ROBBINSVILLE: Sharbell housing plan knocked down; builder says he’ll sue

Updated

By Joanne Degnan, Staff Writer
   ROBBINSVILLE — The Planning Board has denied Sharbell’s controversial plan to convert 150 senior housing units in the Gordon Simpson tract project into all-age housing, citing concerns that the change would cause an influx of schoolchildren and a steep increase in school taxes.
   The board’s 5-1 vote against the conversion triggered a round of applause from the 20 or so residents who sat through the three-hour Planning Board meeting April 20, the fifth and final contentious public hearing on the application.
   Sharbell officials said they would sue to overturn the decision.
   ”We will pursue our legal remedies” in the courts, Tom Troy, Sharbell’s senior vice president, said the next day.
   Sharbell’s application sought to utilize a 2009 state law that permits unbuilt age-restricted housing to be converted into regular housing if 20 percent of units are set aside for low- and moderate-income families and the water, sewer, parking, and recreational amenities are adequate to support the change.
   New Jersey builders lobbied the Legislature for the law, contending there was no market at present for new age-restricted developments because of a glut of unsold units restricted to people 55 and older.
   The law requires planning boards to grant conversion applications that meet the infrastructure and other legal requirements unless the conversion poses a substantial detriment to the public good or substantially impairs the intent of a municipality’s zoning plan.
   Neil Rivers, the only Planning Board member to vote for the conversion, said that while the change proposed by Sharbell was “undesirable,” it did not rise to the level of a “substantial detriment” to the public good.
   The rest of the Planning Board, however, disagreed.
   Planning Board member Daniele Breyta noted that the state education funding formula requires Robbinsville taxpayers to foot the bill for more than 90 percent of the cost of running the public schools. Therefore, the projected 3 percent increase in school enrollment associated with the conversion would have a substantial impact on local property taxes that all residents pay.
   ”The reality is we’ve got a lot of school-age children and this conversion will produce even more,” Ms. Breyta said. “It’s just not responsible to go forward knowing that there’s going to be such a significant fiscal impact to this town.”
   Chairman Frank Cettina noted that a 3 percent increase in students at a time when a new state law prohibits the school district from increasing the tax levy by more than 2 percent “creates an obvious problem.”
   ”Weigh a 3 percent increase in students against a 2 percent cap — how do you deal with that?” Mr. Cettina said. “There’s a point in time when you’ve got to say enough is enough.”
   Robbinsville’s school system is already over capacity and utilizing seven temporary trailers for classrooms at the elementary and middle schools. Voters last year rejected a referendum to build a new K-5 elementary school.
   School board member Sharon DeVito, writing on behalf of the Robbinsville Board of Education, submitted a letter March 23 stating “any additional housing in Robbinsville that is not accompanied by a long-term plan to secure a new school facility will create undue financial hardship on district residents and harm the school district’s ability to properly educate the children already in its care.”
   Ms. DeVito’s letter also noted that the per-pupil cost of educating every Robbinsville student is $11,636 a year — not the $10,133 figure cited by Sharbell in its fiscal impact statement. Sharbell apparently obtained the lower figure from the state’s comparative spending guide, which does not include debt service and transportation costs paid by the school district, Ms. DeVito wrote.
   Residents complained during the April 20 hearing that high taxes were already making it difficult for them to keep their homes. The conversion, if granted, would only exacerbate their financial situation, they said.
   Virginia Hupfl said the taxes on her Gordon Road home were $800 a year when she moved to Robbinsville 35 years ago, and now they are $12,000 a year.
   ”Most of the time I cannot afford to make the needed repairs on the house because I have to keep putting money away to pay the taxes,” Ms. Hupfl said.
   Sharbell’s attorney, Michele Lamar, argued the state law does not allow a planning board to consider a project’s financial impact when weighing if a conversion poses a “substantial detriment” to the public good. Courts have defined this phrase to mean a project’s physical impact on a surrounding community, not its fiscal impact, Ms. Lamar said.
   Planning board members; the board’s attorney, Jerry Dasti; and residents at the hearing disagreed, arguing physical and fiscal impacts were intertwined.
   ”In these economic times, increased taxes will push people out of their homes … and foreclosure is certainly a physical impact from a financial problem,” Malsbury Street resident Aaron Hobart said.
   The 439-acre Gordon-Simpson project, as it was approved in 2006, had a total of 265 residential units and mix of retail and office space. In addition to the 150 senior units at issue, Sharbell’s original 2006 approvals also allow 30 single-family homes and townhomes, 24 market-rate condos, 60 Project Freedom units for people with disabilities and a 70-acre “farmette.” The total school-age population projected in 2006 was 28, but if the conversion of the 150 senior units were granted it would have more than tripled that number.
   Sharbell wants to change the senior townhomes to 120 single-family homes for people of all ages and 30 affordable housing units. Although Sharbell had originally applied to convert the senior duplexes to three- and four-bedroom market-rate homes, it amended the application last month to make all the single-family homes three bedrooms after Planning Board members said the law did not allow converted units to have more bedrooms than the original senior units had. The change reduced the number of projected school-age children from 103 to 90.
   Sharbell said it used demographic data from a Rutgers University study on the number of people who live in homes of different sizes to determine how many children ages 5 to 17 could be expected if the conversion were granted. Numerous residents said they thought the projected student enrollment had been low-balled.
   David Patterson, of Sara Drive, said there was a “hidden population” of children under 5 that are not counted in the demographic projections, even though these preschoolers also would be attending township schools within a few years.
   Ms. Breyta, the Planning Board’s vice chairwoman, noted that since Sharbell received its original approvals in 2006, the commercial component of the Gordon-Simpson tract project had been reduced, creating an imbalance with the residential part of a zone that was supposed to embody smart growth principles.
   ”We have the loss of the supermarket at 5,000 square feet, the loss of the YMCA at 40,000 square feet, and we have heard testimony that the 60,000-square-foot space out on Route 130 may change to smaller single-story configurations due to market conditions,” she said.
   ”What this applicant should be doing is aggressively seeking to increase the retail to get the ratable portion of this project a lot higher than what it’s looking to be,” Ms. Breyta said. Instead, the applicant is seeking to move Project Freedom to “one of the few lots where mixed-use development can occur,” she said.
   The 16 acres near Route 130 and Gordon Road where the supermarket was originally planned is being sold to Keswick Pines for the 248-unit assisted-living facility called The Pines, which is not part of the Sharbell conversion application.
   Sharbell’s application sought a 10-year extension for the project, which Ms. Breyta also said was at odds with the conversion law’s stated purpose of being a short-term response to current real estate market conditions. The law took effect July 2, 2009, and sunsets July 31, 2011, meaning no new senior housing conversion applications can be filed after that date.
   ”The intent of the conversion law, and it says it right in there, is to provide immediate relief,” Ms. Breyta said. “In my opinion, any vesting consideration should be kept to a minimum.”
   Mayor Dave Fried, who was not at the public hearing, issued a statement the day after the vote commending the Planning Board’s decision, but warning Robbinsville residents that the fight was not over.
   ”There are no winners or losers, as I am sure we are headed to court,” the mayor said. “We simply end one chapter and open another.”