HILLSBOROUGH: Sireci: COAH made us do it

Planning Board chair says mixed-use project OK was necessary

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   Hillsborough Township planners unanimously approved a plan Thursday night for 469 apartments, an extended-stay hotel and some retail stores for a 50-acre tract off Route 206 near Valley Road.
   To people who complained the project took down too many trees, didn’t tie into a “community feel” and added to highway traffic problems, Chairman Steve Sireci had one answer: Blame state affordable housing rules.
   He made it clear the Green Village project — long negotiated — was necessary as part of a larger agreement to help the township meet its regional affordable housing obligation. He said the project would help clear legal approvals that will avoid future challenges to the township’s zoning.
   The complex will have 352 market-rate and 117 low- and moderate-rate income apartments, a 130-room extended stay hotel with some conference space and 20,000 square feet of retail space.
   The plan will have its major access just north of Partridge Lane. Traffic leaving the site at the main boulevard will only be allowed right turns — a major concession by the developer to speed approval — unless approval for a traffic signal is granted by the state transportation department. A second access just south of the Valley Road intersection will allow only right turns in and out.
   A variety of environmental and “sustainability” concerns were raised from the audience. The developer, Anatol Hiller, agreed to extend sidewalks to Route 206 to accommodate walkers, bicyclists and mass transit users. He also agreed to use more brick veneer and other features to make the affordable apartment buildings look more like the market-rate ones.
   Questioners asked if it were possible to eliminate some courtyards or common areas, build “up” and put parking under the buildings in an order to eliminate some impervious surfaces and save more trees. They were told lower buildings along the border of the property had been a negotiated concession to neighbors and little unpaved land could be gained as long as the number of parking spaces remained the same.
   The engineer answered critics who feared more runoff would worsen river flooding by saying state rules force the developer to build to reduce the amount of runoff from the property in its present state. Three detention ponds to slow runoff will be constructed.
   In the end, though, the board made it clear the complex was necessary for the township to solve its long-standing legal challenges going back more than a decade.
   Dr. Sireci said the board’s “biggest responsibility” was to achieve “substantive certification” with the state affordable housing program and the courts “because if we don’t, what will come is lawsuits that will be far worse than this (project).”
   He said there were developers waiting for the township to fail to fulfill its obligations.
   ”What’s at stake here is more than a few trees in a secondary-growth woodland,” he said.
   Mr. Hiller was one of the developers who worked cooperatively to draft an affordable housing plan that worked to the township’s advantage, Dr. Sireci said. Such cooperation and “innovative and aggressive” work by the township worked to reduce the total number of affordable units the township must allow, he said.
   ”We just can’t face the prospect of not having certification,” he said. “It’s just not an option . . . the impact will be devastating if we don’t get certification.”
   Without the Green Village plan, the township would have to allow building 500 units of affordable housing, he said. If affordable units comprised 20 percent of any overall project, that could mean 2,500 units of housing in the township, he said.
   The board waived tree-cutting regulations for the site, and about 1,500 trees — almost 75 percent on the site — will be cut down, and 846 planted as replacements. Eighty percent of them are in the 6- to 12-inch diameter size range, the developer’s engineer has said. In addition, the developer will pay $46,150 to a fund to plant trees in other public places in the township.
   Mr. Hiller said afterward it will take a year or more to gain approvals from other regional and state agencies.