By Frank Mustac, Special Writer
A standing-room-only audience came out March 30 to hear plans by the CVS company to build a pharmacy and store at the site of the current Sunoco gas station at the corner of Route 31 and Ingleside Avenue.
Many in the crowd, as well as members of the Hopewell Township Zoning Board, seemed skeptical about the proposal to construct a 14,600-square-foot building with a pharmacy drive-through window and 60 parking spaces.
The CVS Pharmacy company is part of the giant CVS Health corporation, which operates thousands of drug stores throughout the United States.
Zoning board member Marylou Ferrara recused herself from the board for the application because she lives adjacent to the gas station site, which is at 105 Route 31 South.The size of the site is 2.40 acres in total, with 2.25 acres located in Hopewell Township and 0.15 acres in Pennington. The property sits in an R100 residential zone.
One of the representatives for CVS at the zoning board’s special meeting on March 30 was Joe Stanley, a regional real estate manager at First Hartford Corporation.
“There is an opportunity to service the market with a CVS store,” said Mr. Stanley, who along with CVS’s attorney, Henry Kent-Smith from the Fox Rothchild law firm, explained they are asking for several variances to the residential zoning requirements.
Part of the proposal presented by CVS’s agents is for the store to operate seven days a week, 24 hours per day. They also want to install a standard red-yellow-and-green traffic light at the intersection of Route 31 and Ingleside Avenue, where there is currently a flashing yellow signal.
In addition, they are asking to build an underground storm water management system beneath part of the parking lot, reconfigure the landscaping on the site and install more commercial signage than Hopewell Township allows without obtaining a variance.
Several members of the public in attendance asked questions of Mr. Stanley and Douglas Grysco, a professional engineer with Dynamic Engineering hired by CVS.
Perhaps that the most-pointed queries and comments came from the zoning board members, sometimes chiding the CVS representatives for presenting a proposal that essentially does not meet several basic requirements of Hopewell Township’s zoning rules.
Zoning Board Chairman William Connolly sounded displeased when he described the proposal as far from one that is customized to account for the limitations of the location and unusual triangular-type shape of the property.
Letters sent by Hopewell Township’s engineer and professional planner to CVS representatives, Mr. Connolly said, provide setback measurements for how far away a commercial building is required to be from adjacent residential properties.
“Your plan as regards to setbacks does not meet those commercial requirements,” Mr. Connolly said.
Lawyer Kent-Smith, responded, saying, “We certainly understand in terms of the board’s concerns, and part of this process is that we’re going to go back to the drawing board and take into consideration what we are hearing tonight. I just want to reassure the board of that.”
Zoning board meeting went on for about four hours. Two board members wanted to continue CVS’s application at a special meeting later in April. However, the CVS attorney insisted on a continuation at the zoning board’s first scheduled meeting in June, which the board granted.
