Planning Board - Regular Meeting

I think probably 4050 years ago. Somehow, what a land plot or its predecessor obtained both properties.

And it was merged and merged attacks lots together. Yeah, yeah.

portion of it used to be the title. Okay.

So this would be like a unique property in the sense that because it goes so far back from the highway that it falls into the industrial zone. A different zone.

Other ones don't necessarily do that. Correct. And to be clear, this ordinance only rezones the bottom half of this one piece of property. No other properties are being impacted by this ordinance. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Makes sense.

Thank you.

Anyone else? So seeing none, let me take this, open it up to the public just to see if there's any public that wish to speak on this. Any members of the public that wish to speak on the rezoning of the bottom lower part of Eau de Lens property from industrial to HC?

Please raise your hand if you do.

Yes.

I'm not seeing any, Mr. Chair.

Perfect. Then I'm going to close this matter to the public or hand it back to the board. So it sounds from hearing from Mr. Mestrada and Mr. Disko, it's consistent with the master plan. It makes sense. It's better sound planning. It's better for the property owner from an application standpoint, not alleviating their abilities to have to come to a board. It's to be able to go to the right board versus another board when they have to do stuff on their property. So, seeing that, can I have a motion to authorize that make a motion to find this consistent this change consistent with the master plan.

Thank you.

Scott.

As me. And have a roll call.

Mr Barnett yes, Mr Ferraro yes, you see their quest, yes. Mr. Mayo. Yes. Mr. Wishna.

Yes.

Mr. Corn.

Yes.

And Chair Tiger.

Yes.

Motion passes.

Yes. So, uh, counselor Alex, if you can please send a very brief note to the township committee clerk or our board secretary that she can forward on to the township committee, letting them know that we adopted this and we found this ordinance change consistent with the master plan. Perfect. The next one that we have for us to review is ordinance 2026-14. This is for car washes as a conditional use on Route 22. Mr. Mistretta, if you'd like to give us a little overview of it and why we feel this change is important, and then we can discuss it. Sure.

Ordinance is on the screen right to the beginning part. We'll skip. We'll just get right to the heart of it. This ordinance establishes car washes in the highway commercial zone as a conditional use. The conditional uses are quite a few, and we've put those in for a reason. And just let me walk through those. Property shall contain a minimum of 1.5 acres. property shall frontage on at least two roads with one of the two roads with one of the roads being state highway route 22 the property shall not be contiguous or border any property containing a residential use or any property in a residential zone and the property shall not be located within 500 feet of an existing car wash and then we Other conditions are ingress and egress driveways for car washes shall be limited to State Highway 22. And then we have a whole other series of design features ensuring that there's proper queuing and stacking capacity of the cars entering and exiting the car wash before they exit onto 22, that the operations are all contained within the building itself, There's no application shall be favorably acted upon by the land use board of the township if it has to be conducted without causing undue traffic congestion and so forth. So there's no impact on travel lanes, queuing, stacking or the driveways, parking requirements. And there's some additional ancillary requirements all placed on as a conditional uses. So this was done. so that there's a desire to have a car wash as a permitted use in the highway commercial zone, limited it to 22, also limited to certain by putting on these conditional uses so that we don't end up with proliferation of car washes on 22. We've really tried to focus on while we allow them, we also included a significant number of, conditional uses in order to protect the number that would be constructed. I prepared this map to give the board a sense of what properties would qualify. Just to give you an idea, this is more than what would qualify because as one would be constructed on one of these properties, it would knock out the neighboring properties by the radius. So you would not have this many, depending on how they are laid out. If they are, you would end up, I think, with three, depending on the locations of them, a maximum. But if one was constructed as one of these center properties, 3104 lot four or five or one of those, it would knock out most of the others around it and they would not allow to have the use. So the idea is to allow the car wash, limited it to 22, have reasonable conditions on there in order so that there's not a significant number of these constructed.

