Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome everybody to the planning board meeting. We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

In accordance with New Jersey Statute 10-4-10, adequate notice of this meeting has been provided to the publications of record and has been posted here in City Hall. For the benefit of the interested public, this meeting is being live streamed to the city's YouTube page and also broadcast on Summit's government channel, which is Comcast Channel 34 and Verizon Channel 30. any hearings on applications for development in this meeting are quasi-judicial proceedings any questions or comments must be limited to the issues that are relevant to what the board may legally consider in reaching a decision and decorum appropriate to a judicial hearing must be maintained at all times please note that fire exits are to my right your left and at the back of the room where you entered the city has a listening system to assist the hearing impaired if anyone needs hearing assistance please obtain the necessary equipment here at the dais and return it immediately after our meeting

Thank you. And roll call.

Chair Bolson-Alvarez? Here. Vice Chair Hamlet? Here. Ms. Bowen? Here. Council Member Chris Afoli is expected but not yet present. Mr. Dalmaso? Here. Mr. Felmut? Here. Ms. Morrison? Here. Mr. Stern? Here. Mr. Staunton? Here. Mr. Golden? Here. You have a quorum. You may proceed.

Thank you very much. is new business, the master plan consistency review for the ordinance 263393. And I was gonna have Mr. Burgess introduce it to us and discuss it.

Certainly I'd be happy to. The ordinance was introduced on the 7th of this month and there will be a public hearing on it tomorrow night. We have prepared a report dated the 23rd of this month identifying the level of consistency inconsistencies in certain areas that we identify in that report. Basically, as you know, the municipal land use law provides that anytime the governing body seeks to adopt a zoning ordinance or amend a zoning provision, it has to be referred to this board. You have technically a 35-day window within which you must respond because if the 35-day period goes by, the governing body no longer has to abide by any document you submit, which is why we prepared this report on your behalf. Very briefly, the ordinance provides a very specific amended definition of data centers. Basically, it was designed to clarify the specificity of what is permitted and what is not. It prohibits data centers in all zones in the municipality. As a principle, permitted use allowed as of right. There is some question in terms of the definition of computer centers, which is distinguishable from data centers, in terms of the wording as to whether or not that appropriately clarifies the issue as to whether computer centers are permitted as an accessory use, which is customarily incidental to a permitted principal use. We have made one specific recommended modification to the text to clarify that point. If you look in the ordinance in section Item number 2C on page 3 where it says note this is identifying the fact that the term data centers shall not include a variety of specific things and where it's accessory, it says no portion of the facility is used for cryptocurrency mining, high density computational processing or wholesale data infrastructure services My reading of that would have suggested that contrary to allowing computer centers as an accessory use, it just simply prohibits it everywhere. So I suggested that after the word high density computer computational processing, we insert the words for off-site customers. That will distinguish those companies that would fall under the definition of computer centers and it would be those companies that are only using data center information for the purposes of internal use only and not for the purposes of serving outside customers. So I will clarify the point. And with that, we have concluded that this ordinance would be consistent with the master plan and re-examination report. The last comprehensive master plan was done in 2000. There was a 2016 re-examination report. Both documents have very similar goals and objectives. On the one hand, we do point out that in certain instances, The goals and objectives talk about encouraging and promoting economic development and balancing growth and development opportunities with the need to protect and enhance the residential community. But on the other hand, the goals also talk about not only maintaining the overall quality of life for residents in the community, but protecting against potential risks and adverse impacts. If you recall, we submitted a June memo detailing some of the issues, adverse issues associated with data centers. So we feel that with the change that we're suggesting, we can conclude that it would resolve the discrepancy, be consistent with the master plan goals or certain of those goals to enable you to say it's consistent with the master plan.

Thank you, Joe. Can we have questions first?

I was just going to point out, Madam Chair, that we did do a resolution for the appropriate time, and we did include the recommendation that Mr. Virgis spoke of on page 2 in his July 23 report in the draft resolution. But, of course, the Board is free to decide as it wishes, as always.

Correct. So any discussion or questions?

Yes, I have one. So Joe, in speaking with you and just to explain it to the public, when Joe Burgess gave his initial recommendations, one of the things that he wanted in there was this couple of words, which is for outside users. So when the council introduced it, here comes Mr. Christofoli, they took it out, which it's fine. But we're re-recommending that it gets put back in. My question is, and this is more in speaking with the city clerk today, Joe does not think it's a substantive change for tomorrow night. I guess the city clerk will have to make that decision tomorrow. But my question is, if we're If we're saying that it's consistent with the master plan as is written, but we're adding the words, so how will that work?

We're recommending. We're recommending, so, okay. Because we can only recommend.

Right.

At this stage, we're doing a consistency review, and we're recommending that this is inserted so that it's abundantly clear.

But as written, is it still, if they don't accept this change tomorrow, is it consistent with the master plan?

That's up for discussion.

Okay.

So. Does anybody want to, I'm not trying to complicate it. I'm just trying to be clear. That's the question again, is it consistent as written? And we're also strongly recommending this reinsertion for clarity. And it's, it's not a substantive change. For example, if we change the thousand square feet to 5,000 square feet, I think that would be a substantive change. This is just clarifying what they've already written. So I don't see it as, but that's for the attorneys to decide. So any discussion from members?

The definition already includes cryptocurrency not being allowed above the data center.

But that's not the only outside user product that they could use.

But I think with that, I mean, even if it doesn't get in, I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but it doesn't seem like it's inconsistent.

Right. Sure. So you're adding this so that we meet the definition of promoting business and quality of life?

Correct. That's essentially the bottom line to it all. There was some concern that I had that there was an indication on a few people that the ordinance already prohibited as a principal use and would permit it as an accessory use to another permitted business. In reading the text, I just didn't think it read that way. So this clarifies that one point. And if the council does in fact believe that it was always permitting it as an accessory use, this just simply clarifies it, so therefore it's not a substantive change.

Apologies for my late arrival. My daughter took my car, so I came by Uber. So these little surprises in parenting happen. My apologies.

We understand. This happened to me as well.

Joe, I'm familiar with this matter to a certain extent, as the member of council also, who requested the review by the planning board. So this review by the planning board is very valuable to me. I would ask you the question, Joe, if I may, At the time when the ordinance was being drafted by council for the July 7th, I believe it was the July 7th meeting, the first of the two council meetings in July, there was a concern that by adding the words for off-site customers, you would be inadvertently allowing the use for on-site customers. For example, if you were to build a data center and employ some kind of fake employee, fake business upstairs, I think Susan, you could...

Right, a call center on one floor and a data center on another. Then the company could very well say, well, their principal use is for this call center. And we want to close that whole thing.

And once it would be a principal use, that's prohibited.

Just to ask you, Joe, so that was the understanding of council when this ordinance was introduced? and voted for hearing at the first July council meeting. Do you see a risk by adding the words for offsite customers, does that somehow open a back door to onsite customers?

Because that's the concern that people have. No, because it says no portion of the facility is used for all those uses that I mentioned earlier for processing for offsite customers. You're only allowed to process information as an accessory use for your own in-house purposes. You're not out there trying to get customers to use your data center operation. It's used by the individual companies. And we identify financial institutions. We identify hospitals. governmental services you know that sort of thing so it's clear that it's limited in scope and very focused in terms of what it's allowing and not allowing I think that would go a long way to satisfying the concerns of other council members on this particular issue I think it doubles down on the accessory nature as opposed to opening a back door right exactly

opening a loophole, which is what people are afraid of.

Right. And in the draft resolution, just in case we decided to make this recommendation, we put customers slash users because it's also a term of art that we've heard from a lot of experts is off-site users. So we're going to do customers and users just to cover everything. If everybody agrees to that, ultimately.

I have an open question.

I'm sorry.

It's Sam Altman, and I can't remember the name of this company.

Open AI. It's okay.

Open AI. So if OpenAI wanted to buy BMS to develop, I don't even know which is there, let's just say it's ChatGPT. That's their product. So they could do that, couldn't they?

Yeah, but their customers are...

They're constrained to 1,000 square feet for their data centers. I don't think they'd find that very useful.

