Residents of Mansfield Township voice opposition to Planning Board’s amendment to the town’s cluster ordinance.
By: Eve Collins
MANSFIELD Residents attending the Mansfield Township Planning Board meeting last week for a public hearing on a development application, stalled a vote on the 42-house plan as well as discussion of a controversial amendment to the town’s cluster ordinance.
Planning Board Chairman Joseph Lawrence said the board will continue talks on the application and cluster ordinance on Dec. 15.
"The public hearing on it (the application) was rather long," Mr. Lawrence said in a telephone interview Monday. "There were a lot of people there and everyone wanted to talk."
The application for the 42-house development on 126 acres off Mansfield Road East was made by Tindall Homes of Princeton. The proposed development would be called The Legends at Mansfield and include 4,300- to 6,000-square-foot houses costing approximately $600,000.
The controversy stems from a proposed amendment to the township’s cluster ordinance, something officials have been working on for two years, Mr. Lawrence said.
The law, originally designed to preserve open space in environmentally sensitive areas, permits developers, under certain conditions, to "cluster" more houses on smaller parcels than zoning laws normally allow.
Under the municipality’s zoning laws, a developer can build only one house for every 3 acres. The township cluster ordinance allows developers to build houses on 1-acre lots to preserve lands with special environmental conditions, including wetlands.
The amendment would exclude wetlands from being factored into calculations determining how many acres a developer needs to preserve to win cluster zoning approval.
According to Mark Bergman, a representative of Tindall who was at the meeting, if the amendment to the cluster ordinance is approved, the density of the proposed development would go from 42 houses down to around 30.
Mr. Bergman said despite what local officials think, The Legends at Mansfield would not have a big impact on municipal services. "There would not be a negative impact on schools and other services," he said, based on studies his company did on the proposed development.
Mr. Bergman said more than half of the acreage would be kept as open space, some to possibly be used for passive recreation. "We’re not doing anything differently than any other developers," Mr. Bergman said of the company’s application. "We’re not doing anything outside the ordinance."