By Michelle McGuinness, Special Writer
CRANBURY — The Cranbury Township Planning Board on Nov. 1 approved plans for the Chinmaya Mission to build an ashram on Cranbury Neck Road.
The mission wants to build a 15,482-square-foot Hindu house of worship in the southwest corner of the 6.1-acre plot. The ashram will be H-shaped, and a one-way circular driveway will connect the building to Cranbury Neck Road. The current site plan calls for 157 parking spaces, 58 of which will be banked.
The mission originally gained approval from the township in 2001 for a similar plan that involved renovating the existing barn on the property, then building an addition onto it in two separate phases. That plan was scrapped however, in part due to the existing barn’s capability to be remodeled into a temple.
The board’s approval will allow for the ashram to be built on Cranbury Neck Road subject to several conditions, including requiring the mission to build an infiltration trench for rainwater runoff and to turn off street lights when not in use.
On Nov. 1, the Planning Board heard testimony regarding traffic. Kenneth Fears, a traffic expert hired by the Chinmaya Mission, said the mission won’t negatively affect traffic on Cranbury Neck Road, even during two major Hindu holidays, which fall on different days each year. He estimated that the delay would mean a wait of 10 seconds at the mission’s entrance/exit and that the mission wouldn’t add more than approximately half a vehicle to traffic during those times.
”It’s an extremely conservative analysis. It’s really a worst-case,” he said. “I stacked the deck against my client in just about every way I could.”
According to Chinmaya Secretary Sivaprasad Pandyaram, the site will be used for 10 annual festivals, as well as daily religious services. These include the teaching of children in religious practices, the teaching of scriptures, yoga and language lessons. The ashram will also have a daily pooja, a prayer session.
Mr. Fears said he assumed there would be a maximum of 100 cars during its peak use, all of them leaving within an hour and at a time when traffic is at its highest at Cranbury Neck Road. He said that visitors to the ashram would most likely come and go throughout the day, rather than coming and going at the same time.
He said the study was conducted over two weeks, measuring when the volume was highest and how many vehicles were on the road at certain times throughout the week.
”What I found from that is that there are no capacity issues regardless of how I do the numbers,” Mr. Fears said.
The board also approved the mission’s proposed parking arrangement, and allowed for light poles to be lowered from 16 feet to 12 feet and requested that the Chinmaya Mission make a request to the county to allow them to have no curbing along Cranbury Neck Road, a request the board said it will support.
The board also asked the mission to avoid any landscaping that would screen the ashram from view, saying it should be open and visual.
Kevin White, a farmer who will be the only contiguous landowner to the ashram, asked the board to request that an infiltration ditch be built at the southeastern corner of the property to avoid flooding from water running off the parking lot.