I think I can help. If you can confirm my understanding, maybe this will help with some of the others. So we're talking about the use as an accessory use. It's banned altogether as a principal use, right? Correct. And we're now in the part two of the definition, which is only the accessory use to the principal use. And now it's already being mitigated to the lesser of 1,000 square feet or 20%. And first of all, C said it's also banning basically all high density servers within the accessory use. And what we're adding back, so that was banning altogether in principle and potentially if some interpreted it as also an accessory. And we're adding back the off-site users only in the accessory use part of the definition so that if there's some subset in a hospital where they have high-density servers for on-site research or whatever, it's only on that smaller subset of the definition.

And if I may...

So in your example, I think it would be a principal use. Joe.

He was buying something, and there was... And I think the key is something that I missed in the initial presentation. We have a cap of either 20% of the floor space or 1,000 square feet, whichever is less. That's all they can have. Data centers, obviously, are a lot larger than that. So a data center as a principal permitted use would never be allowed based on a number of provisions in this regulation.

So, yeah, I think if that my understanding is correct, I think this is obviously a benefit to the definition because it was basically outlawing it for 10 square feet before this, potentially based on the interpretation of the rate. Correct. Whether it's substantive or not, I'll leave that up to you in terms of the change.

Anybody else have any thoughts on this?

All right.

So do we have a motion to find it not inconsistent? And for the recommendation that we all discussed? So moved.

Second. I'll assume that also is to adopt the memorializing resolution so we can go right to that step. Thank you. With that understanding.

Okay.

Shall we have a roll call vote? Vice Chair Hamlet?

Yes.

Ms. Bowen? Yes. Council Member Crisofoli?

Yes.

Mr. Dalmasso? Yes. Mr. Felment? Yes. Ms. Morrison? Yes. Mr. Stern? Yes. Mr. Staunton? Yes. Chair Bolson-Alvarez? Yes.

Okay. Very good. So we got one thing off of our agenda. Okay. So now we have an application. Temple Hill Associates, LLC, 527 Morris Avenue. Welcome.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Hillary Alls from Dempsey, Dempsey & Sheehan on behalf of the applicant Temple Hill Associates LLC in connection with property located at 527 Morris Avenue, Block 402, Block 1, 3-7 and 61-63. In the NBR5 and R6 zone districts, the restaurant Aubrey's Corner is located on lot one with the parking area located on the other lots. The applicant is seeking minor site plan approval and limited variance relief to permit modest exterior improvements to the existing restaurant. including new architectural lighting and signage, as well as replacement and reconfiguration of the existing entryway landings along Morris Avenue and Aubrey Street, which do not require variance relief. There is no change to the existing restaurant use and no expansion or intensification of the property. The improvements are intended to enhance the appearance of the building, improve pedestrian safety and building identification. and enhance this prominent corner location along Mars Avenue. The applicant's civil engineer, Andrew Clark, and architect, Nicholas Giuliano, will address the plans and requested relief in greater detail, and Mr. Taylor will address the existing restaurant operations. If the board has any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them, or I can call Mr. Taylor.

I think you should call your time.

Chair, if I may, just a predicate over jurisdiction. The notice was sufficient. The content was sufficient. It was timely served and timely published on July 16, certified mail July 13, both at least 10 days prior to this evening. And as mentioned, the content was sufficient. So the board does have jurisdiction. to hear and decide the application this evening. With the Chair's permission, I can square in all the witnesses as well as our board professionals so we could just get it done once.

That'd be great.

So if everybody who will be testifying can stand, raise your right hand. Do all of you swear to God or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you all. Back to you, Madam Chair. Great.

Thank you. So who's your first witness?

Mr. Taylor? And can you state your name and address for the record?

Jess Taylor, home address 12 Lincoln Avenue, Chatham, New Jersey.

Perfect. And what is your relationship to the applicant and the property that is the subject of this application?

I'm the managing director of Temple Hill Associates.

And the owner and operator of Aubrey's Corner?

That is correct.

And are you authorized to speak on behalf of the applicant with respect to this application?

Yes, ma'am.

And you brought this application before the board concerning the property located at 527 Morris Avenue.

Yes, we have.

And can you briefly describe to the board what is being proposed, recognizing that the civil engineer and architect will address the plans and improvements in greater detail?

Sure. We're looking to add some exterior lighting predominantly to increase pedestrian safety along Morris and Aubrey Street and improve the overall exterior facade of the building we've done a significant amount of work inside we've added some windows to the building and we've done some changes as well but on the interior but are looking to finalize what we have on the exterior we firmly believe that this is a very important kind of gateway to summit and downtown and we think this would be a really great opportunity to improve on the entrance into the city

Thank you. And will the proposed improvements change the existing restaurant use or increase the intensity of the use?

No, not at all.

And is the applicant willing to comply with the City Forester's request to provide planting boxes or planters with seasonal plantings along Morris Avenue and Aubrey Street?

Yes, we actually already have purchased planting boxes. We just haven't had the opportunity to plant them, but we have them on site.

Perfect. I don't have any other questions. Okay, great.

Does anybody have any questions for this witness?

I don't. Yes. Just one. I see you're reconstructing the landing on the stairs. That's good. I can't tell from the drawing. I apologize if I missed it. Does that change in any way or increase the easement onto city property?

So I think that the engineer and the architect can answer that question. And I don't believe that there was ever permission granted for those encroachments. But obviously, as a condition of approval, we would go before council and ask for either a license agreement or some kind of approval for the encroachment. And I believe Morris Avenue, that entryway is completely within the property line. It would only be on Aubrey Street that it encroaches into the sidewalk.

We have a step.

Yes.

Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Making you stand there while I do my note. So next witness?

Sure. Andrew Clark. Do you want him to run through qualifications?

And Mr. Clark is your architect? Engineer? Civil engineer.

Civil engineer. Okay, if you could just run through your qualifications and the steps that you took to prepare for your testimony tonight.

Certainly. My name is Andrew Clark. I'm a land surveyor and civil engineer. I was educated, I have a bachelor, hold a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a bachelor's degree in land surveying as well. uh i'm currently licensed as both a land surveyor and engineer with my license in good standing i've appeared before this board it's probably been a couple months when i was last here feels like i'm in front of the zoning board almost every month and i've also appeared with some frequency in madison's zoning board planning boards and chatham borough and occasionally chatham township and florin park very good

we find you to be qualified. Acceptable. Thank you.

Perfect. And again, this remains a good standing. It does. Yes. Always want that on the record. Thank you.

Excellent. And if you could just describe for the board the existing conditions of the site, go through the site plan and respond to the board engineer's comments.

Certainly. I'll make reference to the plan that was produced that I developed. It's entitled Site Plan, dated 09-09-25, and then last revision, April 28, 2026.

There's no need to mark it as an exhibit. It was submitted more than 10 days in advance of planning.

Yes, it was filed with the application.

