LAWRENCE: Day-care center hearing continued to Feb. 15

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
   The fate of a day-care center, proposed for the former headquarters of the New Jersey Conference of Seventh Day Adventists at 2160 Brunswick Pike, might be decided at the Zoning Board of Adjustment’s Feb. 15 meeting.
   The zoning board, which began its public hearing on Agape International Children’s Academy’s conditional use variance request at its Jan. 25 meeting, ran out of time to complete the application and continued it to its Feb. 15 meeting.
   A conditional use variance is needed because it does not meet all of the criteria — minimum lot size, building setback, street access and parking lot screening and setback — to locate a day-care center in a residential area. The property is zoned R-4 (residential).
   Last week, Lola Atunrase, who owns Agape International Children’s Academy, told the zoning board her intention is to serve the community and to lay a good foundation for the children in her care.
   ”It is not a glorified day-care center,” Ms. Atunrase said.
   Agape International Children’s Academy operates two facilities. One of the centers is in Morrisville, Pa., and another one was in a leased building on Princeton Avenue in Lawrence — until a bank foreclosed on the Lawrence property. She was not the owner of the Princeton Avenue property.
   After the bank foreclosed on the Princeton Avenue property, the day-care center was evicted and moved to Ewing Township, Ms. Atunrase said. She considers that to be temporary and wants to move back to Lawrence.
   Ms. Atunrase said she opened the Morrisville center, which is also located in a residential neighborhood, in 2005. The facility is open 24 hours a day — Monday through Saturday — to accommodate parents whose jobs require them to work on shifts, she said.
   The Lawrence facility, however, will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. Although she has state approval to enroll up to 134 children, she said she plans to open with 62 children. The maximum enrollment would be 98 children.
   The center accepts children from infants through 6 years old, Ms. Atunrase said. The facility can handle up to 20 infants. She expects to begin with 8 staff members and eventually employ as many as 15.
   Agape International Children’s Academy owns a custom-made bus that it uses to pick up the children at their homes and then to take them home at the end of the day, Ms. Atunrase said. The bus also transports infants, she said, adding that two aides ride on the bus. About 85 percent of the children are picked up in the morning and taken home in the afternoon by the bus.
   Architect Joseph Saphire outlined the plans for the proposed day-care facility, including the redesign of the parking lot. The parking spaces would be relocated from the east side of the parking lot — adjacent to the houses — to the west side, next to the building.
   An 8-foot-tall fence, as well as “renewed” landscaping, would be installed to provide privacy for the houses adjacent to the 17-space parking lot, whose entrance/exit is on Bunker Hill Road, the architect said.
   Some “fairly minor interior renovations” are planned, Mr. Saphire said. The building would be renovated to provide eight classrooms — four on the lower level and four on the upper level — plus an area for infants, Mr. Saphire said. There would be an open, gym-like space, for winter play activities.
   ”The building is very well-suited for this use,” Mr. Saphire said. It could be “re-used” as an office building, but the zoning ordinance would require 42 to 48 parking spaces plus “very tall” light fixtures, he said. A detention basin would be required, as well.