And this would be a conditional use. It still comes to the planning board. It still comes to the board for review. It's not a guaranteed approval. All the conditions have to be met. It's just putting... We're tightening up our ordinances to make it clear where it's allowed and where it's not allowed.

Correct. As you read the ordinance, and again, we attach the... We have a consistency review report on this that we've already submitted. So...

Wait, so one second. Mr. Mistred, are you complete?

Yes.

Great. Mr. Disko, anything to add?

No. We got one in Union. We got none in Springfield. We got one in Milburn. None in Mountainside. We're getting a lot of interest in these things. The model of car washes is changing. A lot of these are membership type of things. Thank you. We're just trying to get ahead of the curve here. One's coming someday.

So it makes sense to clean up the ordinance so that way we have more tighter and more pronounced rules around this.

Right. We're making it safer, too, with these design where you can access.

Right. And again, it's the same thing, just like what Mr. Mistretta and I said, this is not a guarantee approval for anyone to just go in and get a permit from the zoning officer to get a car wash done. They still have to come before the board. A board for approval. If they meet certain conditions, they'll come before planning. If it becomes different conditions, then they have the right to go before the zoning board for use variance on it. Correct. Okay, let me open it up. Let me try to go in some order. Julie, any questions?

No.

Mr. Sederquist?

No.

Mr. Wischner?

Several. Let me ask this first. And when you were going over the items in the ordinance, I missed a couple things, or I triggered a couple things. So one, what is the rationale behind having frontage on two streets when we're saying the ingress and egress can only be onto the Route 22?

One of the reasons is when you go back and look at these maps here, is just to identify properties that we think would be suitable to have one of these car washes. And having a corner lot is generally a good idea. It's also, quite frankly, that also eliminates the number so that we don't have to have, there won't be an opportunity to have too many of these Generally, what we're trying to do is we're trying to write an ordinance that's going to allow one or two of these in our town. That's the bottom line. In order to do that, you put in conditions that would restrict the overall number of properties that could be developed with this conditional use. I think you're limiting the...

I don't know. I'd feel more comfortable having more of a radius restriction and less... impact on you know forcing it onto certain locations if you're not able to access it you're you're kind of you're limiting the future use potentially if it becomes something other than a car wash after the fact so to me your corner locations are more prime opportunities i don't feel like a car wash is a prime type of use you know Have you considered expanding the radius further just to allow us to at least reduce the number?

Right now we have a 500 foot radius in there. When we laid out this map we basically came up with you could have one on the as I'm looking at my screen all the way to the left side of me left side of the screen you'd have one and if there's one in the center.

It can't be in the center because it doesn't have two streets, the center island.

I was looking at the center of the map.

Block 3101-4 would qualify.

And if one went there or across the street, if one went over to 3703 Lot 2, They would basically cancel each other out, so you would end up with one possible site there, and then that would leave you with one site all the way on the right-hand side. So by putting those restrictions in with the corner and the minimum distances, we basically tried to narrow it down to three at the most that would be constructed.

But if you just increase the radius restriction, doesn't that possibly reduce it to two? Yeah, that's another way. I just feel like that's wouldn't, isn't that better? Fewer than three?

If we were to want fewer than three possible ones on 22, we could expand the radius to, I don't know, just say a thousand. You could always increase the radius to eliminate even more sites.

Mike, you're our planner. What do you think is best? I mean, ultimately, the Township Committee owns the final say-so. We can give suggestions to them, and they can choose to take them and adopt them. What do you think is best? Do you think we should go with a little bit more restrictiveness, or do you think with a recommendation, because it's not us, a recommendation?

I think the way it's written, it puts enough properties in play to be considered What's going to happen is just the market alone is if you got one, and I'm making this up, but if you got one, block 3-1-0-1, lot 4, that's kind of in the center, or across 22, block 3-7-0-3, lot 2, if you got one there, you're not going to get one.

Anywhere in Springfield.

