BY CHRISTINE VARNO
Staff Writer
Long Branch LONG BRANCH — The applicant for the Sapphire Beach project got the go-ahead from the city Planning Board last week to construct a luxury townhouse project on Ocean Boulevard.
At the Aug. 15 Planning Board meeting, the board granted Sapphire Beach LLC final site plan approval to construct a six-unit, three-story townhouse unit, known as Sapphire Beach, on a 43,600 square-foot tract located north of Joline Avenue, between Ocean Boulevard and Ocean Avenue.
The applicant had previously failed to receive site plan approval from the board in January for a mid-rise luxury condominium project equipped with an automated parking system.
Board Chairman Howard Marlin told the applicant at last week’s meeting after the boards unanimously vote, “I commend you for re-evaluating the whole situation.”
Plans for the project call for the townhouses to stand just over 33 feet high and for each of the six units to be approximately 4,000 square feet, according to the project architect Robert Waldron, Riverdale, who testified at an earlier hearing.
He testified that the lower level of each unit will contain a two-car garage and a den with a bathroom. The second level will include a deck facing the ocean, a living room, a master bedroom suite, two other bedrooms and a bathroom in each of the bedrooms.
The project will also include a roof deck, but at the board’s suggestion, Sapphire Beach’s attorney James Siciliano, Long Branch, agreed that his applicant would not permit structures on the roof that rise above the height of the fence enclosing the roof area.
The project engineer is James Giordano of Benchmark Surveying and Engineering, Avon.
The project site is in the RC-1 zone which permits townhouses, but the board granted one lot depth variance for the project.
According to Carl H. Turner Jr., the city’s assistant planning director, the existing lot depth at the site cannot be expanded and the need for the variance would exist regardless of what use was made at the site.

