BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer
Upper Freehold UPPER FREEHOLD – Controversy has surrounded plans for property along Breza Road for years.
Several years ago, then-Township Committeeman John Mele had an idea for a 254-acre parcel on Breza Road. His plan was for a mixed-use community near the township’s border with Allentown and Washington Township. The proposal called for 375 residential units and commercial space, but would have preserved more than 100 acres of the property as open space, according to Mele.
Under the transfer of development rights (TDR), 92 acres adjacent to the school would have been dedicated as township recreational space and room for an additional school. Today, the Winchester Estates development sprouts up on that acreage.
In addition, Mele said the project would have relocated the easement for the controversial westerly bypass. He also said the housing mix would have helped reduce the township’s Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) obligation.
“I do not want to think of the number of units that the township will need to provide based on the number of projects approved over the last two years,” Mele said.
Mele’s plan was met with little support and a great deal of opposition. With regard to what is going on today in Upper Freehold, Mele said he still believes his proposal would have been a win-win situation for the taxpayers and the township overall.
“I wish that the time was taken by the Planning Board and Township Committee to truly look at what would have been saved, accomplished and provided for at no cost to the township,” Mele said.
“Just think,” he continued, “the school would have had a campus and could have started construction a year ago and spent no money for the land to build the school.”
Parts of the site on Ellisdale Road that the Upper Freehold Regional School District chose for the location of its new middle school are contaminated with high levels of arsenic and dieldrin. The land is also situated in what the state considers a Planning Area 4, which does not allow for the creation of public water/sewer.
While the Upper Freehold Regional School District wants to go ahead with a state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)-approved cleanup plan to remediate the contamination by capping it under soil and the new school’s parking lot, some residents and Upper Freehold Township officials have spoken out against this plan. Whereas some of those in opposition would like to see all the contamination removed from the property before the school is built, others want the site of the school changed altogether.
Because the school will need water and sewer service, the school district was counting on the borough of Allentown to extend its village designation to the school site, which would allow that site to have public water/sewer service. However, Allentown officials have now said that they will not grant the designation.
In reviewing what has occurred with the new middle school in the past three years, Mele said it has become a pawn in the political swings of both the township and the borough. He said this has cost the school thousands of dollars in delays, alternate concepts and additional construction costs.
Mele called the situation “outrageous.”
“At one end, you have a town that continues to grow,” Mele said. “Then you have some of the same officials doing everything they can to put roadblocks in the way of building the school.
“Please wake me up,” he added, “because I must be in the Twilight Zone.”
According to Mele, the 2003 plan would have eliminated the entire cost and other issues that the township, the borough and all the taxpayers are now in the middle of dealing with because of short-term thinking.
Mele said the additional recreational land the township would have received as a result of his proposal would have come at no cost to the township. He said the land could have been improved with the $3 million the township recently spent on its purchase of additional recreational land.
“Three million dollars would have covered the cost to make the improvements,” he said, “and this land would have added to our present relationship for shared services with the school.”
Mele recalled some of the comments made about his proposal. He said one critic said it would add 1,000 children to the school system.
“In the last two years, we have added much more than that with the approvals that have been given by the Planning Board,” he said.
Township Committeeman Stephen Alexander did not support Mele’s plan back in 2003, due to the number of housing units proposed.
But when asked to look back on the proposal, Alexander said, “In retrospect, John’s idea should have been given a better look, especially since many of the Planning Board members that are contemplating multiple massive town centers/villages – some as many as five times bigger than John’s idea – opposed his idea as well.”
Three years later, the Breza Road property is generating even more controversy. The Rockefeller Group, of New York City, is currently before the township’s Planning Board with a proposal to build three warehouses there. The proposal is the subject of opposition among many residents in the township and neighboring towns.
The plan includes creating 1.8 million square feet of warehouse and office space on the site. The Rockefeller Group plans to donate 19.2 acres to the township for COAH housing. The proposal requires variances for the size of the parking lot and landscape buffering.
The Rockefeller Group’s project came on the heels of developer Robert Heidel’s proposal for the land, which was also met with controversy.
In 2003, Heidel, of Van Cleef Engineering in Doylestown, Pa., had talked about four sorts of conceptual plans for the land. The first plan consisted of 102 houses; the second, a golf course and some single-family homes; the third, which did not comply with township’s zoning ordinances, was age-restricted housing; and the fourth plan was a commerce park that would be 85-90 percent warehouse space and 10-15 percent office space.
In 2003, Heidel warned that the warehouse plan would not require any variances and said, “Sometimes you get what you ask for,” referring to the crowd of people so vociferously opposed to the mixed-use plan.
While some residents have not changed their opinions on the development of the Breza Road site, others have.
At the 2003 hearing, Wayne Smith, of Allentown, presented census data to the board and said Heidel’s proposed housing project would increase Allentown’s housing units by 52.9 percent. Smith also said that if residents had the norm of two vehicles per household, the project would add 750 more vehicles to local roads. Today, Smith is a vocal opponent of the warehouse project.
In 2003, then-Mayor William Miscoski, who now serves as deputy mayor, said, “If [the Breza Road site] were anything other than a commercial/industrial site, it would be a sin.”
Miscoski is now a little ambiguous about his support for the warehouses. Although he has spoken in favor of them, more recently he said that members of the governing body should not comment because a final decision regarding the Rockefeller Group project could end up being made by the Township Committee.
Jack Menchin, who used to live on Potts Road, asked the Rockefeller Group in May 2004 why it planned to put its largest warehouse close to the seven homes on Potts Road. Menchin subsequently sold his house to Keith Becker, who is currently the spokesman for Communities United (CU), a grassroots group that is opposed to the construction of the warehouses.
In September 2004, the Planning Board approved a general development plan. At the time, resident Gerald Nathanson agreed with the decision.
“When you have [access to] an interstate highway system and the New Jersey Turnpike, it should be used for a clean ratable,” Nathanson had said. “If warehouses are not a clean ratable, I don’t know what is.”
However, two years later, he now opposes the warehouse project. He said that the town cannot build its way out of high taxes.
“I did not realize the extent to which trucks and workers would crowd our roads, or the extent to which pollution of all kinds as light, noise and toxic chemicals would corrupt our bucolic environment,” Nathanson said.
“In addition,” he continued, “the demand on township resources – police, fire and emergency response – would stretch them beyond the breaking point.
“I now know that warehouses are not the clean and benign ratable I thought them to be,” Nathanson said.