By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer
WEST LONG BRANCH — A special meeting of the Zoning Board of Adjustment has been called for Jan. 8 to hear the application of Monmouth University seeking approval to build a parking lot for 318 cars on the campus.
The university needs a use variance because part of the parking lot falls in a residential zone and is asking for preliminary and final site plan approval.
The meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m., a half an hour earlier that usual, and will be held at the new Borough Hall on Broadway, the board’s first one there.
Susan Doctorian, the associate vice president of public affairs at the university, said the new lot should be helpful "without a doubt" in alleviating some of the school’s problems with parking which have annoyed neighbors.
Residents in the vicinity of the campus have complained about students and personnel at the university parking on their streets because there’s not enough room in the school’s present parking lots to accommodate all their cars.
The university won’t issue any more parking decals allowing them to park in university parking lots than the number of cars it figures they can hold.
Faculty have been shunted to a parking lot of St. Michael’s Church on Ocean Avenue in Long Branch and are shuttled in vans operated by the university to and from the campus.
Doctorian said the new parking lot , to be located in the area of Woodrow Wilson Hall and Boylan Gym, will address the problem in the short-term and permit the university to look at a long-term solution.
That, she said, was likely to be the construction of a parking garage.
"I think we have to look at a parking garage," she said. "That’s something we have to consider."
Asked where it might go up, Doctorian said she didn’t want to speculate on that.
Building the parking lot now will enable the university to bring the faculty and other professional staff back on campus to park, she said. She said the university was hopeful of winning zoning board approval for its plan.
The university last year wanted to put parking on a former farm on Beechwood Avenue it had purchased, but it was in an R-22 residential zone and the furor that plan sparked caused the school to back away from it.
Both residents and borough officials were outspoken in their opposition.
Some residents turned out for the Dec. 12 zoning board meeting, at which Monmouth University’s parking lot plan was scheduled to be heard, but a technical problem in the notification procedure required it to be postponed.
Naiomi Wohl brought a canvas bag of baseballs that have landed in her yard.
When an applicant asks for a special meeting of the board, as Monmouth University did for the one scheduled for Jan. 8, it must pick up the tab for the board’s professionals, usually about $2,000.
Rocco Christopher, chairman of the Planning Board, pointed out to Marc D. Policastro, the Woodbridge attorney representing the university before it on the application, that three of its nine members — seven regular members and two alternates — work at Monmouth University and must step down.
That leaves only six people to hear the case, he noted.
The three that have to recuse themselves are Irven Miller, the board secretary; Gordon Mast and Judy Wortman.
Doctorian said if the university receives the board’s approval, it will move ahead as soon as it can to build the parking lot, weather permitting. But, she said, the asphalt makers are shutting down their operations for the winter now and construction isn’t likely to get under way until the spring.
"If we had been able to get approved in November, we could have moved quickly," she said, and gotten it done before the depths of winter.
Before construction can begin, a building housing the Varsity Club and athletic administration offices must be demolished and the Skills Center has to be relocated. The total site area within the project limits is 4.68 acres. Some of the site is in the Institutional Zone and part is in an R-2 Residential Zone.
The engineer for the plan is William E. Fitzgerald, of West Long Branch.