City officials and representatives from K. Hovnanian were in town Thursday evening to host an invitation-only meeting with property owners in Beachfront South, one of six redevelopment zones in the city.

While the media was not permitted to attend, company and city officials met with reporters beforehand to trumpet the $320 million development to rise on 12 acres between North Bath and Morris avenues.

They said they would have to acquire 27 parcels, including five businesses, from 23 property owners, which would then be transformed into five buildings holding 350 homes in an art deco-style reminiscent of South Miami.

"We're turning into Miami," agreed Irene Choras Tsakiris of West Long Branch, whose home on the ocean has been in the family since the 1930s. "That's fine if you're Miami. They're just selling Long Branch."

Tsakiris acknowledged that everyone at the meeting was nice. Mayor Adam Schneider said "the treatment you'll receive is fair," according to Tsakiris' notes of the session, and company officials in the meeting earlier with reporters had said the same thing.

The company has set up an automated Beachfront South Information Line at (732) 623-6721 for questions or comments. Someone from the company will respond within 24 hours, officials said.

They anticipate having the project before the city Planning Board by next summer.

"It was interesting because one of the K. Hovnanian people said this was a voluntary process we're undertaking, which I think was sort of funny because most of us think this is not voluntary," Tsakiris said. "When someone takes something you don't want to sell or give them, that's not voluntary."

Tsakiris said she also found it ironic that the company, which will need to do soil borings on residents' properties over the next few months, promised to restore the area when they are done. This may include some landscaping.

"It is sort of like sterilizing the needle before you give the lethal injection," she said.

Philip Atwell, who along with his wife, Wendy, is part of a partnership called Smiles On The Ocean LLC, which is restoring a 103-year-old Victorian home on the ocean that has 10 bedrooms and eight baths, said company officials indicated they probably wouldn't break ground for 18 months to two years, which means he will finish the restoration and earn revenue for perhaps two summers.

But Atwell, of Middletown, also wonders if the whole process is moving a little too quickly, noting the city and the company have not yet formalized plans by signing a developer's agreement. They have 120 days from Aug. 4 to finalize that agreement, and company officials would not say whether they expect to meet that deadline or whether an extension might be required.

"You would have thought everything was a done deal, the way the meeting was conducted," Atwell said. "Up until such time, with no contract (signed by the city), we will complete renovation and restoration of the property and go from there."

Atwell also has his worries as far as the negotiation process is concerned.

"They kept stressing the fact they intended to be as fair as possible," Atwell said. "But of course, you want to have guarded optimism of that. Fair is a very tricky word which has two-sided meanings. It depends on whose determination of fair we're talking about."

Atwell said Schneider drew distinctions between those who owned their property before 1996 when the area was designated for redevelopment, and those who bought properties later.

"We haven't had the properties for 30 years, and you're not uprooting us from properties we've had for 30 years, but we still expect to be dealt with fair-ly," Atwell said.

Patricia Carle, who attended Thursday's meeting with her husband, Raymond, said she does not like the idea of having to move, but she does not relish fighting for her home. She said she has attended City Council meetings, which are often populated by residents from Beach-front North Phase II who have banded together to fight redevelopment there, and she does not find that constant friction to be productive.

"I have to live, and I can't live fighting," she said. "Rather than fight it, I'd rather move on with the process. I have enough things to get an ulcer about. I just don't need that. It is so totally traumatizing. . . . I'm not into that hollering, screaming, name-calling. I think it is getting out of hand, and it is not accomplishing anything."