TRADING SPACES: First of three parts
By: Leon Tovey
Editor’s note: The first of three stories outlining the issues raised as part of the proposed swap of properties in Monroe.
MONROE Public hearings on the proposed Thompson Park land swap are still more than two weeks away, but a possible legal challenge to the exchange is already taking shape.
The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club and local group Park Savers oppose the proposed diversion of a 35-acre piece of the county park, which is protected under the state Green Acres Program. The two groups have threatened to sue to stop the exchange if it is approved by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
If approved by the DEP, the exchange would still need the approval of the State House Commission.
The Board of Education wants to build a new, $82.9 million, 365,000-square-foot high school approved by voters in 2003 on the parcel, but opponents believe that the exchange would set a bad precedent and undermine the Green Acres Program, which oversees the county-run park.
Public hearings on the exchange are scheduled for Nov. 21 at 7 p.m. in the Monroe Township High School’s Richard P. Marasco Center for the Performing Arts and for Dec. 6 at 4 p.m. at the County Administration Building in New Brunswick.
One legal question opponents plan to raise during the hearings is whether the land being offered by the township in exchange is eligible as replacement land under state law, said Richard Webster, an attorney for the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic. The clinic is representing Park Savers and the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club.
Mr. Webster said Friday he believes that the land being offered is already protected under state land-use law and cannot be offered as compensation in a land diversion.
The township is offering 152 acres in the exchange for the Thompson Park property, two parcels totaling 77 acres near the intersection of Route 522 and Schoolhouse Road and a 75 acres parcel on Hoffman Station Road. Opponents of the plan have said the replacement land is not of equal or greater value, conditions set by Green Acres.
Mr. Webster argued that because the land was obtained through density transfers under the township’s cluster-zone ordinance, it is already protected as unfunded parkland under state land use law.
Under the township’s cluster-zone ordinance, a developer can request that it be allowed to build on lots smaller than zoning allows by concentrating houses on one section of its property (or another it owns in the township) and giving the rest to the township.
Peg Schaffer of Shain, Schaffer and Rafanello, the law firm that represents the township, said Tuesday that the ordinance defines land received in this fashion as preserved for "public purposes."
That can mean parkland, recreational facilities, senior citizens facilities or schools, she said. The ordinance has allowed the township to amass hundreds of acres of land including most of the 152 acres being offered in the exchange and a 30-acre parcel on Applegarth Road the Township Council recently donated to the Board of Education for the construction of a planned elementary school.
But Mr. Webster dismissed the contention that land obtained through density transfers could be used as anything other than preserved open space.
"Quite simply, we don’t believe state land-use law allows that," he said. "And if that’s the case, their ordinance is pretty meaningless. Could the town swap out the density and build COAH units on that land? That’s not the way state land use law is designed."
A Green Acres official involved in reviewing the county’s application said Thursday that Green Acres officials had initially balked at the offered replacement properties amid the same concerns cited by Mr. Webster.
However, after attorneys for the program reviewed the township’s cluster-zone ordinance, officials at Green Acres took the position that the land was eligible as replacement land in a diversion for the construction of a school, the official said.
The official said concerns remain about the value of the replacement land, but that the land’s eligibility as replacement land has long been settled in the minds of Green Acres officials.
But the matter could still end up in court, the official admitted. Mr. Webster said the same.
"Obviously, we haven’t taken a final decision on our legal options at this point," he said. "But if municipal bodies start considering parks viable alternatives any time they’re looking for a plot of land, we’re going to start losing parks left, right and center. We don’t think parkland should be cheap."

