"If no one sees, nothing happened" was the motto at Monday night's Lakewood Zoning Board meeting.
As previously reported here on FAA News, after enumerating at length the reasons why they disliked the application, the Zoning Board approved construction of a 60,000 sq foot office building on Cross Street and Franklin Boulevard.
Pertinently, the approval was for a 3-story, 38.5 feet high building.
As offices are not a permitted use in this R-40 Single Family Homes residential zoning district, the Board granted Use Variance relief for this use. In addition, as the maximum height in this zone is 35 feet high, the Board also granted a height variance.
The applicant, Divonne Equity Group, LLC, represented by Attorney Miriam Weinstein, now returned to the Board to quietly request to increase the height variance to 45 feet high.
The catch was, instead of providing transparency to the public by submitting an Amended Site Plan, the developers quietly snuck this through as "correspondence."
Yup.
Apparently, if no one sees, nothing happened!
Coolest part is that Mrs. Weinstein cheerfully induced the Board to accept the height because "the Township's proposed School Overlay Zone will soon permit buildings of 65 feet high in this zone."
Hmm...
As previously reported here on FAA News, the Planning Board has already urged the Committee to only permit buildings of 35 feet high - not 65 feet high...
Either way, at their original public hearing, the Board discussed adequate access for emergency vehicles, deliveries, and trash pickup trucks. The circulation plan with the application only demonstrates circulation of a Smeal Aerial MM1 100 ft design vehicle through the property. The applicant's engineers testified that delivery and trash pickup trucks will be about to circulate the parking lot. They agreed to review the plans with the Township's Fire Official to ascertain that large fire trucks would be able to access the site in an emergency as well. The developers did not now update the Board as to whether they have yet reviewed the circulation plan with the Township's Fire Official.
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2 comments:
Within 10% is considered a minor variance. That's why they had it originally for 38.5feet 10 percent of 35. Now the sneaky part is changing the type of hight variance to a major variance which is usually not grated without special circumstance.
They called it an architectural error. They will do anything they can to sneak this in.
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