You're not going to get another one across the street from it. So I think the market is going to,

to say one one unit and that's it just kind of like the the marijuana where it's the cannabis we want to provide one use and then you don't have to go through all of this oh because i'm telling right now there are there are many of these types of national operators in the market sourcing locations they're coming after all of my closed bank branches all over the place. So I feel like you're going to designate three opportunities. You're going to potentially have, I don't know that we have the real estate potentially, but you could be creating a problem we don't want. That's my take on this.

Yeah. All right. Let's pause for a second. Let's hear what the rest of the board has and then we'll circle back if that's okay. Was that your last question, Mr. Wishner? Yes.

Thank you.

Great. Mr. Disko, do you have anything to add on that before we go to anyone else?

No, I mean, I think the size of the property is your first screening, the 1.5 acre. Yeah. We just don't want a free-for-all here. The mechanism that you employ, I think there's multiple ways to do it. I don't know if there's a right way or a wrong way or a better way.

so i you know it is what it is yeah i have my comments i'll save it to the end uh kevin uh yeah i got two um first one the 500 feet from an existing car wash is it 500 feet from another property because it's not clear that contains a car wash because like You can have 1 on 1 side auto land and on the other side, I just want to make it clear if it's like a 500 foot radius from the property line.

Is it the property line or the actual building? Mr. Michael.

It says the property will not be located within 500 feet of an existing car wash.

Just if we want, I was just a thought.

Did we do from the property line? Is that considered in land use laws, the property line? We had this whole thing with the billboard sign. So I do want to be a little sensitive there. Is it from the billboard or is it from the car wash or is it from the property line?

I would interpret it that it's the property line of whichever property has a car wash on it.

I would probably in my opinion and I would just clean that up to at least the property at minimum. I'm sure the township committee wouldn't take issue with it only because we did have this with the billboard and it was well was it 500 feet from the billboard? Was it the base of the billboard? So makes sense.

The car wash definition uses the term premises so it would be the whole property.

Okay great. Kevin what else anything else?

No, just the last one is just, does this use include, like, self-car wash establishments? Particularly the union one. You guys talked about the adult. I forgot what they're called. They have, like, half of it self-washed outside, and then you could do the actual drive-through interior. And I don't know if we want to put any restriction on whether we do want self-car wash or not. I'm not a crazy fan of it, but...

Mr. Mistretta? I'm just reading what we have here. It says, shall be conducted within the car wash structure.

Looks like that could be a self car wash, Kevin. You're talking about the ones where you drive in, you grab the hose yourself and spray it all down?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's not anybody managing the place. It's sort of just in the middle of nowhere. Right, right.

I think there's one in Scotch Plains off of 22.

Just a question and whether or not we want to limit that.

Yeah.

I don't know, Mike, what do you think is the intention here? It's silent on it. It doesn't say one way or the other. So I would say that you could have a self-car wash. in here. It doesn't say one way or the other. Yeah.

I would probably like to, to remove, to add in self car washes are, are not a conditional use because then things can get out of hand when it's like, in my opinion, I'll open up to the board, you know, when we continue, but at least it's contained on a nice pretty thing inside, not like everything going all outside and, and, and, and soap suds going all the way out on 22 and stuff like that. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

yeah okay i would say that that's a good point kevin i want to go back to wishness mr wishness one two and a bit but mr corn yeah i'm just thinking if we really have three car washes in town so the reality of the of the market force is likely limiting competition but again i'm not i'm not into that retail space scott like you are where you're seeing that a highly competitive So how would increasing, if you go back to the map graphic, increasing the 500 feet to 1,000, so I understand this, right? These peach bubbles are the 500-foot buffers. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So there's a car wash somewhere by the Colonel Parkway on the left currently? Currently? Or wait, where is the existing?

There is no existing.

