FREEHOLD – The Monmouth County Vocational High School on Robertsville Road will undergo an expansion.
M
embers of the Freehold Borough
Planning Board recently heard a presentation of a plan to build a 3,200- square-foot extension onto the existing school.
The board was apprised of the planned addition and listened to a capital review of the project as a courtesy, according to municipal law. The board was not being asked to grant approval for the work.
Attorney Sandford Brown provided an overview of the plan. Brown’s firm serves as general counsel to the Monmouth County Vocational School District, which operates the school.
Also present for testimony were Tim McCorkell, the assistant superintendent of the Monmouth County Vocational School District, and Daniel J. Balto, of Focus Architecture LLC, Pennington.
McCorkell said the school, which was built in 1971, provides a vocational education program for high school students and for adult students in the building on Robertsville Road. The vocational school is directly across the street from Freehold High School.
McCorkell said the school has been a good neighbor to residents in the area. He said it is time to make some major renovations, not to increase the capacity for more students, but to upgrade the building.
The planned improvements include a new classroom and an upgraded teachers lounge. Plans call for the renovation of 6,200 square feet in the existing building and will include upgrades to bring the school into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, a new storage room, new fire alarms and other improvements to bring the school to current standards.
According to Balto, the existing building is 11,400 square feet. He said the 3,200-square-foot addition will be made at the front of the school.
New sidewalks along Robertsville Road are proposed.
Planning Board engineer William Wentzien said he wanted board members to be aware of the fact that the 11,400-square-foot building will become 14,600 square feet in total with the proposed addition. He said the property is in an R-10 zone at the corner of Robertsville Road and Oak Street, where the maximum percentage of land coverage allowed is 20 percent. The new school building design will bring it slightly over that figure to a total of 20.5 percent land coverage.
The time frame for the addition and renovations is 12 to 14 months, according to Balto.
The work will be done during the school year and in the summer, and will not disrupt classes, according to McCorkell.
In other business, the Planning Board has listed several upcoming applications.
An application from MetroPCS New York LLC, to be heard on June 11, proposes the construction of six additional antennas on the roof of a building at 10 W. Main St. The applicant is seeking a conditional use permit and preliminary and final site plan approval.
The plan proposes to have two of the antennas flush-mounted at a centerline height of 46 feet. The other four antennas will be hidden from view in two stealth chimneys with brick pattern panels matching the existing facade.
Associated radio and battery equipment will also be on the roof and will be screened from view behind 7-foot high panels that will be designed to match the building’s facade. Since the building is already the site of wireless communication antennas, the applicant believes there will be little visual impact on the surrounding area.
An application for a house in the B-1 zone seeking to put in an office will be heard on June 25. The applicant, owner Howard S. Teitelbaum, is seeking preliminary and final site plan approval to convert the existing dwelling to an office through interior renovations and the construction of a six-space parking area.
An application that proposes an addition to the Woodhull House on West Main Street will be on the board’s agenda in the coming months.
The principal owners of 46 Broad Associates, Carl P. Gross and Henry Bloom, want to put an addition on the Woodhull House which currently functions as an office building and knock down an older home behind it in order to make an entrance into the building from Broad Street. The entrance to the Woodhull House is now on West Main Street.
Borough Councilman Marc Le Vine who is the council’s liaison to the Freehold Borough Historic Commission, said the goal of the town is to preserve and protect the historic character of the borough’s properties.
“But we also recognize the business and realistic aspects as to what needs to be done,” Le Vine said. “The goal of the commission is to make sure that those things are done with the best attention to preserving the character of those properties to the best of everyone’s ability.”
Le Vine said it is all about balance. He said whatever theWoodhull House project entails, the final result should still give people a “strong idea of what that building is all about.”
Dave Loring, who chairs the Freehold Borough Historic Commission, said the Woodhull House project was discussed at a meeting several weeks ago.
“We requested that the applicants elaborate on what they want to do and why they want to do it,” Loring said. “We need a more detailed application, one that lists details about the addition they want to build and about the structure they want to demolish.”
Loring said the goal of the commission is to “prevent the random demolition of the town’s older resources.”