You can visit the slide, carousel, ice bar and carnival games in a cool setting until Feb. 26.

AUGUSTA -- Everyone loves the state fair, held here on some of the hottest summer days in August, so fair organizers decided to hold a similar festival in the same area, during some of the coldest days of winter.

Frozen in Ice: Carnival, a festival created from ice and being held at the Skylands Stadium, began Friday and will continue most days through Feb. 26. 

"It's cool," said Mark Crouthamel, president of Ice Works, which sculpted the works that will be featured, including a 50-foot long, 12-foot tall giant ice slide people can ride.

The festival will also include an ice carousel with eight ice-carved horses, ice benches that visitors can sit on, an ice ferris wheel and ice-carving demonstrations.

Cocktails and wine will be served at an ice lounge and ice bar, and for those who want something a bit warmer there will be hot food and a s'mores fire pit. Carnival games will also be available.

New Jersey State Fair

More than a 1,000 blocks of ice, at 300 pounds each, were used to make the entire event, Crouthamel said. The stadium is kept below 32 degrees, so the attractions won't melt, so fair-goers should dress warmly.

Adult admission is $20; tickets for children 12 and younger is $15. The event will be closed on Feb 6, 7, and 13.

Ed Murray may be reached at emurray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Ed on Twitter at @EdMurrayphoto. Find NJ.COM on Facebook.

Classic night spots and music venues in the Garden State.

This photo of patrons at El Castile nightclub in East Orange was taken in 1979. Photo courtesy of Bobby Cole. This and other photos of nightspots and music venues throughout New Jersey will appear in a gallery titled "Vintage photos of clubs and bands in N.J." on Thursday, Feb. 9.

MORE FROM INSIDE JERSEY MAGAZINE

Follow Inside Jersey on Twitter. Find Inside Jersey on Facebook and Google+

Where is your favorite team in the latest Top 20?

We built a map showing Census data on the amount of income inequality in a town. Find out if your town has high or low levels of income disparity.

New Jersey is home to both people with unimaginable wealth and to single working moms struggling to get by.

To better understand this dichotomy, NJ Advance Media dug into the newest Census data and found where this kind of income inequality is highest and lowest in New Jersey.

The Census measures income inequality by the Gini index, which calculates the income distribution in a place. The closer the number is to one, the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer people, thus the bigger income disparity.

We built an interactive map with the Gini index income inequality number of every municipality for 2011-2015. Find out what your town scored below.

According to the latest numbers released for 2011-2015, New Jersey's Gini index is at  0.4759, which is the 13th highest in the nation.

The town with the most income inequality is Deal in Monmouth County with a Gini index of 0.619, the Census shows.

Saddle River in Bergen at 0.600 and Far Hills in Somerset at 0.599 are the towns with the second and third highest level of income inequality.

However, many of the towns with the most income disparity are extremely wealthy with very small populations. A few millionaires in a small town can make a big difference.

"When you're poor, you make $10,000 and $20,000 a year, but a rich person can make millions of dollars a year which can skew the [Gini index] dramatically," according to Steve Scott, a researcher at the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers.

For example, Deal, a town of about 750 residents, has about 18 percent of its households making $200,000 a year or more.

However, when we analyzed only the New Jersey towns with more than 10,000 residents, Atlantic City at 0.5462 and Montclair at 0.5385 emerged as the cities with the highest Gini Index scores.

The map above with the newest data shows how extreme income disparity is more common in the urban centers of the state. 

"In northeast New Jersey, where you the commuting shadow of New York, you see all kinds of poverty and wealth clustered together," said Steve Scott of the Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers. "When you go further south, you're not gonna see those extremes."

The Cornwall Center also zeroed in on Essex County as having the fifth-highest Gini index among all counties in the nation with a population of 250,000 and over.

This was also the first year we could compare Gini index numbers from two different five-year periods: 2006-2010 and 2011-2015.