Yeah, and I've made no marks on the plan here. So the site is located, it's actually in combination of zones, but the restaurant part of it is in the NB zone, neighborhood business, and then some of the parking tax lots are in the R6 and R5 zones. But the site is consisting of a number of tax lots. I'm not sure whether they were never combined, but they weren't. We have word block 402 lots. three four five six and seven and lots one is where the building is almost entirely on lot one which is at the corner of aubrey and morris and then 61 62 and 63 are behind it along aubrey street So the building is located almost entirely on lot one, which is the corner of Morris and Aubrey. And there's a little bit of the building that's in the back on lot 63, which is in that R6 zone, or rather the R5 zone. And the balance of all these lots is the parking area. So there's substantial parking on this property. 170 spaces meets the requirement, which by ordinance is 169 spaces. There's some handicap that's closest to the building. um there's a recycling shed that's along aubrey street and then a garbage enclosure that's behind that there's a row of trees that sort of screens the parking on aubrey since that's sort of the more residential side then this building that's here shown on the inside of lot two is actually not the property it's not part of our property that's where the bagel shop is and a couple of the little stores are in there the cleaners so the crux of this plan we're not changing anything in the parking the parking layout the circulation the drainage none of that is changing at all this is all focused on the corner of morrison aubry where there are a few i'd say minor changes that are taking place they've obviously done a lot of improvement on the building itself it looks beautiful i stopped by there on the way here but they're going to add some some lighting some sconce lighting along that the architect can better describe as he was more involved with that design, and some signage. In terms of material improvements, work on the ground, there's the landing that's being reconstructed that's along Morris Avenue. If you're facing the building, there's like a vestibule and there's stairs on both sides. On the left side of it, on this inside here, that door's been decommissioned and there's sort of a, it's a little bit awkward arrangement with the steps there, if anyone's ever gone in that way. And so, We're getting rid of that awkward arrangement where you come down the landing and then there's like one more step down to the sidewalk. So we're going to get rid of that because that's confusing for people and it causes tripping sometimes. And then just rebuild in a slightly more modest manner the farthest landing that's by the cleaners there. so that's just being reconstructed in the same location but a little bit smaller again as um hillary indicated it's that's on the property that's not in the right-of-way on that section along morris and then similarly we're redoing the landing on the left side of the vestibule that's on aubrey that vestibule is the one that's encroaching on aubrey street in the right-of-way it would need council permission in fact on morris avenue thank goodness it's not because i think that would need county permission there as well um but the the one in question here is the vestibule that's along aubry and on the left side there's there's like a little landing and some steps down two steps down one or two steps but then it sort of you touch down on the cellar entrance which is like a metal door in the sidewalk and so we're going to just reorient that so that you step out and then turn towards the street instead of landing on that cellar entrance so it's a little bit of a safety improvement and and it's also in need of repair that's the crux of the of the improvements that are planned um i'm usually here talking about a lot more things like steep slopes and big drainage plans and things that we're doing but in this case i'm talking more about things we're not doing um the drainage doesn't change there's very little area of impact in terms of the work it's maybe a few hundred square feet we do have one issue that's outstanding that we'll have to address with the county they did review this plan they had a review letter that was issued that the crux of their review letter and i think it's kind of automatic for them for anything that comes in front of them based on what i've seen over and over is they want new sidewalks and new curbs along the frontage So I'm gonna have to talk to them about that and see if that's really necessary. If it is, then we'll do it. It actually would cause more disruption and disturbance in terms of a construction effect than anything else we're planning to do. So that's something we'll have to satisfy with the county. If they really want it, it is only 40 feet of frontage, so we can put a new curb in and put a new sidewalk in and save them the expense next time they do the road. but so that's an outstanding issue otherwise the the drainage is exactly the same the sidewalks and and there's no increase in coverage so there's no triggers for storm water requirements or things of that nature and i think that covers it uh unless i miss something hillary can catch me there or if there's any questions um there's no new utility no though the utility work has been done already to get the restaurant running Um, and then if you could just confirm that there's enough space on the sidewalk, you know, I think that was in the, yeah, the only place there's any change to the space on the sidewalk is that landing to the left of the vestibule on Aubrey, because we're reorienting it that one step. comes a little farther out than what's there now. But what remains is it's about six feet, five inches. It's a little bit more than six feet in there. And so it's more than sufficient space for pedestrian movement.

Perfect, and all of the numbers on your zoning chart, we've confirmed those are the correct numbers, so if there's any plans that have other numbers, we'll plan as the correct one.

Correct. Yeah, I think there was a question about the building coverage and FAR, but it would be as per the plan here, and that's not changing.

Perfect. I don't have anything else.

I have a follow-up to that. So the new step when you're turning it away from that cellar hatch, that's coming into the sidewalk a foot? Correct. Okay. And you said how much is remaining after you have that?

Well, on one side it's about 6'5", and it's almost 6'7", on the other side.

and if City Council for whatever reason says no we don't want you to encroach you can still have the habit yeah we could we could reconstitute the existing condition with you know an upgraded

concrete landings. It's not like it's a deal killer. No, it's still functional. It's just better not to have you touching down on that.

Got it. Okay. Do we have any other questions for the engineer?

I did actually. The entrance on Aubrey.

No, there's an enclosed vestibule there, and it's been there forever. As long as I can remember, it was the same vestibule when it was Marco Polo, which of course was there for decades. And that's already been cosmetically rehabbed, so it's got some windows and it looks much nicer, but it's an enclosed vestibule.

But does there need to be ADA compliance?

There is ADA access that was provided when they renovated the restaurant. It's not really shown on here, but Quite a bit, a little bit down to the right, there's a new door that's on the outside at grade, and just inside is like a little lift. So kind of like the prestige diner kind of thing.

I haven't been there since redo.

So none of these changes is going to affect the first aid squad's ability to get a stretcher into the restaurant, is there?

It should not, no.

That's the only thing I would worry about is safety of getting people in and out.

Okay. Thank you.

Make sure you have the mic, Mr. Son.

Speaking on behalf of EMS, they'd actually prefer the ramp to the lift because the stretcher will fit on the ramp. I don't think it'll fit on the lift.

yeah i mean i can't say that i was involved in any of that but i i i think the access was something that was looked at and designed for that's why that door was added and uh the provision is there i mean it there may be even in there a couple of steps up then often that's workable yeah i i think the architect can't answer the question can't be a flight of stairs but yeah i'm i'm probably not the best one to answer those questions okay

I just have a question.

Marie, do you have anything? I have a few. Marie, just a second. Can we have Delia, and then you can go forward.

Just two quick questions, Andrew. Sure. The first is regarding Union County. Have you resubmitted the revised plans as they requested, or is that?

No, not yet. I've been trying to reach him. because I kind of wanted to talk to him about it first. Because like I said, my sense of the letter is I've seen a number of these in different projects, and I feel like they don't even look at it that hard, and they just say, put a new curb, put a new sidewalk in. Yeah. Well, it seems as though they're pretty specific around the concrete dense requirements or the... Well, yeah, but those are standard requirements for them, and they have standard details that they want, these specific details on there. And I think they even reference the concrete curb, for example, but it's all block curb in here.

I mean, regardless, we're going to comply with whatever... We'll satisfy them either way.

It's not a complicated thing to do.

And then my second question is, and maybe the architect is going to touch on this, but are the stairs as depicted UCC compliant, or are they extending one foot beyond the last step? Or will you just handle that during the permit process?

I mean, the code compliance part of it, I think the architect is probably better equipped to answer that.

Marie? I think I'll start with the question that Delia had said about that step that's sticking out on Aubrey. Just from a pedestrian access standpoint, when somebody's walking down the sidewalk, is there anything that's going to alert someone that this step is down at the bottom? There's no overhang. There's nothing sticking out. So how would a pedestrian not see that?

not trip on it well exactly not trip on it right there's is there a railing that's coming out is there something that's a little higher to catch i don't know if that one has a railing that one i'm getting a nod that there will be a railing on that talk to the other architect okay so yeah we'll let the architect answer yeah he can answer that

Okay. Um, the other, um, the other thing was, um, no, not on your drawings, but there was photos on the architect's drawings and there was a, um, over on Morris Avenue there or Morris street, there was, um, a roof leader that was coming down and discharging right to the sidewalk. Um, is there any other way to discharge that storm water so that it's not coming out on the sidewalk, creating an icing condition?

I mean, the only other opportunity would be to, especially if we're doing the sidewalks over and the curbs, to bring the pipe straight to the curb.

Or is there something, and maybe the architect can answer this, maybe is there another opportunity on the roof to bring that leader to somewhere else?

Yeah, because I know a lot of them on Aubrey Street are... route it to the curb or some of them are going directly into an inlet that's there as well. But yeah, I don't know how that works up on top of the roof in terms of the beginning of where the collection takes place, whether that's an option. Otherwise, the only other option would be to run it straight to the curb line instead of the sidewalk. That shouldn't be problematic in either case, because it's not a sump pump. Sump pumps are usually the ones that are problematic in terms of icing that happens, because if they run at all in the winter and then it's cold out, then you get the ice. But in a rain event, it rains, the water runs, and then it stops, and it stops running. It's not like something that persists for half a day afterwards.

okay all right well but we can look at an option for that just to see if that's a better way to do it right okay um um i have questions about the uh the lighting but i think i'll wait and ask the architect about that um and and and maybe i don't know if this is you or the architect to talk about the encouragement of um light spillage off of the property line yeah he's got a lighting plan that was done for that and it's well versed okay one of my comments about the county, you're already working with them. Is there going to be any equipment or additional boxes on the outside for lighting at all, nothing on the ground? No. Okay, additional equipment. And this might be an architect question, but anything about the dimming or motion censored? Yeah, he'll address that.

He'll do all the lighting. Everything with lighting.

Okay.

Thank you.

Is everybody done? Mr. Warner?

i just want to make sure uh missiles that as between our two applicants professionals who are testifying we cover all the items in the engineer's report i know many of them are architects but can we uh yes we will be confirmed that all relating to the engineer are will complies and then we'll see if we get will complies from all the architectural questions in the engineer's report Is there anything the applicant cannot comply with?

