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LAWRENCE: Officials taking stock of vacancies on Brunswick Pike

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
   There is a “for rent” sign in front of the strip office building on Brunswick Pike, a stone’s throw from the Burger King fast-food restaurant in the southern part of Lawrence Township.
   Nearby, there is a “for-sale” sign in front of the building that formerly housed the Mercer Oxygen business. Across the street, the former Craft Cleaners building is nearly unrecognizable as a commercial building.
   That’s the story up and down Brunswick Pike, between Whitehead Road and the Brunswick Circle — empty storefronts, along with a handful of thriving businesses such as the Altenburg Piano House and the CVS drug store.
   But the township’s Route 1 Business District Redevelopment Committee wants to change that situation — and the first step is preparing an inventory of vacant buildings, their size and how long they have been vacant.
   The committee agreed last week to prepare a survey, hoping to get a handle on the situation. Two members of the advisory committee volunteered to design the document.
   Councilman Bob Bostock suggested creating the inventory, noting that “there are a lot of vacancies.” He pointed to provisions in the ordinance that created the Route 1 Business District Redevelopment Committee in 2001 which call for the group to “evaluate current conditions in the district.”
   ”At the end of the day, it would be really useful to have an inventory of the size of the building and whether it is vacant or occupied so we would know exactly what we are dealing with,” Mr. Bostock said. Once that information has been gathered, meetings could be held with residents, he added.
   Municipal Manager Richard Krawczun agreed that the committee needs to create a form for members to use to gather information. Once that information has been compiled, the buildings could be placed on a map to create a “visual” representation, which in turn could help the committee focus its discussions, he said.
   ”I like the idea of surveying the residents for (the neighborhood’s) potential, what they see their neighborhood as becoming,” Mr. Krawczun said.
   Township officials have been trying to spark the economic redevelopment of the one-mile-long stretch of Brunswick Pike between Whitehead Road and the Brunswick Circle for nearly 10 years. That section was designated as the Brunswick Pike South Redevelopment Area by Township Council in 1999.
   Township officials also have been pushing to redesign Brunswick Pike for several years, which they claim is key to redeveloping the neighborhood. The road is a four-lane street, divided by a small concrete median. The township’s 1995 Master Plan envisions Brunswick Pike as a tree-shaded boulevard, two lanes wide.
   The state Department of Transportation, which controls Brunswick Pike — formerly known as Business Route 1 — has given mixed signals about the township’s proposals for a redesign of the roadway. In 2001, it hired a consultant to study the roadway and offer design scenarios.
   The DOT completed the concept design phase of the roadway redesign in 2005 and was in the process of seeking requests for proposals from engineering firms to prepare the final design, but then put it on hold.
   Earlier this year, the DOT added the Brunswick Pike redesign project to its capital program. The design work and right-of-way acquisition phases were expected to cost about $800,000, and construction was expected to cost about $4.1 million.
   But within weeks of placing the project on the draft 2009-2018 Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan, DOT officials withdrew the Brunswick Pike project from the list because of competition for the dollars in the TIP budget, township officials said.