The two datasets give us a snapshot of the income inequality from a time when New Jersey was beginning to feel the effects of the recession and compare it to the years when the state was trying to recover from it.

Statewide, New Jersey's Gini index was slightly less, with a score of 0.463 in 2006-2010 compared to what it was in 2011-2015 with a score of 0.4759. Thus, in the last decade, New Jersey has become a little more unequal.

The statewide rise in New Jersey income inequality is also reflected in the data for individual counties, which all except Cape May saw upticks in their Gini index scores.

Middlesex and Essex are the two counties with the biggest increases in income disparity over the two periods.

When it comes to towns, 370 had higher Gini index scores and higher income inequality in 2011-2015 than they did 2006-2010, while 191 had lower scores.

However, most of these towns have higher margins of error that make their increases and decreases statistically insignificant. When we took away cities with high margins of error and smaller populations, we came up with 38 cities that increased their income disparity and only three cities that saw it shrink.

The city of Orange in Essex had the biggest jump in its Gini index score, from 0.418 in 2006-2010 to 0.4765 in 2011-2015.

4 charts that show the rapid growth of income inequality in N.J.

Renee Koubiadis, executive director of Anti-Poverty Network of New Jersey, notes that while wages for wealthiest residents have continued to grow, wages for middle and lower classes have stagnated as cost of living, especially housing and medical care expenses, continue to rise.  

This is especially exacerbated in communities like Atlantic City, the city with the highest Gini index in New Jersey, where the closing of the casinos can ripple through a community.

"We don't typically think of the impact beyond a company or casino closing beyond those workers not working. If [those workers] get sick and can't fill out their pharmacy prescriptions, then that affects the pharmacy. It affects the whole community just beyond the workers being laid off," Koubiadis said.

She said that beyond twice raising the Earned Income Tax Credit, the state has done little to help lift people out of poverty and stem income inequality in New Jersey.

Felipe Chavana has witnessed this phenomenon in Essex County first-hand as director of New Jersey Legal Services, which provides free legal assistance to low-income New Jersey residents.

Essex is essentially a "tale of two cities," according to Chavana. The eastern half is made up of four largely segregated inner cities (Newark, Orange, East Orange and Irvington) with high poverty, high crime, high unemployment and lower quality of schools, where the population is overwhelmingly people of color. By contrast, the western half is made up of some of the wealthiest communities in the state.

"It all relates to the high cost of living in Essex, especially in areas where there's no rent control," said Chavana. "[The middle class] then moves out, and they all end up in Pennsylvania or western New Jersey."

In addition, the poorest of the poor in Essex are getting poorer at a rate that Chavana has never seen before. With the new Trump administration, things are looking bleak, he said.

"There's no reason for optimism," he said. "Well, maybe there is in the way that things will have to get worse before they get better."

Meet the members of one of New Jersey's most exclusive wrestling clubs -- the undefeated as of Feb. 5

More than 800 businesses in 41 states took part in the event between Friday and Sunday.

Nine cafes in the Garden State took part in a national fundraiser last weekend to help raise money for the American Civil Liberties Union in the wake of President Donald Trump's travel ban. 

The campaign was organized sprudge.com, a Portland-based publication that focuses on coffee and cafe culture.

The publication said more than 800 businesses in 41 states took part in the event between Friday and Sunday, and called the ban a "dark stain on our national conscience."

"We believe that the current executive order banning refugees from the United States and immigration from 7 majority Muslim nations is illegal, immoral, and fundamentally un-American."

Here's a list of the cafes in the Garden State that took part in this weekend's fundraiser:

• Cai's Cafe in Metuchen
• Harvest Coffee in Medford
• Modcup Coffee Co. in Jersey City (three locations)
• Montclair Bread Company in Montclair
• Rojo's Roastery in Lambertville and Princeton
• The Able Baker in Maplewood

On Jan. 27, the president signed an executive order temporarily barring people including Syrian refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for at least 90 days, prompting nationwide protests.

