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Round one has gone to the residents.
But that does not mean they’ve won the boxing match.
The South Brunswick Planning Board earlier this month denied an application from the Matrix Development Group to build a build a 744,000-square-foot warehouse at the northwest corner of Route 130 and Friendship Road. The board was concerned about the building’s size and the impact the warehouse would have on the intersection, which also connects with the westbound terminus of Route 32 and is a primary access point onto Route 130s for cars and trucks leaving the N.J. Turnpike.
It also rejected a variance request from Matrix that would have allowed the company to place the building’s loading zone along Route 130.
The Aug. 15 decision was met with cheers by residents of the Four Seasons adult community, which is adjacent to the site.
Matrix, however, has signaled that it plans to push ahead with the plan though it has not said how. It blamed what it called the NIMBY, or "not in my back yard," attitude of residents for the decision and said it plans to "vigorously defend our rights to develop this property," which has been zoned industrial for more than 20 years.
Translation: Round two is likely to be fought before a judge in state Superior Court.
And this makes what might seem a purely local issue into something that should be of concern across the state. Should a court side with Matrix, it would effectively negate the ability of local residents to petition their governments or control the manner in which their communities develop.
Yes, residents, through their governments, do have the ability to revise municipal master plans and zoning maps. That’s fine, as far as it goes.
The fact is that the detrimental impact of most development applications even those that meet the letter of local zoning laws cannot be identified until the application is filed. That’s because lines on a larger zoning map rarely indicate the conflicts likely to show up down the road when developments are actually built.
And that’s what happened here.
The Matrix zoning may have been in place for 20 years, well before the township rezoned what was to become Four Seasons for planned adult housing. But Matrix has yet to build, while residents have been living in Four Seasons for about a year.
So while the Matrix application met most of the requirements of the warehouse zone, as company officials pointed out, the project would have been out of character with its immediate neighbors.
You might blame the council and Planning Board for not anticipating this when they approved the adult-community zone. And you would be correct to do so.
Or you might blame the residents for not doing enough research to understand what kind of development might be built on neighboring parcels.
You could even blame Matrix for waiting until housing was built alongside its property to offer a development proposal.
But finger-pointing is fruitless.
The fact is the Four Seasons residents are here and it is to them that the Township Council is responsible as South Brunswick Mayor Frank Gambatese, a member of the Planning Board, pointed out Aug. 15.
"We have a responsibility to listen to the opinions of our residents," Mayor Gambatese said. "We have to look at what is the common good."
The question is whether the courts will view things this way.
Mayor Gambatese, in casting his vote, pointed to a recent appellate court decision that found that planning and zoning boards could take the objections of the community into account when considering an application.
The July decision in the case of Riya Finnegans LLC v. South Brunswick is based on very different circumstances and might not be relevant in the Matrix case. In Riya, the Township Council had rezoned a 12-acre parcel from retail to office after the Planning Board denied a variance for a strip mall at the corner of Finnegans Lane and Route 27. Both the Planning Board and the council took into account strong opposition to the shopping center by residents living near the site.
"In adopting this rezoning ordinance, the Township Council was performing a legislative function," stated the ruling by appeals court judges Mary Catherine Cuff, Michael Winkelstein and Jose Fuentes. "As such, the Township Council was entitled to rely on the view expressed by the Township residents."
My fear is that the courts will side with Matrix and, by extension, builders around the state and protect the company’s right to develop, even if that development comes at the expense of its neighbors.
If the courts do side with Matrix on this, it’s because the state’s land-use law is rather archaic and protects property rights above all other considerations. There is a need to revise the municipal land-use law to grant more power to communities to take into account health, safety and quality-of-life issues at the time of an application even on generally conforming applications and not just at the time that the master plan is being revised and the town’s zoning code is approved.
As I said, the detrimental effects that a development might have on neighboring properties too often are not apparent until well after the zoning is in place.
What good, after all, is a citizen planning board if it’s not allowed to listen to its fellow citizens?
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected] and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.

