At issue is a 50-foot strip of land along the border between a farm and the 946-unit Stonebridge at Greenbriar planned retirement community.
By: Leon Tovey
MONROE "We’ll see what happens," Laurie Winter said Monday, following an hour-long meeting with representatives of the township and U.S. Homes, the developer, she and her husband, Greg, have had a property dispute with since October.
The Winters met at their Federal Road farm with Robert Calabro, Land Division president of the Central Jersey division of the Lennar Corp., U.S. Homes’ parent company, to try and reach a compromise on what has become a contentious and public dispute over a 50-foot strip of land bordering their respective properties.
Mr. Calabro maintains that U.S. Homes owns the land, having taken possession of it when the company bought 350 acres adjacent to the Winters’ farm to build the 946-unit Stonebridge at Greenbriar planned retirement community, the general development plan for which was approved in 2003.
The plan for that area of the development, which received preliminary site plan approval in April, calls for six houses to be built adjacent to the disputed land.
But the Winters say they have used the land since they bought their 10-acre farm seven years ago. Parts of two of the couple’s horse corrals are located on the property, as is a large garden they have cultivated and a gravel road that provides the only access to a narrow strip of land separated from the rest of their property by a drainage ditch.
The Winters also say Mr. Calabro told them in 2003 that they could continue using the land and that they built the corrals afterward.
Mr. Calabro has said that was a result of a misunderstanding about where the actual property line is. He said he did not realize at the time how far the Winters were encroaching into U.S. Homes’ property.
"I’m sorry for giving you that misimpression," he told the Winters on Monday afternoon. "I never would have taken that tack if I realized we were talking about 50 feet rather than 1 or 2 feet."
Monday’s meeting was called after the Winters asked the Township Council for help in the dispute at the Nov. 9 council meeting. It was also attended by Township Engineer Ernie Feist, Environmental Commissioner and Planning Board Member Joe Montanti, the Winters’ neighbor Olga Martynuk and Jamesburg attorney Otto Kostbar, who attended at the behest of the Winters and also is a Jamesburg councilman.
The meeting ended with Mr. Calabro saying he would explore the feasibility of allowing the Winters to keep their garden and most of the sections of the corral that are on the disputed property. That arrangement would still eliminate the road and require the Winters to reduce the size of their corrals.
Mr. Montanti said that because 40 feet of the disputed property is drawn on the plan as a buffer zone between the backyards of the houses and the property line, this would be a workable solution and one that he would support as a member of the Planning Board.
Mr. Calabro said he would send a surveyor to the site to determine whether such a solution would be workable.
"I have to get the current conditions and see how that will affect the plan," Mr. Calabro said. "I’m not promising anything other than I will look into it. I want to figure out a way to help.
"I want to be a good neighbor," he added.
Township officials have said they can not get directly involved in the dispute, but Mayor Richard Pucci instructed Mr. Feist and Mr. Montanti to use the township’s "good offices" to try and broker a compromise.
A report on the status of the situation is to be issued at the Dec. 5 Township Council meeting. Mr. Montanti said Wednesday that it would be in the developer’s favor to have the matter resolved before it applies for final major subdivision approval for that section of the project, as the Planning Board tends to consider issues like this in granting approvals.
He said there is no timeline for when the plan might come before the board, but said work on that phase would likely not begin for at least two years.