Uber responds to social media criticism over travel ban

The order caused chaos at American airports, where more than a hundred people were detained or turned away - some of whom were already granted legal permanent resident status.

A judge granted a request by the ACLU to block the order last Saturday.

"Today they're defending innocent refugee and immigrant families impacted by the recent executive orders--tomorrow they could be defending you, because they are committed to defending all of us," sprudge.com said in a release. 

Sprudge.com said it promised to match the first $500 raised by 26 of the cafe brands.

NJ Advance Media reached out to sprudge.com for a tally of how much was raised, but did not immediately hear back.

Rajeev Dhir may be reached at rdhir@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @googasmammoo. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Victor Ricci, a former social media celebrity and a senior at Seton Hall, founded TrendPie in 2015.

SOUTH ORANGE -- A few years ago, Victor Ricci was a pretty normal kid from Rhode Island. He maintained his own personal social media accounts, had a summer job, and was getting ready to move to New Jersey for college.

Victor Ricci. (Courtesy TrendPie)
 

That all changed the summer after his senior year of high school, when he posted a six second "life hack" video to his Vine account.

The video of Ricci using a water bottle to separate the white and yolk of an egg, went viral. His Vine account, @QuickLifeHacks, which he described as videos that showed small tips to make everyday tasks easier, grew everyday, eventually reaching more than 1.4 million followers and becoming one of the most followed accounts in the world.

"It definitely wasn't something I was trying to do," Ricci said of his sudden Internet fame. "I'm not even an avid social media user. Now, I don't even have the Facebook app on my phone."

But, there was a monetary incentive to being a social media influencer. Ricci, now 22 and a senior at Seton Hall University, said he was contacted by companies offering him between $3,000 and $5,000 to feature their products in his short videos. Though the offers came at an inconsistent pace, Ricci said they helped support him during his first few years of college. More importantly, Ricci said, the offers gave him an idea.

He transitioned away from social media stardom, and in April 2015 launched TrendPie, an Internet marketing company that connects brands to his network of non-celebrity online influencers.

Instead of sporadic, high-cost campaigns, Ricci said his company offers regular, lower cost placements on the accounts of multiple organic social media influencers. The result is more successful for his clients, and a more regular revenue stream for the influencers, he said.

"I think of it kind of as the Wal-Mart approach" Ricci said. "We charge less, but we do it everyday."

$8M gift is one of largest ever to Seton Hall

Almost two years later, as Ricci is finishing up his degree at Seton Hall, the plan seems to be working.

He has four employees who all work remotely to keep the business running. TrendPie's influencers have a collective reach of 250 million followers. Its client roster has included apps like Drunk Mode and Sworkit, and companies like Yahoo and Aol. TrendPie said it has earned almost $1 million in sales since launching.

Ricci runs TrendPie while pursuing a marketing degree, and running on Seton Hall's cross country team, which he has been a part of since his freshman year.

"It's amazing to watch Vic do what he does," said Tony Testa, who heads Seton Hall's athletic training department.

"He'll come in for a treatment or something, and stop in the middle to take a conference call. Then, he comes back ready to work."

After graduation, Ricci said he hopes to open a TrendPie office, expand the company, and keep learning as he goes.

"When I started, I didn't know how to run a company," he said. "Everyone has an idea, but most people don't act on them because they are too busy with other things. Sometimes you just need to take that first step."

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Lat Sall, as a French teacher, allegedly yelled at a female student, "you're dirty and stink, go home and take a shower" or words to that effect and spat on her.

PATERSON -- The state recently ordered that a former Paterson teacher's certificates be suspended after he allegedly verbally abused and spit on a 10th grade female student.

In May 2014, Lat Sall, a French teacher at the School of Education and Training in the JFK Educational Complex, allegedly yelled at a female student, "you're dirty and stink, go home and take a shower" or words to that effect and spat on her, according to the decision.