No, I mean, again, we're going to comply with the Union County. I just don't know what that compliance looks like at this point.

That's up to Union County and the applicant.

And I think that Andrew's addressed quite a few questions. I think the other questions are related to the lighting and so the architecture.

There's nothing that the engineer cannot comply with that's engineering related in the engineer support. Correct. Thank you. That's all I have Madam Chair.

Just, Andrew, if you could confirm for the record that all the areas of noncompliance shown on your zoning table are preexisting conditions. They're not being adversely affected by this.

MR. That's correct. They're preexisting and are not being expanded or exacerbated as a result of this work.

You can ask, but I think they have to.

Yeah, I think I heard what you guys were talking about. For the Union County, sorry, for the Union County approval that's going to be needed or maybe not needed, that would be a condition of a, can that be a condition for us? Yeah, obviously it's going to be a condition for them.

It's needed and we got a review from them and that we would have to satisfy in order to clear their approval and so I'm just trying to work out the details of what exactly that looks like and then we'll do yeah whatever they're going to be usually in the resolution as a condition of approval yeah that'll be part of it what I think for just so you know how it works sometimes you know Marie Collier's does their big long list of engineering issues and a mix of architectural issues and we'll hear from the architect in a minute

then we usually button that all up unless the applicant does not agree but typically they agree to all Satisfied by all of the concerns and that's one of the ones listed in the colliers Yes, the only reason I bring it up is just because we we are a little short staffed in DCS right now So if we could if we could have that Tied to colliers and not the city engineer.

I think it would be helpful for the city Yes, I've just seen so many applications where something's required for DEP or this or that and it's I

don't know if we're supposed to have you check it or so i think we need to be just very clear going forward i think it'll be when we do our resolution compliance it'll go to marie and then she'll review everything just one correction for the record it's not usually in the resolution it's always in the right

we have the general outside of agency approvals but we also include all the separate specific ones when they're listed so the included but not limited duly noted thank you okay so are we ready for the architect sure thank you oh sorry public I'm so sorry do we have questions from the public for the engineer

No, it doesn't look like we do.

OK.

Thank you, Mr. Clark, for that reminder. It's been a while.

And then if you could just go through your qualifications for the board.

I'm sorry, first name, your name is? Nicholas Giuliano. Yes, that's right. Thank you. You got that question right. What's your address? We're going to go for two for two here. Business 16 Maple Street, South Jersey.

The rest you'll get from your council.

Right, you can just run through your qualifications. Sure.

Appeared before this board fairly recently. Appeared before the zoning board a number of times. And I've testified also in Millburn, Montclair, Westfield, Rumson, and Middletown most currently. I'm a bachelor's of architecture from New Jersey Institute of Technology and currently licensed in New Jersey and New York State to practice. And remains a good standing, correct? I believe so, yes.

We accept your qualifications.

Perfect. And can you just run through the steps that you took to prepare to give your testimony tonight?

Sure. I've been to the site probably 100 times since the renovation started. Drove by there recently as well just to kind of see the lay of the land since everything's been done and all the construction equipment's gone compared to, you know, the restaurant next door, what the rest of the street looks like. I feel like we have a pretty

modest application that really enhances the property overall from the outside excellent and you've obviously prepared plans and had conferences with the applicant reviewed the administrative comments review the ordinance yes yeah perfect and then using the plans that were filed can you describe for the board what is proposed from an architectural standpoint sure

I'll start with the exterior landings and steps since it seemed like there were some questions on that for Andrew. That part of the project is primarily just to enhance the safety of the site and help with the pedestrian wayfinding. As Andrew had mentioned, the Morris Avenue entrance vestibule is really not supposed to be a primary entrance anymore. During the design phase, we had decided with the owner to remove one of the exterior landings and steps going into that vestibule and really just maintain one towards the corner for egress purposes on the inside only. It's a non-entry door. And on the other Morris entrance, the plan was to eliminate the awkward single step at the bottom. A couple of the other steps have unequal riser heights. The current railing's probably not code compliant anymore. So we're planning to just reconstruct that entire step and stoop. It'll actually be smaller than Kern. It'll just be sized for kind of the minimum platform size you need. All of the new riser and tread heights will be code compliant. We'll be building a new guardrail and handrail that are all code compliant to current code. All of the other steps on the site don't require full guardrails because they're only two steps a piece, but we're still including just a single handrail for convenience. And that'll help with some of the, you know, kind of visual cues that you were concerned about on Aubrey Street. They'll see the step, but they'll also see the handrail coming in. The menus in that landing, it's illuminated. The door will have a sign on it, so we feel like that vestibule will really kind of signal itself as the entrance to the restaurant and don't feel that there'll be a tripping hazard of any kind. Really, we feel like it's going to feel better for people to not have to step so close to the basement access door, just because I know when I'm walking on the street, I constantly...

It's shown on A3, the railing that's going to be where that step's protruding.

And then, yeah, we have a new wheelchair lift on the inside of the restaurant. Right next to the wheelchair, there's actual steps into the restaurant, and those are directly in front of the door. That's at grade. So if there's any concern about stretcher access at the lifted vestibules on Morris and Aubrey, that rear entrance is a pretty straight shot right up to the first floor. When you open that grade door, you can kind of go right up. It's only two steps, about six inch risers a piece. So we feel like that would be pretty good access if anybody was coming in with a stretcher or just any kind of bigger piece of equipment that might be tougher to jockey through the main entrance vestibules.

Mr. Staunton, do you have anything else to ask about that?

No, not really. None that you can't make pretty successfully from the inside.

Okay. All right. We have a lot of lighting questions. Yep.

I think if you want to just run through maybe the signage, the lighting, and then...

Yeah, so, I mean, most of the lighting that we're here for on the application, it's essentially kind of decorative in nature. It's very dim lighting, wall-mounted lanterns, similar to what Summit House has. We're not actually doing gas lanterns here. They'll be electric, but it'll be at a similar kind of light level where it's really just a glow on its own. It doesn't really illuminate much, to be honest, other than just the little bit of facade right in front of it. There'll also be some gooseneck lighting illuminating the Aubrey's Corner sign that's already been installed. That'll be shielded. It's facing only against the building, not down onto the sidewalk or out onto the adjacent street or neighbors. And we have... a foot candle calculation photometric chart that was prepared by the lighting designer. Really the most intense part where we have light spillage is at Morris Avenue, right in front of that vestibule. We get up to about 1.2 foot candles there. The ordinance does stipulate that you can be up to one foot candle for commercial sidewalks, so we're kind of close to that level already. There's street lights already that exist there. Everything down Aubrey Street is really pretty low numbers. By the time you get to the sidewalk, we're at 0.3, 0.2, 0.4. And again, this is not abutting another property on either of these two sides. They're just onto the street. And the lighting really terminates very far away from when you get to the first kind of residential block on Aubrey street. So all of this kind of stops on, go back to the photos. Really the last piece of lighting we're installing is at the end of the new green storefront and all of that stucco at the end here is all just not eliminated other than just emergency lighting. Sorry.

How many feet is that?

Probably scale it off from the plan. I mean, probably 50 feet to the edge of the building, then you still have the parking driveway to get into the parking lot, and then the next lot starts. So probably 70 or 80 feet from the next lot. From the last light. Yeah. I don't think it'll change kind of the perceived brightness from either street. And really, I mean, you want a little bit of light on the sidewalk to get there. There really wasn't much to begin with when it was Marco Polo. other than just the street lights so again helpful for wayfinding for so dim lights are gonna shoot down so that it does help with pedestrian just like kind of a general ambient light outward they're glass lanterns I'll go to the last page here on a five I believe it is has a cut sheet of that light it's a copper lantern that gets mounted onto the building it's got a opaque cover on top, but then all four sides of it are glass.

Because I saw, they're nice pictures. The bottom is open or is it solid?

I think the bottom itself is solid to hold the fixture, but then the four sides of the vertical are glass, clear glass.

I'm actually thinking about lighting around the step. Is there going to be enough just to see it accurately? Because it does stick out. It's a little awkward. But I understand why you're doing it, and it has a railing, which is helpful. Does anybody have questions about the lighting on the building?

I do not.

