Thursday, October 1, 2026
After more than three years of legal wrangling over property at 2025 Park St., the Village of Atlantic Beach has agreed to settle with the Long Beach-based Chabad of the Beaches with payments totaling the $950,000 over two years.
According to the agreement, approved at a special meeting on July 1, the village will pay the Chabad $700,000 this year and $250,000 next year. The settlement is $550,000 larger than an agreement the parties reached in November 2023 that was rejected by the Chabad 13 months later.
As part of the new agreement, the Chabad will be officially welcomed into the community, and the village’s Board of Zoning Appeals will be required to grant the organization the variances it requested in August 2024 to renovate a former bank building on Park Street that it purchased four years ago.
Many residents questioned whether Atlantic Beach could afford to make the payments without another tax hike on top of this year’s 87 percent increase.
Village Trustee Barry Frohlinger said that the village would use money originally budgeted for legal fees and road repaving, and that no further increase or use of reserves would be needed.
The dispute began in November 2021, when the Chabad purchased the former Capital One bank branch at 2025 Park, at the base of the Atlantic Beach Bridge, for $950,000. The Chabad intended to build a community center for Jewish programming, education and worship as well as a drive-through café.
Weeks later, the village attempted to seize the property through eminent domain, the acquisition of private property for public use.
In a letter to residents that was posted on the village website at the time, then Mayor George Pappas wrote that if the village reacquired the property, it would create a year-round community center with outdoor recreational space.
In July 2022, the Chabad sued the village for attempting to seize the Park Street property.
After more than a year of legal battles, the Chabad and the village reached an initial settlement agreement in November 2023, with the village agreeing to pay the Chabad $400,000 over four years and drop the eminent domain litigation.
The Chabad submitted its plans for the Park Street property to the Board of Zoning Appeals last August. In October, the BZA denied all but one of the Chabad’s variance requests. Two months later, the Chabad rejected the village’s settlement agreement, and added the BZA to its lawsuit.
Shortly after the October meeting, Jeremy Dys, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, a law firm that is representing the Chabad, said that village officials “engaged in open anti-Chabad and anti-Orthodox sentiment and trafficked in vile anti-Semitic tropes” through text messages and emails.
BZA Chairman George Cornish read a statement after the meeting on July 1, was adjourned, in an effort to clarify the situation.
“There was no antisemitism expressed by any BZA commissioner —no collusion with mayor and trustees,” Cornish said. “I personally never spoke to the mayor in the 35 years I lived in the village until the mayor refused to provide the BZA with their own lawyer to defend this lawsuit. Once added to the lawsuit, the ugly antisemitism statement by trustees and Mayor Pappas response that he would never let the Chabad into the Village of Atlantic Beach was revealed.”
Pappas and Trustee Charlie Hammerman, whom Pappas had appointed deputy mayor, both resigned on July 2.
Residents voiced their displeasure with the village administration’s lack of communication with the community during the litigation. One, Ed Radburn, said that the lack of transparency between the previous board and the residents was a big issue, and added that he was looking for more open communication from new trustees.
“With the $950,000, the board should not be congratulating themselves over this — they lost,” Radburn said. “They could have settled this lawsuit for $400,000.”
Have an opinion on the Atlantic Beach settlement? Send a letter to mberman@liherald.com.