Sall had been a teacher since 2004 and worked in Paterson for 13 years. He was later fired from his tenured position, according to state documents.

Dozens protest Trump in Paterson

Sall told the state that it was a one-time incident and that he was successful teaching in East Orange and would have a new job opportunity for the 2016-17 school year.

School records show that he was offered to teach french at East Orange Campus High School for the 2015-16 school year with a $51,873 salary.

Sall's multiple certificates, including a teacher of french and psychology, were ordered to be suspended for two years. Sall's lawyer declined to comment on the state's decision.

Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde.

The 57-year-old from Sparta allegedly told cops he was in a hurry and forgot the gun was in his bag

NEWARK -- A North Jersey man was caught with loaded gun in his carry-on bag as he passed through security Saturday morning at Newark Liberty International Airport, Port Authority police said.

The loaded gun found in the carry-on bag of Voigt C. Kempson III on Saturday morning at Newark Liberty International Airport, police said.TSA (left)/Port Authority police (right) 

Voigt C. Kempson III, 57, of Sparta, had a Kahr CM9 handgun loaded with hollow point bullets in Terminal C when he was arrested at 9:20 a.m., a Port Authority police spokesman said. Kempson told police he might have forgotten the gun was there because he was in a hurry that morning, authorities said.

Kempson was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of body armor penetrating bullets. He was released with a summons and is due in court March 2, authorities said.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

The 'Daily Show' host will be in Newark on March 31 Watch video

"Daily Show" host Trevor Noah is scheduled to come to Newark in March, but now, thanks to heavy demand, NJPAC has made his appearance a double header. 

Organizers say people were so interested in seeing Noah, who is making his NJPAC debut, that they added a second show. The Comedy Central host will now appear at both 8 and 10 p.m. on March 31. 

Noah, 32, a South African comedian who became a "Daily Show" contributor in 2014, took over for Jon Stewart, 54, in September 2015. The longtime "Daily Show" host, who grew up in Lawrenceville and owns a farm with his wife in Middletown, decided to leave the show after 16 years at the helm. Since then, Stewart has made several appearances alongside former "Daily Show" colleague and "Colbert Report" host Stephen Colbert on "The Late Show," most recently this week. 

While tickets are still available for the 8 p.m. show, a Ticketmaster American Express pre-sale for the 10 p.m. show starts at 10 a.m. on Feb. 8 and tickets go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. on Feb. 10. Admission $39 to $69; call 888-466-5722, 800-745-3000 or 866-448-7849 or visit njpac.org or ticketmaster.com 

Christopher Tyminski allegedly used the funds to pay for vehicle repairs

NEWARK-- The former head of Essex County Sheriff's Officers PBA Local 183 has been accused of using his PBA credit card to pay for more than $14,000 in repairs to his personal vehicle, Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said in a statement.

Christopher Tyminski (Essex County Prosecutor's Office)  

Christopher Tyminski, 45, of Byram, was charged Friday with theft by deception and is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 16. The charges are not related to his duties with the sheriff's office, authorities also said.

A spokesman for the sheriff's office did not immediately return a call Monday night. 

Anyone with information is being asked to call the Essex County Prosecutor's Office Professional Standards and Corruption Bureau at 862-520- 3700.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.  

The 5-month-old girl was unharmed

NEWARK-- A 19-year-old Irvington man has been charged with child endangerment after his infant daughter was found alone at the YMCA on Broad Street Monday, police said.

The five-month-old girl was not harmed and her mother was located. Child Protection and Permanency was notified by police.

In addition to the endangerment charge, Kelly Coran is also wanted on a $2,000 warrant for theft of services.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.  

Former residents of Newark's Baxter Terrace and former members of Queen of Angels Parish shared their joys and sorrows about the role of the church and a community neighborhood that still makes them smile.

When residents moved into the James Baxter Terrace public housing development on Sussex Avenue in Newark, they felt a sense of family and promise, a chance at upward mobility.

