By JACQUELINE DURETT
Correspondent
SAYREVILLE — Whether the borough will continue to own a parcel of land alongside the National Lead site or whether it will be sold to National Lead is yet to be determined.
After discussion at the Nov. 14 Borough Council meeting, Business Administrator Dan Frankel said the borough’s Open Space Committee wants to keep the property as open space, but National Lead wants to purchase it for development.
“It’s a sliver of a piece of property,” Frankel told the council, explaining the site’s dimensions are about 50 feet by 900 feet off Kennedy Avenue.
The site is what Mayor Kennedy O’Brien called a “doughnut hole” in the National Lead site. He strongly advocated for selling the property, adding that it is needed by National Lead for the residential component of its mixed-use development project, The Pointe.
O’Brien said he is concerned that retaining the property would compromise the quality of the development and could potentially impact the number of overall residential units, ultimately also affecting the number of affordable housing units that would be ultimately built on the site. He said selling the property to National Lead is “the appropriate thing to do” and if the borough did not, it would be the residents of the project who would pay the price.
O’Brien added that the borough is court-mandated on what it needs to provide for affordable housing, and he is concerned that not selling this parcel may put the borough’s plan to meet that obligation in jeopardy.
Councilman Steve Grillo said he felt National Lead should have the entire property to complete its development.
However, Council President Dan Buchanan and Councilwoman Victoria Kilpatrick said that the residents of the Melrose section of the borough do not want to see the property sold.
“Our residents right now do not want even that small sliver developed,” Kilpatrick said. “That’s one of the things that we heard constantly, is ‘please stop overdeveloping and bringing in more developments within our town,’” she said.
Councilwoman Mary Novak said her understanding is that if the borough does not sell the property, there is an additional acre that National Lead already owns that it would not be able to completely develop either. She said the result would be a two-acre buffer between the development and the rest of the Melrose section.
Buchanan and Kilpatrick recommended the borough proceed with existing plans to have the Open Space Committee meet with National Lead representatives next month, although Frankel said he was not certain National Lead representatives are interested in meeting with that committee and may not attend the meeting.
Grillo said he was comfortable with waiting for that meeting to take place, but a decision should be made soon thereafter, he stressed, as he shared O’Brien’s concerns about meeting the affordable housing obligation.
“I think an expedient decision is needed,” he said.