Pump Branch closed on the property in February 2008, paying $1.5 million, according to county land records. The company had entered into a contract in 2007 to sell the land to another developer for $7.4 million, but that purchase was not completed.
In February 2009, another of Maressa's companies, New Brooklyn Associates, sold the open-space fund a property in Winslow for $485,000. Home construction on the property is already restricted through Pinelands-conservation rules, and the majority of the 78 acres are classified as wetlands and undevelopable, county officials said.
The land deals were part of more than $33 million spent by Camden County over the last 12 years to protect undeveloped land and farmland.
In October, one of Maressa's companies was close to selling the county another halted housing development in Winslow for $3.2 million - $1.2 million more than the company paid for the land. The all-Democratic freeholder board had tentatively approved the purchase, but then postponed a final decision pending further review.
Since 1998, members of the Maressa family, who have large land holdings in eastern Camden County, have donated more than $130,000 to state and local Democratic politicians and organizations, according to New Jersey campaign-finance records.
Maressa and his father, Joseph A. Maressa, who served in the Legislature from 1972 to 1982 and remains a powerful Democrat in eastern Camden County, did not respond to repeated interview requests.
Freeholder Jeff Nash and Peter Fontaine, chairman of the citizens committee that oversees the open-space fund, said the deals were part of the county's strategic plan for its park system; they said no preferential treatment was given.