"It was such a village,'' said Rosemary Francis-Spears, a Vauxhall resident who lived there 15 years until 1956.  "We were family.''

Queen of Angels Parish - Newark's first African-American Roman Catholic Church - was just as much a community anchor, located nearby on Irvine Turner Boulevard, an eight-minute drive by car. Its worship services were as lively as its political activism and social commitment to never give up on people.

"When I came to Queen of Angels I knew I was home,'' said Cecilia Faulks, an Orange resident who had been was a member since the 1960s.

MORE: Recent Barry Carter columns 

Former members of Queen of Angels Parish, Newark's first African-American Roman Catholic Church. From Left to right: are Tracey Battles, Margaret Henderson, Cecilia Faulks, Wynona Ward and Miles Callender participated in a Black History Month program at the Newark Public Library that explored the role of the church and the community in their lives. Barry Carter | The Star-Ledger 

Baxter Terrace residents and the faithful parishioners are forever linked to a special time and place in their lives when people looked after one another.

They gathered as panelists this past Saturday for a Black History Month program at the Newark Public Library, where 11 of them shared their joys and sorrows about the role of the church and a community neighborhood that still makes them smile.

And reminisce.

But Baxter Terrace and Queen of Angels are gone, two Newark stalwarts that were demolished after structural decline. The sprawling public housing development deteriorated and was torn down in 2012 after the Newark Housing Authority could no longer afford to maintain it.

Dwindling membership and costly repairs at Queen of Angels caused the Archdiocese of Newark to close the church in 2012, when the roof collapsed. The rectory and convent was razed in 2015, and the church came down in 2016.

When Baxter first opened in 1941 to working class and poor families, housing was segregated. Whites lived at the front of the complex along Sussex Avenue and Nesbitt Street. Blacks lived toward the back on the Orange Street side.

The panelists, however, said they were just kids who didn't pick up on the racial divide, which lasted until the 1950s.  They played with each other in the courtyard, and mothers looked out from their windows to watch them shoot marbles, play kickball or hopscotch.

Queen of Angels Parish in Newark before it was demolished in 2016.Alex Remnick 

There were sprinklers on hot summer days and bushes from which parents plucked a flexible, thin limb of a branch to spank a misbehaving child. Many of us know it as a "switch."

Older kids ventured away from the courtyard, but they had to be home by 5 p.m. They went roller skating, played basketball or checked out three movies for 14 cents when they saved up a quarter. The left over change was spent on penny candy.

"It was a wonderful time,'' said Ronald Koontz Sr., of East Orange. "I'll never forget it.'' 

Remnants of Baxter Terrace, which include entranceways, are now part of the Smithsonian's National African-American Museum in Washington, D.C. But what Baxter Terrace evolved into before it was finally razed is not the picture that residents remember.  They didn't experience the poor housing conditions rampant drug activity that became the development's reputation.

"That wasn't the last vision I had,'' said Linda Leonard-Nevels, a Hillside resident who is among four generations of family members who lived in Baxter from 1941 to 1986. "When people think of Baxter, they think of deterioration. We had a great time. It was a safe time.''

Fateisha Tullis Mariano of Willingboro wished her time at Baxter could have been like the glory days of other former residents who speak passionately about the complex.

"I feel bad that I didn't have the closeness that you had growing up,'' said Tullis Mariano, who was a resident from the mid- 1980s to the early 1990s. "We didn't have it all bad, but we didn't have it all good, either.

Queen of Angels, known as the beacon on the hill, was the social conscience of the neighborhood. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited several times and held meetings at the church for the Poor People's Campaign.

When King was killed, Queen of Angels organized a walk for racial harmony through the Central Ward, which drew of 25,000 people.

Members didn't sit idle in this church. They were put to work. There were fish fries, bake sales, community theater performances and dances. They were taught to give back.

No one was left behind, and Miles Callender, of Newark, can testify to that kindness. During his cocaine addiction, he said, the church never turned its back on him when he showed up on Sundays.

