concerned with plan for
BJ
Residents: Parking lot may
take away our paradise
Marlboro homeowners
concerned with plan for
BJ’s at routes 9 & 520
By larry ramer
Staff Writer
MARLBORO — A group of residents are being faced with the prospect of living nearly right on top of the parking lot of a large department store and they are very upset about the situation.
RJB Marlboro New Jersey LLC has brought an application before the Planning Board to build a 115,000-square-foot BJ’s Wholesale Warehouse Club — a discount retail outlet at the southwest corner of Route 520 and Route 9. The applicant is also seeking approval to build a small restaurant and a parking lot with 651 spaces.
If the applicant’s current site plan is approved, the proposed parking lot will be just 10 feet from the property lines of some residents who live in Marlboro Crossing, a small housing development off Route 520. Several of the approximately 100 concerned Marlboro Crossing homeowners who attended an Aug. 18 Planning Board meeting discussed their misgivings about the proposed shopping center.
The homeowners in Marlboro Crossing will be negatively impacted by the proposed shopping center, according to Marlboro Crossing resident Charles Milo.
"This [shopping center] would clearly affect our quality of life. We’ll have to cope with everything from noise to removal of a lot of trees," Milo said. The buffer will cause the shopping center to "infringe on our homes and development," he added.
"We came from Brooklyn to Marlboro to have a normal lifestyle, not to live in another Brooklyn," said Yan Feldman.
According to Feldman, the municipal ordinance mandating the 200-foot buffer was created to protect residents from commercial development. The township has an obligation to uphold the ordinance, he maintained.
If the shopping center is constructed as planned, Feldman added, it will bring garbage, vermin, pollution, noise and many cars to the development’s doorstep.
The large parking lot will also create a dangerous situation for commuters who walk to bus stops, Feldman said. Other pedestrians, including children, will also be negatively impacted, he added. Finally, the Route 9 and Route 520 intersection cannot support the tractor-trailers that will come to the site if a BJ’s Warehouse is built there, he stated.
Feldman said he is not opposed to commercial development on Route 9, but he said large businesses should only be built in areas that are far away from houses. Other residents of Marlboro Crossing made the same point in their comments to the board.
"I’m sure no one on stage [members of the Planning Board and the Planning Board attorney] would live in a house with a BJ’s in their back yard," Feldman said.
During the meeting, the board members heard legal opinions on the proposed site from the applicant’s attorney, Kenneth Pape, and Dennis Collins, the board’s attorney.
Pape pointed out that most of the property in question is zoned C3 (commercial development), with a small adjacent area zoned for homes. Township ordinances dictate that when a property has been split into two zones, the larger portion dictates the overall purpose of the property, Pape said.
Pape also said the Planning Board had passed a resolution in 1991 allowing a 124,000-square-foot retail center, including a 60,000-square-foot grocery store and a 3,000-square-foot auto repair shop on the site. That resolution permitted a 10-foot buffer between the shopping center and the adjacent residential zone, the lawyer explained. The approvals granted by the board in 1991 remain valid until the board adopts a new resolution for the property, Pape said.
Collins agreed that the approvals which the applicant received in 1991 remain valid, but he said there was an additional important aspect of the application that the board must consider. The board must decide, he said, whether the proposal currently being presented by the applicant is a new or amended site plan. If the current application is found to be an amended site plan, then all of the variances that were previously granted must be honored, unless they exacerbate a negative aspect of the plan.
For example, if the BJ’s application is found to be an amended site plan, the board would have to grant the applicant a variance for a buffer of 10 feet between the commercial and residential zones, but it could reject a proposal for an 8-foot buffer, Collins said.
On the other hand, if the board decides there is a substantial difference between the current application and the old site plan, i.e. that a new site plan is being presented, the applicant must prove anew that the variances it is seeking are appropriate, Collins explained.
The presence of the Marlboro Crossing housing development, which had not been built when the original commercial application was approved in 1991, will be a factor in the board’s determination, Collins added. Before making a decision in this matter, the board must hear all of the evidence in the case, he stated.
Republican mayoral candidate Robert Kleinberg came to the hearing and said he was opposed to the plan presented by the applicant.
"(This project) just doesn’t fit, based on many factors. The law is the law and I would defer that to the legal experts; however, from a common sense perspective, when this [plan] was approved 12 years ago there weren’t 53 homes that are going to be directly impacted by a much larger type of project. I trust the Planning Board will follow existing zoning ordinances and not give multiple variances at the expense of homeowners," he said.