Just for clarification, you referred to, if I may, Madam Chair, earlier the foot candle illumination levels. You were referring to the diversified sidewalk lighting sheet dated February 11, 2026. Would that be correct? That's right. Okay, thank you.

Marie, you ready?

Do you want to do that or do you want them to do the signage and then answer questions?

I thought we'd stick to lighting unless that's more difficult. That's totally fine. You know, do it by topic? Sure.

Do you have any hours of lighting, any switches to turn off the lights at any time? What are the plans on there?

To my knowledge, and I'll let Mr. Taylor confirm, I believe they'll just be turned on sort of at the evening hours, you know, right around dusk, and probably run until the restaurant shuts at the end of the night. They won't be on overnight at all.

OK, so on some timer or some photometric? Right. Right? Photometric, that's not what I meant.

Timers.

Timers. Yeah. When's the restaurant closed?

Sorry?

So I'll have Mr. Can I have Mr. Taylor come back on? Sure.

Remains . So the kitchen closes at 9. So we're closed always on Mondays. On Sunday evenings, the kitchen closes at 9 o'clock. Pretty much all six days, usually we have guests stay maybe an hour or so after the kitchen closes. So on Sundays, it closes at 9. Tuesday, Wednesday, it closes at 10 o'clock. And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the kitchen closes at 11. We've been open now for just under. and I think I have had guests there past midnight, maybe once. So we certainly will have a timer that we'll be using and certainly won't have those lights on past the guests leaving.

Thank you. Okay. Any other questions on lighting?

No, I think they've covered all of the other. Great. Okay.

Okay, on the signage. So as you know, if you've been to the site at all, the main Aubrey's Corner sign has already been installed. It was compliant with all the signage requirements as of right. It's really just the accent signs and their relationship to this sign that are necessitating the variances. The first set of signs are really kind of small accent signs at the corner of the building. And these are really just more of a design motif than anything else. We're really emphasizing that this is a corner building, if it isn't evident in the name already. but we're showing two small street sign placards on both streets meeting at the corner of the building. Because the building is on the lot line for the most part on Aubrey Street and very close to the lot line on Morris, putting two signs at a corner that way creates the variance for distance from the lot line on the Aubrey Street side. from Aubrey to the property line again there's no neighbor on that side it's the street so we feel like it's not that impactful in the sense that it's a sign too close to somebody else's storefront that may have a sign that's conflicting you know it's just the street once you get beyond it And the other variance is for the Aubrey Street placard street sign and its proximity to the main Aubrey's Corner sign. And again, the main Aubrey's Corner sign is placed above the first two kind of glass storefront pieces that you can see it from Morris when you're coming down the road. But because it's positioned relative to the lot line, the street sign placard for Aubrey Street is within six feet of distance to the Aubrey's Corner sign. Again, it's a much smaller scale sign than the Aubrey's one. It's very much a major and a minor sign. And in terms of all the other signage requirements, we're well under the total amount of square footage of sign we could have for this storefront overall. The letter heights are all quite small compared to the maximum allowed. We feel like the signage for the building itself is pretty unobtrusive. There could be a lot more signage without any variances, but just this particular design necessitates a few because of the building's position to the lot lines.

Thank you. Questions?

Just for clarity, none of the signage is illuminated, correct?

Not internally illuminated. The main Aubrey's Corner sign will have gooseneck lights that illuminate it from above, but nothing's backlit or internally illuminated.

Any other questions regarding signage? You have one? Okay.

Yes, I do. I don't want to disappoint you. Just for confirmation, the magnitude of the deviation for the sign separation variance is three feet, i.e. three feet versus six feet minimum required separation? Yes. Let me look at my chart just to see the exact number.

Yes.

I cheated. I looked at Mr. Burgess's memo. He's never wrong. Speaking of Mr. Burgess, do you have a resolution? That's right. Correct?

That's correct.

That's right. Great. And I guess the signed setback deviation is actually less than a foot, three foot required, two feet, three inches or thereabouts is what exists? Correct. Okay. So we have that magnitude. Okay. Thank you. Nothing further.

Joe, do you have anything?

No, when you get time to deliberate, I'll offer a couple of comments.

Okay. All right. Do you have anything else to share with us?

I just have a brief closing statement, if that's okay?

We're not quite there yet. Okay. Sorry. Questions for the public. I'm so sorry.

Questions from the public for our architect?

No?

You have another question? Oh, good. Go. Sir, can you just confirm that the handrails are going to, or can we make this a condition of approval? They're going to extend past that so that the UCC compliant, I'm not sure if they were in those depictions or not, but in speaking with the building official, I know he was a little bit concerned about that.

Right, so the new stair on Mars Ave, the one with the denser picketing here, that will be a fully code-compliant stair with the handrail extending one foot beyond the bottom tread. The other sets of steps aren't required to have any handrails by code. We're really just putting them there for a matter of convenience. There'll be a little bit of a decorative curve probably as the rail terminates beyond the last step, but we didn't want to bring this handrail particularly a full foot beyond the step because then that's another foot.

How far do you think it extends?

Probably four inches maybe in that version.

Is that just because it's shorter?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

But if I may, just for clarification, no handrails that are being installed or will be installed will violate

uh the construction code it's just a matter of you're installing more than is required correct that's right marie can i ask your opinion um with regard to tripping and just it's unusual to have a step going into a sidewalk and it's in the cities right away would we recommend something more extended than four inches just to to try and catch people's eyes so they don't trip or do you think four inches is sufficient i think

that's sufficient you know it's it's something to catch their eye you know a little higher up than just the foot level and i think i think that's adequate okay didn't somebody recommend planners just like yes buffer that right which they could be on either side and we're going to okay provide those yeah it might be helpful sure

I mean, I am unfamiliar with, I saw Mr. Linson's comments and I thought, are they allowed to do that? Because they're in the right of way.

Yes, it's the same thing like La Focaccia, because they are temporary and you can remove them, then you don't need them.

So they can be? Yes, they can be moved around. All right, so maybe that's a good idea just for safety so people don't trip on it to put them on either side of the step. Okay, great.

Madam Chair, you alerted me to something, which is you mentioned one of the other reports and I was focusing on the plan our engineers reports but maybe we should double check and make sure where you will comply with the foresters report and with the construction officials report as well so we have fire is that all of them are just those I think those were the only ones with any comments okay so we have engineer with construction code with Forrester well I guess HPC and EC had recommendations as well they just said that

They agreed with the design. They liked the design. There was no specific comments to comply with.

Got it. I was going by the check marks on the on the cover sheet. Didn't get to the reports yet. OK, so we got them all.

OK, good.

My last question is, this isn't going to change delivery times or can you just go over what the current delivery hours are for the restaurant? Sure.

Remain on the road. It won't change anything for current delivery times. The waste removal is from my understanding to the city's requirements of sometime between 4 and 9 a.m. and then the only early delivery we have is the bread delivery and that's usually around 6 to 7 a.m. those are the early ones everything else is normal you know normal business time all right so

think we can wrap well you want to do your comments public comment thought we just asked that was a question yeah questions now they get to comment oh that's right comments yeah do we have any general comments for this application from the public you get to be sworn in by me if you make a comment no I have to tell the truth OK, you scared them all away.

I don't think they were.

OK, so yeah. OK, so you may proceed with your closing statement.

OK, excellent. Thank you so much. So the record demonstrates that this is limited and carefully considered application for an existing property and an existing restaurant use. The proposed improvements are modest. They consist principally of lighting signage and the replacement and reconfiguration of the existing entry landings. There is no expansion of the building, and as Mr. Taylor confirmed, there is no change in the restaurant's operations or any increase in the intensity of use, including parking demand, hours of operation, deliveries, or service activity. The requested variance relief is similarly limited. The deviations relate to the location and separation of two signs and the illumination levels at the property line. As the testimony established, these conditions are directly related to the existing configuration of the property, including its corner location and the fact that the building is located at or near the property line. The proposed lighting is intended to provide appropriate illumination at the entrances, improve pedestrian visibility, and assist with building identification. The signage is modest in scale and designed to provide identification from both Morris Avenue and Aubrey Street while maintaining the architectural character of the building. It's important to look at the application in the context of this particular property. It is at a prominent corner along Morris Avenue, a busy county roadway, and an important gateway into the city. The improvements will enhance the appearance of the property, improve identification and wayfinding, and provide a safer, more welcoming pedestrian environment. Uh, the requested relief is appropriate because it is limited site specific and driven by the existing physical conditions of the property rather than by an effort to intensify or expand the existing use. The proposed improvements advance the purposes of zoning by promoting public safety, improving the visual environment, and enhancing the character of this corridor. There is no substantial detriment to the public good. The lighting has been designed to be modest, shielded, and directed toward the building and pedestrian areas. The signage deviations are minor and the application does not create any additional demand to the site. Accordingly, it is respectfully submitted that the applicant has satisfied the applicable standards for the requested minor site plan approval and variance relief. The application represents a thoughtful improvement to an existing property without changing the nature or intensity of the use and will be an enhancement to the property. Therefore, the applicant requests that the planning board approve the application subject to reasonable conditions as the board may deem appropriate.

