LAWRENCE: Proposed day-care center on Planning Board agenda

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
   A proposal to convert a single-family house at 22 Fackler Road into a day-care center tops the Planning Board’s agenda Monday when it meets at 7 p.m. in the lower level conference room at the Municipal Building.
   The application, submitted by Asim Mufti, was slated to be heard at the Planning Board’s July 16 meeting, but it was postponed to respond to comments from the Planning Board’s planning consultant.
   A day-care center is considered a conditional use in the Environmental Protection-2 residential zone. The proposal meets all of the conditions for a conditional use, except for parking lot landscaping for the 13-space parking lot.
   The minor site plan application calls for moving an outbuilding and attaching it to the main house, and also for opening up the first floor of the house and reconfiguring it into several daycare classrooms. There would offices on the second floor.
   There could be as many as 65 children enrolled in the day-care center, which is located on the corner of Fackler Road and Princeton Pike.
   In other business, the Planning Board is expected to continue its discussion of the possible rezoning of a 37-acre parcel on the corner of Quakerbridge Road and Lawrence Station Road from residential to commercial to accommodate a potential Costco store on a portion of the property.
   The request for the rezoning, which was made at the Planning Board’s July 16 meeting, was made at the request of property owner United States Land Resources L.P. in a June 27 letter to Municipal Manager Richard Krawczun, who doubles as the township’s Community Development Department director.
   Monday night, the Planning Board may review a proposed amendment to the Land Use and Housing Elements of the township’s Master Plan, clearing the way for the proposed rezoning. Several steps must be taken before the township’s Land Use Ordinance, which determines zoning districts, can be modified by Township Council.
   Finally, the Planning Board will review the possibility of adopting form-based codes as an alternative to conventional zoning in the Brunswick Pike Redevelopment Area, which is a one-mile-long stretch of Brunswick Pike between the Brunswick Circle and Whitehead Road.
   Conventional zoning focuses on the type of permitted uses, the number of units per acre, setbacks and the amount of parking. But a form-based code “addresses the relationship between building facades and the public realm (view), the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another and the scale and types of streets and blocks.”
   Form-based codes are regulatory and not advisory. They should not be confused with design guidelines or general policies, according to the Brunswick Pike Redevelopment and Form-based Code Study that will be presented for review Monday night.