Lakewood Township's ordinances require developers to pave the paper streets around their property. In this way, as more and more houses get built, the roads around them are supposed to get paved to provide for proper traffic circulation.

Lakewood Township's Planning Board recently granted a developer a waiver from paving one of the roads that front his property in a planned Belz community development off Locust Street and Vermont Avenue.

The neighbors did not even have any clue about this because the application was not noticed to the adjacent neighbors. In the past when this developer presented an application to the Board with proper notice to the neighbors, numerous neighbors did oppose the application.

This application was presented by Jacob Lipshitz and Melvin Feigenbaum of Vermont Holdings 2 LLC. It was a "Minor Subdivision" application to approve a single duplex structure (2 houses plus basement apartments) at the end of Evergreen Avenue at the intersection of Farry Street. Evergreen Avenue is currently a paper street north off Locust Street, adjacent to Vermont Avenue.

The Lakewood Planning Board has previously approved a new duplex development on this new Evergreen Avenue. Access will also be provided to Vermont Avenue through June Avenue.

Farry Street is currently a paper street which would have provided this major development an additional connection to Vermont Avenue.

However, the Lakewood Township Planning Board this week granted Mr. Lipshitz a waiver from paving his portion of Farry Street, thereby cutting off Farry Street from providing this additional through-street, and instead, jamming this future development.

Back in September 2018, the Board heard an application from Locust Holdings LLC for a portion of this new duplex development. The applicant proposed paving only Evergreen Avenue and not providing an additional connection by paving June Street out to Vermont Avenue. Numerous neighbors including bus drivers from Belz strongly opposed the application citing traffic concerns and ultimately the Board conditioned the approval on the developer also connecting June Street to Vermont Avenue.

Quite possibly, this recent application and the waiver request not to pave Farry Street would have been opposed by the neighbors, however, the application was not noticed to the neighbors and the Board approved the application anyways.

At the very least, prior to approving the road waiver, the Board should have tabled the application until the applicant sent notice to the neighbors.

But there's more to the story: At the Planning Board hearing, Engineer Brian Flannery testified that they don't want to pave Farry Street because "we don't know if our neighbors will ever build on their properties and pave their portion of the road". However, this is baloney. A quick glance at the list of adjacent property owners reveales that actually, Mr. Lipshitz owns many of the lots on this block!