Those are just sites that would qualify. Yes, qualify. So I think Ken, and I'm hoping this would satisfy some of Mr. Whish's thing, by us taking the self car wash out, the barrier really to entry of putting in a full service car wash where it's built inside with all the machines and everything, as opposed to someone throwing up like whatever, I think that cuts down on the likelihood of Well, we can continue to talk about it as a board, but I think that self-solves it. I'm okay with just eliminating to say one on Springfield or two on Springfield. So, you know. Yeah, I would support a limit on it. quantifiable limit so you know two two matt what are you saying two max full service car washes yeah i mean i don't think we're gonna get two anyway to be honest i mean i'd be okay with recommending that to the township committee assuming mr mestretta and the board is uh who's gonna put two uh you know there's there's there's one in union if the one's one in springfield who's gonna put two i mean yeah it's not gonna happen barely be the same operator Yeah, I mean, it's very unlikely. I mean, like, you get one. I mean, I guess if you got one at where, let's call it where Chick-fil-A, that area wasn't, I guess you could have one on the other side where the Krispy Kreme could be. I mean, I guess. But again, that's still far enough away. I mean, we'll open up...

The other ones that are in surrounding towns might not stay there forever. So if somebody... closes their union location and wants to relocate it, there's no guarantee that there's just because one pops up, another won't.

And I'm taking your feedback, Scott. I mean, I guess we could just do one, and then if anything else comes up, if there needs to be a second, it goes to the zoning board to decide if that's the case, if that becomes. But let me go to Mr. Barnett, and then we'll sum everything up.

Look, I don't really know the The car wash market. I do appreciate Scott's experience there. I guess he seems to be seeing it every day. What is the downside of having three car? Let's say three car washes use all the available space. What's the downside of having three versus two? Why do we care? I just don't understand that yet.

I agree. I don't think you're going to even see.

Why would we not want that? What's the negative here?

In my opinion, you get some additional traffic on 22 that has to be looked at. If you think of what Krispy Kreme had when they first put that in the backup all the way on 22 for a while, we want to try to avoid it as best as we can with site-specific. So I hear you. It makes sense. Maybe... Maybe we limit it to one on the northbound and one on the southbound so they're not too next to each other or too close enough to one. Maybe that's a fair recommendation to do, one on east and one on west. Sorry.

If they came to us, we would be able to see how much room they have for car queuing. Yes. The Oregon Institute talks about having two lanes, and so we still have control over that. So overall, look, I'm fine with... um with how it is now i'm fine if we want to say okay it's going to be two because i don't i don't specifically see an inherent problem um you know with having three um and certainly we have the the control so if the rest of the board feels very strong that should be two i'm with you

So this is my thoughts since I've heard everyone's and, and my, my initial thoughts would be, what if we did, you know, I think with eliminating the self-serve ones outside that takes away a high barrier. So that's, that's, I'm hoping the township committee accepts that from us as a suggestion. But the second thing that I would say is if we put one on the East and one on the West, that also eliminates the ability of having two close one, one, you know, when you first enter Springfield coming in from union and one at the end. So, That would be my suggestion is a great compromise. But let me see what Mr. Mistretta and Mr. Disko think, and then we can quickly go around the board and then close this out.

I'll just jump in. I'm very comfortable making those. And I have one more item to add in there, and that's just to clarify that it's to the property line. And I understand I interpreted that it's to the property line, but I listened to the other comment, and I would add that third comment. Just so that it's very clear it's to the property line and not to the building. Okay. Okay. So would you be comfortable if we, in support, we put one on east and one on west? One on east, one on west. No self-serve. Clarify that. And clarify that it's to the property line of the car wash. Yep. Those are the three I have.

Great. And if there's anything else, they can always go to the Board of Adjustment if they feel that that's the case.

Right. Great. By the way, it's a shame Harris or Alex aren't here. I think the big issue on the self-serve that I would want the TC to know about is if it's self-serve, we don't have control of where the soap is going and all that stuff is going. And I think that's a big deal on that. So if there's a way in the letter to them, it doesn't have to be part of the ordinance because you're going to say no self-serve, but I would also want them to understand that's the rationale for why we're not.

