They took to a courtroom — and then to the streets — to try to save their “American Dream.”
“We have no choice. It makes no sense to stop (fighting),” an emotional Luis Romero said Wednesday morning.
He was surrounded by more than three dozen people, all crowded onto the sidewalk on Smith Street in Perth Amboy to show their support after Romero and another property owner filed a lawsuit desperately hoping to save their lots from the advancing clutches of the city.
Officials voted in April to take two properties — a multi-family home owned by Honey Meerzon and her mother Dina Finkelstein, and a tire shop owned by Romero — by eminent domain.
“It’s too many years here, too much invested in our long-time employees,” Romero said of his six full-time workers. “That’s what bothers me the most, that they could end up with no job.”
People came out to protest the City of Perth Amboy use eminent domain to seize properties on Smith St. in Perth Amboy. June 11, 2025Amanda Brown| For NJ Advance Media
The case, filed in Middlesex County Superior Court, argues that the city violated local housing law, the New Jersey Constitution and the U.S. Constitution when it deemed the properties blighted.
It claimed the study used by the city as evidence to take the properties was “full of factual inaccuracies.”
“If things like minimal amounts of litter, or the presence of a feral cat is enough to blight an area and allow the properties to be taken by eminent domain, then really no one’s property is safe from taking by eminent domain,” said Bobbi Taylor, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm that is representing Meerzon and Romero for free.
“Honey and Luis are not only suing to save their properties, but to protect the property rights of all of Perth Amboy,” she said.
Taylor’s co-counsel, Robert McNamara, said their organization has won eminent domain cases across the country, including three in New Jersey.
He called Perth Amboy’s actions an “outrageous, bogus blight designation.”
“New Jersey will not tolerate eminent domain abuse,” he said.
The mayor’s office said it hasn’t seen the lawsuit and it does not comment on legal matters. Perth Amboy’s redevelopment agency did not respond to requests for comment. The city previously told NJ Advance Media it did not have specific plans for the properties it sought to take over.
Properties on Smith Street in Perth Amboy, NJ, on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. Perth Amboy is trying to take his property through eminent domain.Ed Murray| For NJ Advance Media
The tire shop and the four-family home on Smith Street, close to the foot of the Victory Bridge, border an existing redevelopment project called Gateway, which includes plans for a nearly 500,000 square foot warehouse, the cleanup of contaminated parcels of land that could house future businesses and the creation of trails leading to a gazebo overlooking the Raritan River, a city press release said.
Meerzon’s and Romero’s properties are not part of the project.
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To take a property by eminent domain, it must be deemed “blighted” or “an area in need of redevelopment” by meeting certain specific criteria. The city’s study on the properties said they qualified.
The study, first detailed in an NJ Advance Media report, claimed the properties do not meet current zoning requirements and that the properties are too close for the road. It also said Meerzon’s driveway had “obscured vision,” and there was litter and refuse on the properties.
It also cited police incident reports outside of the two properties. But Meerzon’s and Romero’s attorneys said in the lawsuit that they were random police stops on a public street rather than incidents that had anything to do with the two properties, and other neighboring businesses, including a Dunkin’ Donuts and a 7-11, had hundreds of police calls in comparison.
A land use planner hired by Meerzon and Romero at the time disputed the city planner’s findings, calling the report “fatally flawed,” something their attorneys repeated in the lawsuit.
“The blight study designated both Honey’s property and Luis’s business as blighted based on information that is factually inaccurate, conditions that are inherently transitory (like stray cats), without evidence of causation, and based on a broad interpretation of statutory criteria that would, if permitted, apply to most of the entire city of Perth Amboy,” the lawsuit said.
What happens next will be up to the city, the attorneys said.
“We are not blighted. We are not forgotten. We are not for sale. We will not be torn down,” Meerzon said. “True redevelopment lifts people up. It does not push them down.”
Clara Brucilova, of Manalapan, came out to protest the City of Perth Amboy use eminent domain to seize properties on Smith St. in Perth Amboy. June 11, 2025Amanda Brown| For NJ Advance Media
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Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on X at @KPMueller.