Thank you. Okay. So we're going to go into closed session now. What do you not close session? What do you call it when we get to deliberate without anybody else talking?

Very good.

Okay.

I think Joe might have some comments regarding C1 and C2 variances. Yes.

It's interesting. Although they didn't use the terminology when they testified, they did touch upon statutory burden in terms of improved wayfinding, aesthetic enhancements, and improved public safety to combine C1 and C2, primarily C2, which is the public benefits test. In terms of the lighting, in terms of enhanced public safety, it's also a C2 public benefits test. And when one looks at the extent of that lighting deviation from permitted 1.0 foot candles to the proposed 1.2, I would venture to say that there's not a person in this room they could distinguish with their eyes. what that difference is, is very de minimis. So in terms of public safety, excuse me, in terms of the negative criteria, there's no substantial detriment to the public good for all those reasons. And there's no substantial impairment to the intent of the master planner zoning ordinance because of the de minimis nature of the relief that's being requested.

Very good. Thank you, Joe. All right. So it's time for us to discuss. Any comments or opinions or feelings on it?

I would say I think everything, after looking at it for this weekend and most of today, I think it's very reasonable. I think it's a nice addition. It's tough starting a new business, so I think adding lighting and signage will hopefully make you more successful. It seems very reasonable. So I fully support this application.

Great.

Anybody else?

I would agree. I mean, what they've done so far has really been transformative, and this just puts the icing on the cake with the lighting, and I support it.

I have no issues, and I like the fact that they are thinking about the safety of people on the sidewalk and people in the side of the restaurant. So as long as John's okay with it, I'm okay with it.

Very good.

Very good. I'm going to tee it up real quick for a motion. Sorry? Would you like me to tee it up for a motion?

Well, I just wanted to say a couple of things before you teed it up. But I wanted to make sure anybody else had any other comments. Mr. Stern? No. Okay. So a couple of things that we touched on, and I just don't, I just want to confirm with Marie and Joe that they're covered in what you put in your reports that you're agreeing to, uh, address, um, the, the stormwater downspout onto Morris. Is that, uh, something that we, that they are agreeing to? Was that specifically in your. Did I miss that?

It actually was not in my letter. That's what I thought. But it sounds to me like they're willing to look into it to see if they can direct the water to another location or if they have to rip up the sidewalk that maybe they can pipe it underground so it's not an icing condition on the sidewalk.

How do people feel about making that a condition of approval because of ice? If it's going right onto the sidewalk at Morris where it's a busy street.

Has icing been an issue in the last year?

I think it's a good idea to make it a condition of approval.

It does sound like you're digging up the sidewalk for the county anyway, correct?

We may not have to. It depends.

But we can certainly look at piping a downspout to another corner.

I think that the applicant is definitely willing to look into it to see if there's a better location.

Would it be a, if, if the board so desires a good faith obligation, uh, subject to the review and approval of our engineer, you could work with Marie. Would you be able to stipulate to that and then the board will decide if that's sufficient?

Rather than us dictating that you could work with Maria on solutions. Okay, great. I'm not sure if we have to put in the hours of operation for just to, if they're testifying to turning off the lights when they close, but then- They're open till four in the morning.

I don't even know if that's legal, but do we need to put the operation times in there as part of the conditions or just put in there that they're going to, I think they were testifying to when the lights are going to be on and off, not necessarily what their hours of operation were. I don't. Right.

Right. You're linking it to that.

We're linking it to that when they close, then the lights will go out.

The lights will be off no later than, is it 11 PM each night or are there any nights when it may be midnight?

It would be, I would say, midnight because you want to wait for all of the employees to leave. Right, that's what Mr. Taylor said.

Yeah, if the board wanted to tie it to, well, I think I know where the chair is going, but if the hours of operation change and they get extended, albeit unlikely, it might be problematic to extend it that much. I'm not even sure it's permanent. yeah I don't think you could but but if you want if the if the board wanted to quantify a time for absolute we could just leave it in hours of operation if everybody's comfortable with that I just thought I'd ask yeah you want to leave a one hour post or 30 minutes post now uh closing or or just when do your people leave

9 o'clock on Sunday, 10 o'clock Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 11.

No, but I was asking when the employees leave.

By midnight, Mr. Taylor.

That's when the last guest, so far in the history, has the latest that they've left. The staff usually leaves about an hour afterwards in terms of cleaning.

Do they need that lighting?

No, because they always use the employee entrance door, which is in the parking lot.

Okay. So any thoughts on that?

I think the simplest way would be perhaps to cut off at midnight and just give it a number. And on most days, what are, uh, if they mentioned, uh, their Sundays, Sunday, 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock weekdays, every other day, midnight. Right.

I would say that there's a chance that it would be off before that. But if we put in 12, then

it's just the outside number so we have some some kind of idea okay for the neighbors perspective you want the lights on you know while the guests are leaving right exactly okay we have the stick okay thank you um and you're going to go to the city for the encroachment yeah and that's already agreed to yes and then um Oh, delivery times are the same. But you confirmed that in testimony. So I'm not worried about that. Anything else to clarify any conditions that we have for approval? I don't think so. OK. So go.

My understanding is the relief sought is minimum sign setback, three feet versus three feet required, two feet, three inches proposed. Sign separation between Aubrey Street and Aubrey Corner signs, six feet separation minimum required, three feet proposed. And the illumination at the lot lines is, I heard as much as 0.2, 0.3 foot candles, whereas 0.1 foot candles is the maximum permitted.

It's 1.3. I'm sorry. Oh okay.

Joe will double-check that one. It might not be always perfect. And minor site plan approval. Right. Minor site plan approval always. Right. We got that. So it's minor site plan approval with a signed setback, signed separation, and maximum illumination at the lot lines. All the conditions set forth in the various reports as stipulated to buyer on behalf of the applicant, as well as all handrails UCC compliant, and all A good faith effort to find an alternative location for the downspout, for the stormwater runoff from the downspout subject to the review and approval of our engineer and cut off on the lights, absolute cut off at midnight. And I believe those were all the individual conditions of approval. So that would be the motion I'll assume unless I'm told otherwise.

I move. So moved. Second.

Okay.

Vice Chair Hamlet? Yes. Ms. Bowen? Yes. Council Member Crisofoli? Yes. Mr. Dalmasso? Yes. Mr. Felment? Yes. Ms. Morrison? Yes. Mr. Stern? Yes. Mr. Staunton? Yes. Chair Bolson-Alvarez? Yes.

So thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. You did a beautiful job. Thank you. It looks great. Shall we take a little break for everybody before we start the next application? We're going to do a five-minute break until 5 of 9. I'll give them a chance to sit. All right. So the next item on our application is 190 River Road. All right.

Good evening. I'm sorry. Before you begin, my understanding is we may have a board member who is recusing himself from the matter. Board member Delmaso will be recusing. We still have, I believe, 2468989. Yes, nine members. Full compliment to proceed without Mr. Delmaso.

