HIGHTSTOWN: Planning Board deems application for use variance of former Minute Maid plant incomplete

By Christina Whittington, Special Writer
   HIGHTSTOWN — The Planning Board held a special meeting June 25 regarding the former Minute Maid plant on Route 33.
   The meeting was devoted to an application for a use variance, preliminary site plan approval and waiver of certain checklist completeness items submitted by owners Mercer Street Warehouse LLC and Bruckner Southern LLC.
   The applicants are seeking a use variance that would allow for additional warehousing while adding manufacturing production at the plant on Route 33, also known as Mercer Street. Currently, this is not allowed because the area is zoned highway commercial, which does not permit these additional uses. To date, some warehousing is operational at the plant.
   ”What makes this application useful is that we are not trying to change the building, the outside, the structure in any way whatsoever. We are showing a site plan, ultimately, because we need site plan approval,” said attorney Ken Meisner, who was at the meeting on behalf of the owners. “The heart of this application is the variance to permit the light warehousing use our clients feel they desperately need.”
   The applicants also requested the Planning Board allow an abbreviated community impact statement, a tool used by planners to consider how a proposed project activity would affect the people, institutions, neighborhoods, communities, traffic, organizations and larger social and economic systems of the area of the proposed project.
   The elements of the CIS in the Hightstown Borough code Section 26-7 consist of the impact on population, school, facilities, services, traffic and financial.
   As there are existing warehousing operations in the building, the applicants felt the CIS elements, with the exception of traffic, were not applicable to the use they were applying for, and they asked for waivers pertaining to those elements.
   ”Typically, what people do is they ask for a waiver of a community impact statement and ask for permission to submit, instead, an abbreviated community impact statement and then they get some direction from the board with some questions included,” said Tamara Lee, borough planner. “The way you did it, the way you submitted it, you asked for all these various waivers, but, basically, you need to explain to the board why this community impact statement can be waived.”
   The Planning Board did allow the applicants an abbreviated CIS, but only granted the waiver for the impact on schools.
   The board unanimously voted that the application was incomplete and denied the waivers for floor plans and title certification of the site.
   According to Planning Board Chairman Steve Misiura, the next step of the application process would be for the applicants to submit the needed information discussed at the meeting, then a hearing could be scheduled on the application itself.
   The East Windsor and Hightstown Route 33 Corridor Revitalization Plan, which impacts the area of the Minute Maid plant, was not mentioned at the special meeting.