Residents to be heard on Stop & Shop plan

Larkin tells meeting Ocean Gate application

BY LINDA DeNICOLA Staff Writer

BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer

OCEAN TOWNSHIP — The township will hold a special meeting to give residents the chance to weigh in on a controversial shopping center application, Mayor William Larkin said last week.

“You will get your own special meeting to ask questions,” Larkin told a resident who complained about the Planning Board hearings on the proposed Ocean Gate Commons shopping center.

The resident addressed the council at the April 13 meeting to say that just because the number of concerned citizens attending the ongoing hearings has dropped off, doesn’t mean that people don’t care any more.

She said the hearings are boring and tedious, and residents are not allowed to speak about their concerns just to the testimony being presented by the applicant’s witnesses.

Larkin responded that he can see why people are dropping away. “They are boring.”

There was some concern that the Planning Board will vote after all of the testimony is heard on June 16, but Larkin explained that nothing will be decided at the Planning Board hearing because board members have to go over the testimonies and hear from the residents.

“It is not a done deal,” Larkin said, adding that there are just so many supermarkets the community can support.

He also said that there are many people who are in favor of the project. “We hear from them all of the time.”

He and Councilman Christopher Siciliano urged the residents to be patient.

“We are dealing with the problem,” Siciliano said. He reminded residents that the council has been successful in getting the project scaled back. “It started at 210,000 square feet and dropped to 198,000. We have suggested cutting it in half.”

Larkin said officials are looking into what can be done, but any zoning changes would have to conform to the master plan.

Called Ocean Gate Commons, the proposed U-shaped 198,000-square-foot center would be built on a 31-acre parcel on the northeast corner of the intersection of Deal Road and Route 35.

It would include an 80,000-square-foot Stop & Shop supermarket, six retail business spaces and two free-standing buildings.

Ceruzzi Holdings LLC, the Connecticut-based developer, promises to widen Deal Road, add jughandles to the intersection and move the Eden Woolley House, a 250-year-old structure that will become the headquarters of the historical society, to the property adjacent to the new public library under construction.

A commercial overlay zone on the proposed site was created in January 2001.

The overlay required developers to pay for road improvements made necessary by their projects. The applicant has proposed $2.2 million in traffic improvements, which includes two jug-handles at the intersection and the widening of Deal Road by creating two additional lanes, one traveling in each direction.

A resident asked why the overlay zone had been created. Larkin responded that township officials were doing what they thought was best for the town.