Okay. No, thank you for pointing that out. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Jason Tuvel, attorney for the applicant. This is an application for 190 River Road. It's block 102, lot 1. It's for preliminary and final major site plan with some C variants and design exception relief. As the board may be well aware, this is the old Wells Fargo building. The property is located basically on an island at the edge of the municipality close to the Millburn border. This is a fourth round site, meaning it's part of your fourth round affordable housing plan, where the developer in this instance worked very diligently with the municipality and its city professionals to come up with the plan that's going to be presented before you today and at subsequent hearings. So the application is for 198 residential units. 30 of those units would be set aside for affordable housing consistent with your affordable housing plan, as well as the settlement agreement with the municipality and the zoning ordinance that was subsequently adopted in furtherance of the of the housing plan. The site plan, as you're going to see before you, is to repurpose the existing building. So it's very interesting. On a lot of these projects, you mainly see ground-up construction. Here, the applicant has the ability to repurpose an existing structure, most of that being the parking structure, the two stories of it that's out there today. The application as a whole, we believe, is going to improve stormwater management, enhance landscaping, and also be very, very aesthetically pleasing from an architectural perspective. And the applicant paid a lot of attention to the Vanderpool aspect of this application in terms of the historic nature. Although the site is not historic or the building is not historic, it was called to our attention that there is a lot of value to this property from a sentimental perspective and the way that the municipality views this property and what occurred there. in the past, so the applicant worked with your historic commission and your other design professionals to come up with the architecture that you'll see this evening. There's also, what went into this, and you'll see by way of the comments, we worked very diligently with your technical review committees, your planner, your engineer, your fire, police, historic, so you'll see a lot of the comments, I believe, we've addressed successfully and to their satisfaction prior to coming before this board today. And that was over the last, I would say, year and the last couple months of really refining the site plan. I think what's also important to note are some of the agreement terms that were part of the settlement agreement with the city. I won't get into some of the ancillary terms. I'll get more into the terms that deal with the site plan aspects of the project. So the project will provide shuttle service for the residents to and from the downtown. Those will work in the morning peak hours from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and in the evening from about 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The shuttle service will be run by the developer. There will be no third party service running the shuttle. The developer themselves will be running the shuttle service. There were very specific landscaping requirements that the city required in the agreement. We've adhered to those and you'll see that during the course of the presentation. We are going to contribute 25 parking spaces on site for the city to use. And when I say the city, I mean the city will figure out how they want to use it, whether it's for employees or other services that the city provides. But there will be 25 spaces, and they'll also have access to the shuttle service that the applicant is providing. And then we also named the building after the Vanderpool family, so you'll see that when you see the architectural plans that you have before you and The application, as it should be based on the fact that we work so diligently on this ordinance with the town, essentially conforms with all the higher tier of zoning requirements. So we're under on building coverage and lot coverage, which is usually a measure of intensity. So we add a percentage that we could max out there. We're actually below those. We're below on building height. We're below on floor area ratio. And we're significantly over on parking. So the residential component of this project requires 384 parking spaces. Because we're re-utilizing the existing parking structure, there's actually 585 spaces. So we meet the requirement. The 25 above the 384 will go to the city, and another 175 We have the ability under the ordinance to lease those to a third party for some sort of auto dealership or similar type of use to use on a monthly basis. And that's in your zoning ordinance as part of the parking requirements. So I have five witnesses that I plan on calling. And I'll just explain who they are and what each one of them is going to testify to. So I have Rob Frood. He'll start. He's our civil engineer with Dynamic Engineering. He will go through stormwater, the site orientation, the layout, lighting, and he'll be first. Then I have Merrilee Meacock. She's our architect. So she'll go through the building elevations and the floor plans. Tom Bauer is our landscape architect. So I know sometimes that the civil engineer will do landscaping, but here, since it's a pretty comprehensive project, the applicant did hire to its credit its own a separate landscape architect to do a planting plan here that you'll see. And then Craig Paraguay is our traffic engineer. And then finally, Matt Flynn with John McDonough and Associates is our professional planner. So like I said earlier, from a from a zoning perspective, we adhere to basically all the requirements. We do have some signage variances associated with the application. There are some bulk deviations. One is about point two feet that the setback to JFK Parkway. But the reason for that is just the existing parking structure just happens to be point two feet off. But the other setbacks all comply just some other operational characteristics that I'd like the board and the public just to have in the back of their heads when they're listening to the application and the witnesses will go through this but just so you have it from the outset so there's a pool and there's other amenities associated with this multifamily development those will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. And we'll talk more about the intricacies and how they're accessed and security, but I just wanted you to be aware of that. The fitness center that's on the site will be 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Garbage pickup and recycling is usually two to three times And again, that's private hauler. The applicant has its own service that comes during off-peak times that's coordinated with building management. So we'll get into more detail on a bunch of those things, but I just wanted the Board and the public to keep that in mind. I provided my affidavit of service and publication to the Board. I hope Mr. Warner had the ability to go over that. I think it's in order. Is that my cue?

I'm setting you up. With the chair's permission. I did have an opportunity, as always, to read the content of the notice. I did find it to be sufficient. I found and timely served and published the certified mail on and published on July 17th, both at least 10 days prior to this evening. So the board does have jurisdiction to proceed. I would never let the board proceed without jurisdiction.

Thank you. Thank you. So, Madam Chair, with your permission, I'd be happy to call our first witness, which is Robert Froude from Dynamic Engineering.

Madam Chair, if you like, I could swear on all the witnesses, as well as our board professionals, or at least those that are here this evening.

So, if you will all raise your right hand, as well as our board professionals, both.

Do all of you swear to God or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. Thank you all. I think we have got all five witnesses there as well. Perfect.

Okay. Proceed.

All right, great. So, Rob, if you can just go through your qualifications for the board, licenses held, educational background, and your experience testifying as a civil engineer in the state of New Jersey.

Certainly, again, Robert Frood, F as in Frank, R-E-U-D. My professional address is with Dynamic Engineering, 1904 Main Street in Lake Como, New Jersey. I have a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from Lehigh University. I've been practicing civil engineering and land development consulting for over 30 years in New Jersey. I'm a licensed engineer in New Jersey as well as six other states in the region. I've testified in well over 100 municipalities throughout the state, most in Union County, except for Summit. So I'm happy to be here for the first time.

Welcome. And your license is current and in good standing?

My license is current, and I serve as a director and principal with Dynamic Engineering.

I ask that the Board accept Mr. Fruits' qualifications as a civil engineer.

In good standing, you always ask.

I think he said it.

All right. We accept you. Thank you.

All right. So, Rob, why don't we start by describing the surrounding area and some of the existing conditions on the property. So this will be our first exhibit. All right. So, Rob, can you just describe the exhibit for the board and who prepared it?

So this is entitled Overall Aerial Map Exhibit. It is prepared by our office. It has today's date, 7-27-2026. This is, again, an aerial map. We're designating it A1. A1. Again, this is an aerial map pulled by a service called DeerMath within the past several months. It identifies the current property outlined in yellow. And we've also identified several other critical features. So you have the city limits of Summit that surround the property. You have 24 running on the right side of the page. So north is generally to the right side of the page with 24 on the north and the ramp from 124 immediately on the north side of the property. You have the mall here. Beyond that, further to the north, to the east or below the lower end of the property is River Road with the municipal golf course beyond and then residential beyond that. And then on the south end, is where jfk parkway and river road come together you have a small connector that helps serve as access through there and then on the west side is jfk parkway and you have office buildings uh beyond that as well so the property is basically surrounded by street frontages yeah so you have yeah you have right away frontages on all sides of this property So the next exhibit would be A2. And this is an enlarged version of the same exhibit showing the property, again outlined in yellow, the same orientation with River Road at the bottom of the page. What's now just off the page, and I failed to point out, you have the Passaic River that runs to the west of the property beyond the other office use. And there's a tributary of that. What's very unique about this property is there's a tributary of that that runs through the property and ultimately through the golf course. There's a large culvert underneath the parking structure that carries that water through the property. There's a floodplain governed by the DEP that runs through there, and I'll get into that a little bit further as I describe some of the conditions. Specifically, this is Block 102, Block 1, known as 190 River Road. It's 4.4 acres, and again, as Jason indicated, it's in the AH3 3A affordable housing zone. As Jason mentioned, a very unique property in a couple of facets. One is it is completely surrounded by right-of-way and road frontage. Number two is the structure that's on the property today. What you see here is an outline of the parking structure building. This is actually the upper floor. There's a lower floor parking below what you see in the aerial. And then you see, uh, the building here that several stories that rises above the parking structure. Uh, their access is solely from river road, uh, the bottom of the page where it's an East side where you come in to, uh, an intersection into the property. You can go straight off river road and get into the lower level of parking. or you can go to the right and circulate around. You're basically coming up a ramp, getting onto the upper level parking here, which circulates around, and then there's a ramp that comes back down. So it's one-way circulation around, but that is a full movement driveway on River Road at that point. The building itself is about 52,000 square feet of that 4.4 acres. which is 27.6% coverage. The overall parking structure is about 80% coverage on the lot, using up most of that space. Again, going back to the DEP, again, there's an unnamed tributary that runs underneath the structure. It's in what was anticipated to be a 40-foot wide easement. It's noted on a older stream encroachment permit that was issued when this project was built. It appears that that easement was not recorded. As part of this application, we would record a 40-foot wide easement to allow for potential maintenance if necessary of that. As part of this application, we did make application to the DEP and received a flood hazard verification and an individual permit that would allow this development. As part of that review, they did review the flood hazard components of that, which are twofold. One is there is a floodway that runs through the property. It mirrors the line of the culvert that runs through the property. and what that means is the culvert in a flooding condition contains the floodway and it's a little bit beyond the banks of the culvert going through there in addition there is the floodplain excuse me will you be showing that air a graphic of of the culvert and the easement uh today uh we we can yes it's it's contained on the site plan we can show that thank you continue there is also a general floodplain which shows the hundred-year flood or the design flood for the DEP which surrounds a majority of the property the way it is situated with the elevations of the deck that that floodplain is encompasses the entire first floor of the parking by a foot or two, but the entire second floor is above the floodplain. The entrance from River Road is below the flood elevation, but as you come up the drive on either side, it rises above the flood elevation. And that's important because as we go into redevelopment, especially for residential uses, we need access through there. I will see if I can pull up a... So this is the site plan first floor at sheet six of 21. This is one of the sheets containing the set, so I don't know if you want this marked as an exhibit or. Need not be marked. If it's in the set, we're good. So this is as taken from the set again at sheet six.

