BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer
Ocean Township OCEAN TOWNSHIP — Despite the threat of litigation, the Township Council voted to adopt an ordinance that changes the zoning on the controversial 31-acre Ceruzzi tract on the northeast corner of Route 35 and Deal Road.
Ceruzzi’s development proposal includes a 198,000-square-foot shopping mall with an 80,000-square-foot Stop & Shop as the anchor store.
Under the new zoning, the largest store can be only 30,000 square feet.
After a public hearing during which a representative for Ceruzzi Holdings LLC requested that the council hold off on voting, the zoning change was unanimously approved by the four councilmen in attendance. Councilwoman Donna Schepiga was not present.
Ceruzzi’s representative, attorney George McGill, said his client was strongly opposed to the ordinance. He said the matter has been going on for two years and was nearing resolution at the June 16 Planning Board hearing. He added that his client had invested more than $1 million in the project.
“They can’t just walk away from this project,” he said, adding that he didn’t want his comments to be taken as a threat.
He asked the council to table the vote on the ordinance and to meet with Ceruzzi in order to avoid what is going to transpire. If they did that, he said, his client would be willing to table the June meeting.
Mayor William Larkin said the council had studied the issue for a long period of time and developed an ordinance that they felt would best suit the town.
People in the audience clapped and cheered when Larkin said, “We feel the ordinance will stand up to any challenge.”
Most of the residents at the hearing, including Stephen Levy of the Concerned Citizens Committee, opposed the retail center project.
But there were also a few who supported the original project.
Matthew Rovito, a resident of Wanamassa, asked what the benefits were of changing the zoning, especially economic benefits like ratables.
David Kochel, the township administrator, said that besides the new traffic improvements that the developer would have to provide no matter what is built on the property, the new zoning would allow an interplay among the three uses — retail, office and residential — that would be beneficial.
The new town center proposal would be two stories instead of one, providing more footage but on a smaller section of the property, which would leave more open space, said Councilman Chris Siciliano.
“We may be gaining, because [the structure is] bigger,” he said.
Mark Shuster, of Moorestown, the planner who was hired by the Township Council to examine a rezoning study that had been submitted by another planner, was at the meeting to explain the zoning changes.
He said that there are very specific design criteria in the zoning ordinance. The maximum size of the anchor store has been reduced, he said, adding that one store can be 30,000 feet, another can be 20,000 feet, and the rest would have to be smaller. They will also have to be built in a U-shape, facing Deal Road with a plaza in the center and a parking area.
The new ordinance allows for a maximum building coverage of 14 percent with a maximum building height of 35 feet and a maximum of 40 percent of the total square footage on the second story.
Shuster said the ordinance also mandates buffers and a ring road with directional signage, as well as the kind of landscaping and the amount of impervious surface that would be permitted. The parking areas would include landscaping, seating areas, decorative lighting and pathways to create a streetscape.
According to the ordinance, the official zoning map would be changed to remove the commercial development option, and would change the underlying zoning from a combination of office/retail to a community mixed-use district, which would encourage a variety of uses with storefronts at a pedestrian scale, a residential component, plazas and open spaces for public gatherings and interaction.
After being pressed on the amount of parking allowable, Shuster said that it would be about 1,200 spaces.
Rovito said he feared that Ocean Township was going down the same path that Middletown went down when they changed the zoning on property where the developer wanted to build a town center.
That town center, planned by Mountain Hill Group, was for a much larger scale project of 137 acres on Route 35. The $150 million, 1.7 million-square-foot project was unveiled in September 2000, after which the township changed the zoning in its master plan from commercial to adult residential with some commercial. The issue has divided the town and has cost Middletown taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Mountain Hill has filed suit claiming that Middletown officials conspired behind closed doors to reject approval of the mixed-use town center. The developer is asking the court to overturn the zoning change, but in April, Superior Court Judge Lawrence Lawson upheld the township’s decision to change the zoning. However, since that was only one of the issues in the suit, it is expected to continue in June.
Rovito said that Ceruzzi is a much bigger developer than Mountain Hill.
“We’re going against a huge company. You’re handcuffing them on their development.”
He added that the majority of the people in town who voted, spoke when they voted down the referendum on an open space tax.
“You want to appease a small group of people,” he said.
Another resident said that many people are not opposed to the project. It’s progress, she said, adding that the issue is not going to go away and that it will cost the taxpayers to fight it.
Shuster responded that the new zoning ordinance is not a development proposal. “It’s the perimeter around which a development can be designed,” he said.
Larkin said that he and the rest of the council have listened to not only the residents who attend meetings, but also to people who don’t attend meetings.
“It’s got to be the most talked-about issue out there. We are doing what’s best for the town,” he said.
Larry Loigman, a resident of Ocean Township and an attorney in Middletown, said that McGill was representing only the owner of the property, but that the council was representing everyone who lives in the town. He congratulated the council for taking a slow and deliberate path.
“Why doesn’t Ceruzzi work within the ordinance?” he asked.
In response to McGill’s comment that it has cost his client $1 million so far, one resident suggested that the expense is offset by the increase in the value of the property over the past couple of years.
Siciliano said, “This was not a capricious decision. We labored over this and thought about it for a long, long time.”
There was a moment of levity for residents who have spoken out against the controversial project at every council meeting for the past two years, when Ken Moser, a West Allenhurst resident, said he never thought he would be praising the council.