"No matter what condition I was in, the church was always receptive to me, even if I was sitting in the back stoned out of my mind.''

MORE CARTER: Toy guns look like the real thing 

James Baxter Terrace, a Newark public housing development, was demolished in 2012.Matthew Gosser 

The church's nurturing way turned him around. Callender earned a doctoral degree in theology and is working on a second master's degree at Seton Hall University.

The Queen of Angels members have gone through stages of grief, from anger to sadness, over the loss of their church. But they've moved on to other parishes, taking with them the call-and-worship-style of praise that made Queen of Angels appealing to many.

Tracey Battles, of Plainfield, understands the heartache, but he's practical about the demise of his church.

"Queen of Angels served its 's purpose and it served its time,'' he said.

The pews and stained glass windows are at Seton Hall University. St. Lucy's in Newark has the church bells, and many other artifacts are part of a gallery exhibit on Central Avenue in Newark. The curator is Matthew Gosser, a Newark resident and professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark.

The land where Queen of Angels once stood is still empty, but the former Baxter Terrace site is not.  It's now called Baxter Park, a modern $21.7 million apartment development built by the housing authority in 2013.

The only thing that remains the same are the memories of bygone days and the people who created them.

Barry Carter: (973) 836-4925 or bcarter@starledger.com or nj.com barry carter or follow him on Twitter @BarryCarterSL

It's well known that New Jersey is one of the most expensive places to live in the United States, but the cost of property varies widely across the Garden State. What costs you $70 in one part of the state could cost you $700 in another.

The deaths of three friends found in a Maplewood apartment last month have been deemed homicides, officials said.

MAPLEWOOD -- Questions are still swirling around what has been deemed a triple homicide in Maplewood late last month.

An autopsy has confirmed the three friends found dead in a Van Ness Court apartment on Jan. 29 died from gunshot wounds, Thomas Fennelly, chief assistant prosecutor at the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, told NJ Advance Media Monday. Their deaths are officially being investigated as homicides, he said.

Few other details are known about the killings of Michael Davis, 45, of Maplewood, Roshana Kenilson, 30, of Paterson, and Lance Fraser, 44, of Newark. Their three bodies were found by firefighters after the department received a call from someone concerned about not being able to reach the three friends, authorities said.

Fennelly said Monday that no arrests had been made.

"I cannot comment on a motive at this time," he said. "The investigation is active and ongoing."

Residents in the area last week said the killings were out of character for the usually "quiet" neighborhood. Anyone with information on the killings is asked to call 877-TIPS-4EC or 877-847-7432. 

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Two companies in Albany N.Y., which Pilgrim Pipeline LLC indicated would build pumps at their terminals for the project, disavowed the plan.

MAHWAH - A controversial proposal to pipe 400,000 barrels across protected watersheds in North Jersey every day suffered a big setback last week.

That's because two companies that the owner of the proposed Pilgrim Pipeline told the New York Department of Environmental Conservation that it would use to build pumps at their terminals have disavowed the project.

"Given the almost universal opposition of communities along the pipeline route, it is extremely unlikely that the Pilgrim Pipeline proposal will move forward," one of the companies, Global Partners of Albany, N.Y., wrote to the New York DEC. "Regardless, Global has no involvement in that proposal."

The other company, Buckeye, also of Albany, has also disavowed the project.

A plan to build a pipeline to carry oil between Linden and Albany, N.Y., has run into a setback after two companies linked to the project have disavowed it.
 

Pilgrim hopes to build the 178-mile pipeline between Albany and Linden. While plans have yet to be submitted in New Jersey, documents provided in an application in New York indicate the pipeline would enter through Mahwah, in the Highlands Preservation Area, and pass through Morris, Passaic and Essex counties before making it to Linden in Union County.

Municipalities along the route have banded together in opposition to the project. Last March, people packed Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco's office to deliver 1,000 petitions against the project.