Yeah. And there's no one managing those properties. They're like, yes, all day. Like there's nobody there.

They're smart guys. I'm sure they'll realize, but we'll make sure Alex writes it very clear that the board strongly encourage, use the word strongly encourage that self-serve car washes are removed for environmental reasons, you know, control reasons on the site and so forth. Alex can do that. And Alex can review it with Mr. Mistret in advance so that they're on target. Great. Any other questions from the board? I think we got a good compromise and this would be our recommendation to the Township Committee with the ordinance to make the change.

So what I would before... For Mr. Mistretta. So I do, in your experience with other municipalities, do you see that the car washes are specifically excluded as a use in other municipalities that you work with?

Most of my other towns, they all seem to want one or at the most two car washes. And they always want them on, every one is the same. It's the same playbook. They want it on the highway. The car washes are becoming more sophisticated. You go in and you drive in and it cleans your car. You have different services. And then you come out and you're in a larger building and there's vacuuming and cleaning and club membership, and they're getting more and more sophisticated. Our biggest, keep it away from all residential. We've done that. Queuing lanes in and out is one of the biggest issues. I think we've done a very good job with that. But otherwise, they just don't want, you know, maybe two car washes, but that's about it, and they don't want any more.

Is it environmental? Is it sound? What's the general pushback from other municipalities?

It's just one of those uses that on certain days, it could draw a lot of traffic, a lot of queuing, a lot of people attending, and they just want to keep it out on the major highways and away from all the residential, all of the secondary streets. That's the biggest issue. Every one of my towns is okay with one or two and there's no issue. And they want everything inside of the building. And we have that also, all of the operations inside the building structure.

Cool.

Okay. So let's, let me take this opportunity. Thanks, Scott. Thanks to all the board. I mean, we got, this was actually good. We got some good feedback out of this to give the town show committee as opposed to making it just consistent. So, so any members of the public wish to speak on this, the carwash ordinance? Raise your hand.

I don't see any raised hands, Mr. Chairman.

Great. Thank you. I'm going to close this matter to the public and remand it back to the board. So what we would be asking is our board attorney to draft a letter to the township committee that we find the ordinance consistent with the master plan changes. However, these are some of the suggestions that we strongly, and I want to, would like them to consider. The self car washes, the one on the east, one on the west, and whatever the clarifying language that says the corner of the property line, not the building. Correct.

Okay.

Great. Okay. So seeing that, what I just read, can I, can I have a motion to request to find the ordinance consistent with the, the strongly suggested conditions? We got it. Great. Fine. Second. Can someone second it?

I'll second it.

Great. Thanks, Richard. Can we have a roll call?

Mr. Barnett?

Yes.

Mr. Sederquist?

Yes.

Mr. Mayo? Yes. Mr. Wischna?

Yes.

Mr. Korn? Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay. So two more quick things. I promise we'll be off in less than a minute. Anyone of the members of the public wish to speak on anything before the board? Raise your hand.

Seeing none.

Seeing none, I'm going to close this matter to the public or mandate back to the board. So the last thing I want to do is I will work on our next meeting date. If our meeting dates are some of this normal stuff where it's just ordinances and general stuff, my initial lean is to do it virtual as opposed to pulling everyone to the town hall in the summer and so forth. We do have several applications coming our way, whether it be Autoland, United Windows and Doors, couple small businesses in town so we do have stuff coming so we will have meetings i just need to determine whether that will be in uh in person because it's just uh silly stuff that you know stuff that doesn't require us to be there that we can do over the over the uh the web meeting or being in person when we have applications that we want the ability for the public to also to be able to take part in as well so seeing none uh can i have a motion to adjourn motion to motion all in favor aye aye aye everyone have a good uh fourth of july summer we'll be in touch soon thanks everyone take care bye-bye thank you