Board will hear request for interpretation of zoning ordinance, as it applies to school uses
By Ruth Luse
The Lewis Clinic and School of Princeton has an application pending with the Hopewell Township Zoning Board of Adjustment to use an existing single-family residence and existing accessory buildings on Cherry Valley Road for teaching and educational-clinic services.
On May 3, the zoning board will hear a request for an interpretation of the zoning ordinance, as it applies to school uses. The meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the municipal building, Scotch Road and Route 546.
The board will be dealing with an amended application for Block 15, Lots 9 and 17, according to Robert N. Ridolfi, local attorney.
Attorney Ridolfi, in an April 3 letter to township Zoning Officer Robert Miller, said: "As you recall, the applicant originally filed for a use variance that would permit it to construct its educational facility on the above-referenced parcels. We applied for a use variance" because "there was a question as to whether the applicant’s educational facility is in fact a ‘school’ as defined by the township’s Land Development Ordinance."
To resolve that question, Mr. Ridolfi wrote, the applicant now is applying for an interpretation of the definition of "school" as defined in the ordinance and, in the alternative, is asking the board to continue to consider the previous application for a use variance.
The existing school and clinic is based in Princeton at Bayard Lane and Paul Robeson Place across from the Princeton Family YMCA. The Lewis School was founded in 1973 as a small tutorial school and educational diagnostic clinic for dyslexic and learning-different students.
The school itself provides preschool through high school and college prep education. The Lewis Clinic is the school’s diagnostic, language and learning performance unit offering educational evaluations, according to the school’s Web site.