"With all the opposition from the port, New Jersey's refineries, the public, and every town along the route, it is clear no one wants this speculative pipeline owned by a management company," said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "The failure to get any support for this terrible project shows that Pilgrim should abandon their plans for good."

Opposition to the project is most pronounced in Mahwah, where the Ramapough Lenape Nation has posted signs and erected several large teepees against on the Ramapo Valley Reservation. In response, the town issued summonses against the tribe for not obtaining the necessary permits and for moving soil without permission.

Mahwah, which gets about 80 percent of its water from aquifers near the pipeline route, said it is taking further steps to guard its supply against the proposal.

"It seems like the practicality of the pipeline is diminishing but our determination to protect drinking water continues," said Mahwah Mayor Bill Laforet. "We are fighting with a ghost right now, don't know if and when they are going to file for permits in New Jersey."

In a statement to NJ Advance Media Monday, Vice President of Pilgrim Pipeline LLC George Bochis said he hopes those in both states realize the pipeline is safer than the current barge system.

"We are confident that state officials in New Jersey and New York will determine that the Pilgrim Pipeline provides citizens with a substantial improvement upon the current reliance on river barges to transport the region's critical fuels,"Bochis said." Our project offers a safer and more secure means of transporting these fuels while generating lower greenhouse gas emissions to carry the same amount of product."

Fausto Giovanny Pinto may be reached at fpinto@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @FGPreporting. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

There's two new teams in the Top 20.

The under-construction apartment complex went up in flames over the weekend.

MAPLEWOOD -- The 235-unit, nearly-completed AvalonBay apartment complex partially destroyed in a six-alarm weekend fire will be rebuilt, its developer said in an interview Monday.

Before the blaze broke out, the development was set to begin leasing next month. Though that timeline will no longer be possible, Avalon executives say they are intent on rebuilding.

"In no way has this challenge that we are now facing impacted our decision to have an Avalon community in Maplewood," Ron Ladell, the company's senior vice president for development, told NJ Advance Media.

The fire undid about two years of construction at the site, officials said. Maplewood Mayor Vic DeLuca said about 130 of the units that were mostly completed when the fire broke out sustained only minimal smoke and water damage, and will just need to be refurbished. About 100 units in the back of the development that were still under construction, he said, need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

"It's very sad," DeLuca said. "It's really going to be a key anchor (for that neighborhood). It's an important development, and it's just sad."

6-alarm blaze levels unfinished complex 

The cause of the blaze, which broke out at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, is still under investigation, officials with the Essex County Prosecutor's Office said Monday. DeLuca said propane heaters were being used at the property during construction.

The fire jogs memories of other blazes that struck Avalon complexes, including one in 2000 that flattened the-then under construction development in Edgewater.  

After a massive, fast-moving fire displaced about 500 people in the rebuilt Edgewater apartment complex in early 2015, the company agreed to increased safety precautions at its construction projects in other New Jersey towns, including the one in Maplewood. The upgrades included more sprinklers and concrete fire suppressant walls.

Ladell called the fire in Maplewood "completely different" from the more recent Edgewater blaze, which authorities determined was sparked by a maintenance worker's blowtorch.

The Maplewood building was under construction, and "the fire safety enhancements had not been installed yet," he said.

The company, a public entity that owns and operates more than 83,000 apartment units in 10 states, released a statement Monday saying the costs of rebuilding after the fire "will be substantially covered by its insurance program and will not have a material effect on the company's financial condition or results of operations."

Despite the great material loss, Ladell echoed sentiments in the company's statement, saying he was grateful there were no serious injuries reported as a result of the fire, and was looking forward to rebuilding.

He thanked the town's officials and first responders, calling them "incredibly supportive" thorough a tough process.

A look at how New Jersey is reacting to the shocking news out of Paterson.

Check out a storyline for each letter of the alphabet as we get ready to start postseason matches.