Nearly 100 people attended a Planning Board public hearing on the project, which would be located near Exit 7A of the New Jersey Turnpike.
By: Scott Morgan
WASHINGTON Area residents Tuesday night continued their criticism of a Matrix Development Group proposal to construct warehouses along the township’s border with Upper Freehold.
Though representatives from Matrix set out to assuage public concerns by addressing the handling of sensitive environmental, aesthetic and traffic issues, members of the public who voiced their opinions remained largely unsatisfied by plans for the warehouse site. All of the residents who spoke against the project Tuesday night were from Allentown/Upper Freehold. No one from Washington addressed the Planning Board.
Nearly 100 people attended a Planning Board public hearing on the project, which would be located near Exit 7A of the New Jersey Turnpike. Because of the size of the crowd, the meeting was held at the Pond Road Middle School.
The Planning Board has been weighing whether to grant approval for a proposed 5.5 million square feet of warehouse space in the area near Old York Road, Gordon Road, the Turnpike and Route 524. The Matrix proposal seeks to accommodate seven warehouses on 434 acres of land.
Project Coordinator John Takina outlined an amendment to the original plan, which entails a cross-parcel move of approximately 28 acres worth of warehouse space from the northeast corner of the Matrix site to the south center. Mr. Takina also gave a basic project overview, outlining the group’s designs to build large natural buffers that would increase the amount of forested area at the site, which currently is comprised mostly of farm land, he said.
But the specifics most audience members seemed anxious to hear came from the project’s traffic engineer, Carl Penke. Mr. Penke said the area has been under study to assess potential traffic impact for the roads that would serve as the site’s main arteries Old York Road and West Manor Way, as well as county routes 524 and 539 since 1999. He said the study was re-evaluated July 31 of this year.
Mr. Penke outlined the group’s plans to widen Old York Road and place a traffic light and traffic calming landscape to ease potential traffic backups and provide greater safety. The site driveway, which has been moved south along Old York Road due to public concern, is now expected to see a split-lane exit that would be discouraging to large trucks seeking to make left turns onto Old York Road. This would encourage traffic to head south to Interstate 195.
The traffic light, he said, would be placed as development in the site grows. Monitoring for the light would begin when development reaches the 2 million-square-foot barrier, while the light would be installed when construction reaches 4 million square feet. Also, the widening of Old York Road would consist of a 375-foot left-turn lane and a 200-foot right-turn lane.
Traffic impact is expected to reach an upper shelf of about 900 vehicles at peak morning and evening drive times, Mr. Penke said. He added that Gordon Road, based on the ongoing traffic study, likely would remain narrow to discourage large vehicles from rumbling through the mainly rural/residential area.
Despite the information, some members of the public remained unswayed. Upper Freehold Planner Richard Coppola acknowledged that Matrix has taken public concerns into action, mainly by moving the main entrance farther from residential areas, but had concerns that the group’s plan to buffer a stretch of Old York Road might fall short. Mr. Coppola said the minimum buffer distance from the road needs to be 80 feet, which, according to the Matrix outline, it is. However, he added, the turning place for trucks encroaches on this distance.
Mr. Coppola’s main contention, though, centered on the group’s plan to install the traffic light only after traffic gets heavy. Saying that such good intentions get lost over time the Matrix complex would take approximately 10 to 12 years to complete Mr. Coppola wondered why the group wouldn’t just put in a light now and save the surveys for later. A final point of contention was what Mr. Coppola said doesn’t make mathematical sense. If 90 percent of the complex would be used for warehouse/storage space, he asked, how could only 11 percent of the traffic be tractor-trailer traffic?
"It just doesn’t jibe," he said.
Other members of the public had different concerns. One man from Somerset Court in Upper Freehold chided Washington Mayor Dave Fried in advance for accidents he said he "prays to God" do not happen involving kids in the street and commercial vehicles passing through carelessly.
Resident Dale Tantillo suggested Matrix find a way to keep the majority of its truck traffic on the Turnpike "where it already is." Bob Korn, a Denise Drive resident, asked whether the site warrants, or will end up generating, its own highway exit, such as what Matrix already has done with Turnpike Exit 8A near Cranbury.
Matrix has had a commercial park in Cranbury for a number of years.
Upper Freehold’s Steve Alexander questioned how Matrix’s estimates have changed since the previous Planning Board meeting. Originally, Mr. Alexander said, the Matrix proposal entailed six buildings with about 750 employees. Now there are seven buildings planned and a total of 1,700-plus employees expected by Matrix. He asked if the facts given Tuesday reflect new or old data. Mr. Alexander also said that building an industrial park would effectively kill the rural area and make it a commercial one.
In the end, public sentiment, at least from the Allentown/Upper Freehold opponents of the Matrix development, came down to what Somerset Court resident Joseph Whelan asked of the Planning Board: "Please consider our quality of life."
Public input will continue at a later date, unavailable at press time.