Home Depot submits new plan

Proposes new warehouse.

By: Matt Kirdahy
   There could be another warehouse coming to Cranbury east of Route 130.
   Developers Keystone and Trammell Crow have filed an application with the township for a 759,436-square-foot distribution center that will be used by home improvement retailer Home Depot.
   The Planning Board will review the application at a July 31 meeting. That date is subject to change.
   "We’ll discuss site plans, traffic reports, engineering reports, environmental impact and hear testimony from their experts who will then argue why it would come to Cranbury," Planning Board Chairman Thomas Harvey.
   The 43-foot-tall building will be approximately 500 feet from the Holland House and new police station sites.
   According to an application on file at the Planning Office, the developers have included a provision to donate a small tract of land that would increase the buffer zone between the warehouse and the 153-year-old Holland House, which the township is auctioning on July 11. The additional space could create space needed for the police station, slated to be built east of the warehouse, to expand its driveway.
   The Holland House was donated to the town by the developer Cabot Industrial and will be renovated once it is sold. Police station design plans are being reworked and will go before the township one last time within the next month or two, according to committee members. That construction is expected to start this year.
   Mr. Harvey said the extra land in the application is nothing unusual. Developers have made provisions for land to be donated to the township in applications before.
   He said that once a developer has reached a maximum on the amount of impervious or building space it is permitted to use, then it doesn’t matter to the developer what happens with the leftover land.
   "It doesn’t cost them anything at all," Mr. Harvey said. "Their ability to develop in Cranbury or anywhere else tends to be limited by how much impervious surface they can use and in Cranbury your impervious limitation is 50 percent."
   He added that the building space includes parking lots, which in the new distribution center boasts 238 employee spaces, 234 dock spaces and 342 trailer spaces.
   One of the issues to be discussed at the board meeting is landscaping needed to shield activity at the warehouse.
   "We’re going to focus on creating a facility which is sufficiently bermed and landscaped so that you don’t look in at a bunch of trucks," Mr. Harvey said. "They show a lot of truck parking in their plan. They are going to try to convince the board that they are developing a site in a way that when someone drives past they won’t see the trucks."
   Don Harrison , Eastern Division public relations manager of Home Depot, said the distribution center is expected to house "big commodity products."
   "It’ll be products like lumber and drywall that we have to set aside for the retailers," Mr. Harrison said about the facility, which is expected to occupy 88.9 acres approximately 425 feet off Station Road.
   Mr. Harrison did not say why the company or developer chose a site like the one in Cranbury specifically but did mention the importance of having key access to the NJ Turnpike, which would make travel to state retailers easier.