By David Kilby, Staff Writer
CRANBURY — The planners of the proposed hotel and day care center between South River Road and Dey Road were sent back to the drawing board at the Planning Board meeting last Thursday.
The board didn’t accept the site plan, which is on the site known as South River Park, because the board believed the plan for the day care center didn’t provide enough parking spaces.
In March 1998, the Planning Board granted site approval for South River Park to Trammel Crow, a major logistics company, provided 70 percent of the site be used for warehouse space and 30 percent of it for something other than warehouses.
Originally zoned for research offices and light industrial, there was no office development on the site. Richard Goldman, attorney for Comsleep Properties —- the applicants for the current site plan — said there was never a market for office development at the site, even during the boom of the late 1990s and especially not during the recession of the last few years.
Since offices were never built, approximately 14.5 acres remained open for nonwarehouse development.
In 2006, the board approved a four-story, 212,000-square-foot office building and a 76-room, 45,450-square-foot Comfort Inn hotel at the location proposed by Comsleep Properties, neither of which were built.
Comsleep Properties changed the site plan due to a market decrease for office space.
The new site plan consists of a Hampton Inn hotel and a Montessori day care center. If the site plan is approved, the Hampton Inn would be 68 rooms and 43,086 square feet for Phase 1 with an additional 14,496 square feet and 32 rooms under Phase II.
The day care center would be 15,438 square feet under Phase I and 4,010 square feet under Phase II. The hotel is designed to have 97 parking spaces, and the day care center is designed to have 26.
An additional 46 “banked” parking spaces have been provided in the plan off the hotel’s westerly and southerly driveways, according to the description of the property and proposed development report provided by Richard Preiss, township planner.
The hotel would include a breakfast area, indoor pool and fitness center and a meeting room, reads the report.
The day care center would provide classrooms, administrative offices, a conference room, an indoor and large fenced-in outdoor play area, all to be built in Phase I, and a 4,010-square-foot multipurpose room to be built in Phase II, reads the report.
A 5-foot-high meandering line of 396 deciduous shrubs will screen the hotel and day care center from the road and tie into the woodland area that will be between the hotel and Dey Road, said Ed Caballero, project engineer.
Planning Board Chairman Allan Kehrt said he found it a bit troublesome the driveway to the day care center was also a driveway for customers of the hotel even though there will be signage saying the driveway is the entrance to the school.
Mr. Preiss had similar concerns.
”How is this going to work alongside a hotel?” he said.
”Day care drop-off and pickup is two to three hours, not the same as with schools where everyone is coming at once,” Mr. Goldman said.
Hillary Drinkell, who works for the Montessori Foundation, said, “it’s a different program” than other day care programs.
She said the program is very centered upon child development, and all educators at the day care center will be Montessori-trained.
”You’ll see materials appropriate for each age group, open areas on the floor so they can roll, tiny chairs and shelves,” she said.
Because of this setup and because of the various group activities in the program, Montessori requires larger classrooms than other day care centers, she said.
Members of the board were mainly concerned about the number of teachers that would be needed for the school since the Montessori program requires more than one teacher per class.
Comsleep Properties has volunteered to limit the occupancy to 200 students although a capacity of 236 students for the 15,438-square-foot school is required by state law.
Comsleep Properties also will limit the number of staff to 26.
Board members also were concerned that if Montessori doesn’t stay at the facility, another day care company with less strict standards may move in.
”What if someone comes in with just monetary purposes and tries to jam as many people as they can in there?” said Art Hasselbach, board member. “We should put something in place to protect ourselves from that.”
”You don’t have enough spaces to have the school operate the way it’s planned to operate,” Mr. Preiss said after noticing a maximum of 33 spaces would be available for both faculty and parents dropping off and picking up their children.
Four spaces would be reserved for 15-minute parking, but the board members believed this still wasn’t enough.
”A lot of these days, it’s going to be raining, and it’s going to take longer,” Mr. Kehrt said. “I think you have a real site problem here.”
”It’s very much a staggered scenario,” Ms. Drinkoll said, adding it is very unlikely parents will be arriving at the same time.
”I don’t see the conflict of these two uses as being a dramatic conflict,” Mr. Goldman said.
He added the day care center will be open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and most of its activity will be during the daytime whereas most of the activity for the hotel will be at night.
But board members emphasized parents dropping off their children in the morning may be arriving at the same time as people who are leaving the hotel in the morning.
Mr. Kehrt closed the meeting at 11 p.m. and said the board will continue with the application at its next meeting May 19. The board did not hear testimony from Hampton Inn representatives.

