By linda denicola
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — The Planning Board has approved the final site plan for the Freehold Business Park East on Asbury Avenue, off Route 33 near Kozloski Road.
The application, filed by Shore Office Group II, LLC, proposes eight office/flex buildings (a permitted use in the zone) totaling 144,510 square feet, with an additional 9,000 square feet of office mezzanine.
According to Guy Leighton, the township’s assistant planner, the proposed distribution is 80 percent warehouse and 20 percent office use. Buildings are to range in size from 13,750 to 39,600 square feet with two 3,000-square-foot mezzanines. Access is to be proved by one main driveway off Asbury Avenue.
A second emergency access lane is provided along the westerly property line connecting to Asbury Avenue.
A 30-foot wide buffer is shown along the easterly property line to buffer Turnbury Estates.
Shore Office Group has already received approvals for a single-family subdivision to the east of this lot (Turnbury Estates) and for numerous office/flex buildings off a private cul-de-sac to the west.
The board also approved a second phase in the Battleground Estates at Freehold subdivision.
The original subdivision was approved in 2002 and had a section that was on a dead-end street, Leighton said.
The original proposal for the 71.5-acre tract at Jackson Mills and Georgia roads was for four residential building lots and a new cul-de-sac. The majority of the parcel is hardwood wetlands, Leighton explained.
In a memo to the board, Leighton said a 59-acre piece of the property was to remain a farm, but the applicant now wants to raze the farmhouse, barn and chicken coops, extend the approved cul-de-sac and further subdivide the property into seven additional building lots, with a total of 11 building lots.
The road will have curbs and sidewalks, as well as private wells and an on-site sewage disposal system. The new building lots are to range in size from 1.8 to 4.8 acres.
A public hearing on a proposed 15-lot subdivision called Winding Woods was postponed.
According to Leighton, a number of objectors were in attendance, but because there were a number of loose ends in the reports, the hearing was postponed until the board’s April 3 meeting.
The application by PRC Real Estate Corp. involves a sprawling tract north of the Jackson border and south of the North Branch of the Metedeconk River. The portion nearest Jackson Mills Road is zoned R-40 (1-acre lots) with the balance zoned RE (rural environmental).
Leighton explained that five house lots are proposed in the R-40 zone, one with an existing house, and eight clustered house lots are proposed in the RE zone.