of the beachfront tax abatement plan that was outlined in the October Redeveloper's Agreement, and we'll resume negotiations on it this week. Our attorneys are also preparing for a March 31 court date with several city landowners who are suing us over aspects of the beachfront agreement.

Meanwhile, another city/redeveloper team is drafting an overall plan for the relocation of residents and businesses in the primary redevelopment zone between the boardwalk and the east sides of Bergh and Webb Streets. (No relocations or eminent domain will occur in the beachfront rehabilitation zone between Grand Avenue and the west sides of Bergh and Webb.)

This plan will be the basis for the Workable Relocation Assistance Program (WRAP) application, which must be approved by the NJ Department of Community Affairs. The WRAP program, which protects the rights of affected residents and business owners, will be carried out in stages, beginning with the first businesses in 2004 and affecting the first residents no sooner than 2005. The document laying out the proposed process should be completed soon.

In coming weeks, I'll describe these and other beachfront plans in more detail, and I'll also attempt to address any unfounded (or founded) rumors that people submit to me.

A redevelopment of this magnitude is not a totally foreseeable process, and the answers to some of the hardest questions facing us often seem more elusive after you've spent the day in a roomful of experts. But we'll do our best to keep you informed as answers become available, and your questions will help us foresee potential issues before they become major problems.

To quote my former co-worker, "May the best rumors win."