Bnos Yaakov on Kent Road and County Line Road has spent the last couple of years battling with their neighbors due to substantial parking deficiencies.
On June 4, 2021, the school purchased the adjoining lot at 18 Cathedral Drive for $300,000. The seller was Ari Goldner. Since that time the school demolished the existing home and turned it into a gravel parking lot.
The neighbors who were upset that a parking lot got plopped down along their long and narrow residential cul-de-sac reported the illegal parking lot to the Township, who in turn ordered the school to submit an application for a Site Plan review for a paved parking lot.
In May 2022, the school did present a Site Plan application to the Planning Board, despite, as illustrated more fully here on FAA News, only the Zoning Board has jurisdiction to approve a parking lot as the principal use of the lot in a residential zoning district. Numerous neighbors opposed the application.
Since that time, the 31 spaces paving work was never completed and the gravel area remains.
As previously reported here on FAA News, in May 2023, the school closed on the $650,000 purchase of 20 Cathedral Drive.
The school is now set this Tuesday, November 26, 2024 to present a revised site plan to the Planning Board for an expanded parking area as well as daycare facilities.
The massive revision with this new plan is that all ingress and egress will only be through Kent Road and County Line Road - and not through Cathedral Drive.
What remains unchanged is that the Planning Board still lacks jurisdiction to approve a parking lot as the principal use of the lot in a residential zoning district, therefore, curious minds wonder how this application was placed on the Board's agenda.
Application SP-2546 seeks Preliminary and Final Site Plan approval to propose daycare facilities for the faculty and expand an existing parking lot by fifty-three spaces.
The existing school site is Lot 3.01 in Block 1. The proposed parking lot expansion will extend onto Lots 3 and 4 in Block 1.07. The existing one-story dwelling on Lot 7 in Block 1.01 (20 Cathedral Drive) as well as the existing one-story modular building behind the school will house the daycare.
The existing school has sixty-two off-street parking spaces. The proposed parking lot expansion would add fifty-three spaces. Therefore, the future proposed number of off-street parking spaces would be one hundred fifteen, which would require five ADA spots. The existing access driveways on Kent Road and County Line Road West would remain unchanged.
Paving, curbing, sidewalk, grading, stormwater management facilities, landscaping, and lighting have been proposed for the expanded parking area.
Pertinently, while schools and child care facilities are permitted in the R-15 Residential Zone District, parking lots as the principal use of the lot are not permitted uses in this zone. The school is therefore attempting to cover up the situation by inventing a claim that the Planning Board can approvethe usr because the "parking lot expansion would be an ancillary use to the approved school project."
The application seeks a number of submission waivers, variances, and design waivers, including the following:
• Site improvements encroach into the Buffer Line. A submission waiver is required from proof of submission for a letter of interpretation to the NJDEP.
• A submission waiver is required from providing an Environmental Impact Statement.
• A Minimum Front Yard Setback Variance is required. Schools require a fifty-foot front yard setback, whereas the structures to remain fronting Cathedral Drive are only about thirty-four feet, forty-one feet, and forty-five feet from the right-of-way line.
• Buffer Variance relief is required since the proposed parking lot expansion would be an ancillary use to the school site. A twenty-foot wide buffer for the adjoining residential zone uses or properties is required. Fencing and landscaping is proposed along the side property line to Lot 2 for justification of the relief. No fencing and landscaping are proposed along the side property line to adjacent Lot 8.
• A Parking Setback Variance will be required from Section 18-906B of the UDO since the proposed parking lot expansion would be an ancillary use to the school project. Off-street parking is not permitted in any required buffer. Off-street parking is proposed about five feet from adjoining Lot 2.
• Variance relief may be required from providing an onsite bus loading and unloading zone.
• A design waiver is required for off-street parking space size as the angled off-street parking spaces are undersized.
• A design waiver is required from providing Shade Tree and Utility Easements along all project frontages. We recommend a Shade Tree and Utility Easement be proposed along Kent Road, thereby eliminating this design waiver.
• A design waiver is required from providing street trees along all project frontages.
• A design waiver is required from providing sidewalk along County Line Road West.
• A design waiver is required for proposing six-foot high fencing in front yards.
The Board Engineer has also noted that the required safety surfaces has not been provided for the play equipment in accordance with the Township ordinance.
The Board has placed this application on their agenda for this Tuesday's public hearing beginning at 6:00pm at town hall.
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1 comment:
Thank you for reporting on this. We will be going to fight this again, but I fear that there will be a smaller turnout against it because the owner of the school has a proxy on our street who is advocating for him. The real question is how come Mr H is not held accountable for his actions? When the phase 3 expansion was completed all the trailers were supposed to be removed and the children moved into the school. As you reported, trailers are still there. To get the parking lot at 18 Cathedral the planning board memorialized that there would be no simcha hall. But guess who has a simcha hall? These are just a few items that will be brought up and questioned tomorrow night. Feel free to attend and report further on how it turns out to keep the public informed.
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