BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer
Rendering of Monmouth University’s proposed multipurpose activity center, or MAC WEST LONG BRANCH – On the issue of Monmouth University’s proposed sports arena, the borough’s Zoning Board of Adjustment has decided not to decide for now.
As a result of the indecisiveness displayed by some of the board’s newer members, a vote on the school’s controversial use variance application for the 4,842-seat arena is postponed until the next scheduled meeting at 8 p.m. on Dec. 14.
A recommended list of conditions of board approval, mostly related to traffic flow and parking at the proposed 152,400-square-foot building will be submitted to the board and its attorney prior to the hearing, said Wendell Smith, the university’s attorney.
Some of those conditions include engaging borough police to enforce temporary no-parking restrictions on Larchwood Avenue and other neighboring streets and a developer’s agreement to protect any arrangement made between the school and the borough with regard to the arena, known informally as the multipurpose activity center, or MAC.
During the somewhat tense, more-than-four-hour meeting last Thursday night, residents either praised or criticized the university’s planned addition depending on which side of the issue they stood.
Though board Chairman Rocco Christopher and board Secretary Irvin Miller, both graduates of the private university, appeared eager to decide on the application they have been hearing for nearly six months, a few of their colleagues were not.
Board Attorney Thomas Klein advised those members not to vote unless they were satisfied with what they had heard.
Acknowledging that the clock was ticking toward midnight, Christopher, a veteran board member, conceded.
“I don’t think the board is ready to vote tonight,” he said. “We might want to mull it over.
As residents and university employees in the crowded meeting room listened, board member Douglas Bostwick told Christopher and Smith that he wanted to know what the applicant would consider “a capacity event” at the arena and how frequently those events might take place in the calendar year.
Whether those events were basketball games or concerts or Founder’s Day or convocations was not the issue, but the number of events that could bring in enough patrons to almost fill the seats inside the building, Bostwick said.
When Smith estimated that about 20 events bringing in 4,000 or more patrons might be held during the course of a calendar year, a few residents gasped.
“That’s about half the weekends in the year,” Bostwick said. “That’s almost every other weekend.”
The university’s designs for the building show that if constructed, it would be connected to the 2,200-seat Boylan Gymnasium, the more-than-40-year old venue for basketball games and other sporting events.
The facility would be in the center of the south campus and about 647 feet away from Larchwood Avenue, the nearest thoroughfare.
Traffic associated with patrons coming to and from arena events and the possibility that nearby residential streets could become an overflow parking lot have been the major concerns raised throughout the course of the hearing, mostly by neighbors living on Larchwood Avenue and other area streets.
Despite having heard two nights’ worth of testimony from David Shropshire, the university’s traffic engineer, on the plans for moving arena patrons’ vehicles off the campus and out of town, board member John Aria said he was not ready to vote.
“I want to see a MAC center, but I want to see as little impact on the surrounding area as possible,” Aria said.
Though both Shropshire and Patricia L. Swannack, Monmouth’s vice president for administrative services, had testified earlier that the more than 3,000 parking spots on campus could accommodate a capacity arena crowd, board member James Meola was not completely convinced.
“The parking concerns me,” Meola said. “We could pass this [application] this evening, but what if [parking] is a problem later. What do we do?”
Board member Ellen Anfuso picked up a few residents’ suggestions that if the university’s administration were to change hands someday, any promises made not to hold any other capacity events on the campus concurrent with arena functions might not be honored.
So, too, could any agreement made by the university with the borough regarding the number of events staged at the center per year and the parking and traffic control arrangements associated with such functions, Anfuso said.
“There should be a developer’s agreement,” said Anfuso, who also credited Bonnie Hurd, the board’s engineer, with the idea. “Just in case of a regime change at the university.”
Smith agreed.
“That would protect everyone,” he said. “I endorse everything being spelled out.”
Aside from Christopher and Miller, board member Samuel Guidetti also indicated that he was ready to vote.
Guidetti said that he was “favorable” toward the arena plan.
Resident Joseph Hughes reiterated his plea for the zoners to deny the university’s arena application.
The arena would be constructed in the R-22 zone, a situation making it incompatible with the borough’s master plan, said Hughes, president of the West Long Branch Coalition of Neighbors, a grassroots group of citizens opposed to the university’s building in residential zones.
“The issue is not whether or not you like Monmouth University, the issue is land use,” said Hughes, whose home lies across from where the 126-space parking lot is planned.
“We have a problem with the expansion [of university facilities],” said Hughes, a practicing attorney. “It’s time to build a satellite campus for some of these things.”
Zavaha Sher, whose Pinewood Avenue home will face the arena, urged the board to think “long and hard” about granting the use variances, including one allowing the building’s highest point to be 65 feet, higher than any other structure on campus.
“Does a 5,000-seat arena really fit into the master plan for our town?” Sher asked.
Traffic plans shown previously to divert arena traffic to Norwood or Cedar avenues might not work out, resulting in backups on Larchwood, she went on.
“No one has created this problem for Monmouth University except themselves,” Sher said. “This is not a decision you can take back once it’s made.”