Just the last revised date on the site plan set. Just so we can confirm for the record.

uh june 8 2026 revision number six we're confirmed thank you so i will this is a black and white version i can outline the culvert that runs through here it's uh starts opposite the golf course just south of where the driveway connects so it connects the drainage pond on the golf course comes under river road and then makes a slight angle and ends up on the northwest corner of the property where it becomes another open channel before it comes under JFK Parkway and ultimately connects further west to the Passaic River. So what I'm outlining here that comes through includes the 40-foot wide proposed easement area around that culvert. We're going to go back to the aerial map, and I just want to give some reference points for elevation. Again, the flood elevation through the site is between around elevation 184 to 186. When you're at the River Road entrance, that's at 183, so it's a couple feet below the flood elevation. As you go to the south side, it's about 190. So this is the low point on the site is the entrance on River Road. It's about elevation 190 here. JFK Parkway comes down a little bit again, 186 to 184. When you're at 124, that's the high side. That's actually higher at elevation 205. For reference, the lowest garage floor is 183. Again, that's a foot or two into the floodplain. But the upper garage floor, which becomes our entrance, and I'll show that when we get into the proposed site plan, is 194.7. So that entire upper floor parking, which also then contains the entryway and the vestibule and the access to the residential, is all well above the flood elevation. Jason mentioned zoning compliance here. Again, before we get into the proposed, I do want to point out there's one existing nonconformity that's in the northwest corner of the property where the parking structure is 24.8 feet. When the ordinance was written, it rounded to 25 feet, and we have a slight deficiency. So that's an existing nonconformity that we would request a variance to cover. There are all primary utilities here, gas, electric comes in, water, and sewer, and I'll get into those a little bit when I talk about the proposed, but they're all existing today. There is a pump on site to handle sanitary sewer. And that essentially covers the existing conditions. I'm going to turn now to a rendered plan. This was prepared by Milo Bauer-Carman, the landscape architect and dynamic engineering. It contains the site plan, the landscape plan of the perimeter of the site superimposed on that and colored you can also see here a plan view of the upper floor parking and the entry vestibule and i'll walk through that for the board a little bit to show the development and that's a3 and this will be a3 and this has a date of uh 7 27 2026. So again, as Jason mentioned, this is a very unique development in that it is essentially an adaptive reuse of the existing structure that's there. While the office component, the bank office component is dated and obsolete and not viable for the reuse for this project, the parking structure served a lot of value and we're retaining that parking structure and using that for the proposed development. The lower floor parking structure will remain essentially the same. The differences will be, and the architect will go through it in more detail. We'll bring in stair towers down so that we have ability to get down and up for the residents and also for access. There will also be utility rooms on that first floor that we'll go through, and that's the utilities coming in and out of the building as well. As you look at this, there's a slight modification to the circulation in the site.

The driveway on River Road remains exactly in the same place.

That'll come in and out. If you're coming in and you want to go to lower floor parking, you continue straight just as you would do today. The difference is the drive aisle that runs north-south along that River Road area, we're widening to make it two-way in both directions. That allows two-way access if you go north to get into the residential parking garage on the upper floor. and that would be gated gate controlled access in that area you can also turn left and come around the south side of the building as you see the additional color here and our landscape architect will go through it in more detail but there's some treatments there that provide a nice entryway into the building and what that includes is a drop-off area as well as a bypass circulation that goes directly into the parking structure that you see there also again gate control but what that drop-off area does is that allows for ride share to come, that allows for small deliveries like a mail, a quick Amazon delivery to come in at the upper level and come through. Anything you see in blue here would be services inside the building, lobby, mail rooms, things like that, and architects will go through that in further detail. But all that is accessed from that upper floor. There are three parking spaces here, including one handicap accessible parking space, for a quick park and drop-off. Maybe you're coming in for a leasing meeting or you're coming in to pick up someone. There's also a 24-foot wide drive here where you'd be able to stage along the curb or bypass to get through there as well for the drop-offs. Along the face of the building that faces River Road, we have a more substantial loading area. It'll be seven feet wide and run a length of the building here. just south of the entrance there's also going to be a roll-up there door there you'll see that a little bit more detail from the architecturals that roll-up door will handle larger deliveries that will handle move-ins move-outs things like that so if you're moving in or out you would stage here along this area and be able to park typically for apartments like this we don't see anything larger than say a u-haul type box truck an su-30 type truck is what we would show here so that truck could come in and stage here for deliveries this is also where garbage will come in and out of the building so architects will go through the details of how garbage is collected inside the building it's maintained inside the building until it's time to be picked up so when it is time to be picked up the garbage truck can stage in this area and The containers will be brought out, loaded into the garbage truck, and brought immediately back in. There will be no maintenance or storage of garbage containers outside the building other than for immediate pickup.

And Rob, in your professional opinion, the drive aisle width and the loading space size are adequate for the proposed vehicles that the applicant anticipates to go to the site.

Yeah, so as we've widened, the typical drive is 25 feet, which is more than sufficient for two-way traffic. Where we have the loading, we've widened to 30 feet. which includes the seven foot wide loading zone now we are requesting uh variance relief for the width of that loading zone which is uh in the ordinance is noted to be 12 feet wide that's often if you were to have a perpendicular type parking stall with loading you need to be able to open doors from both sides next to other spaces when you look at rsis and you look at a typical road width with parking on one side of the street it's 30 feet with a seven foot parking lane so this is consistent with while it doesn't apply it's consistent with RSIS dimensioning and more than enough for a vehicle to stage here for that loading for that garbage or for the drop-offs and get out total width is 30 including the seven I'm sorry total width is what 30 feet 30 feet including the seven and seven of it is seven of the 30 is is the loading correct Now, the other modification that we've done along the River Road frontage is we've added an emergency egress here a little bit further south. If you recall when I discussed the topography here, the River Road entrance is at the low point on the site. That is below the flood elevation. As we move south, we're rising. As this driveway rises to get to the second floor and River Road rises as you move south, we're getting up and out of the floodplain. This is provided therefore to be an emergency ingress and egress that's outside the floodplain. That was part of our DEP approval to provide that access point outside the floodplain for the residential use. We do have an application with the DOT currently that's under review for that access. And that will be gate controlled. Summit's emergency responders will have access to that gate if they need to come in from that direction as well. speaking of emergency and first responders from a fire perspective we have the ability for the fire truck the summit fire truck to come in and stage along the south side of the building then he would be able to turn around and come back out the main drive we've also met with and worked with the fire officials over the past several months through the TRC meetings and individual meetings and look at access from JFK Parkway to the building access from 124 an additional access along River Road so that there is quite a bit of access to the building from all of these road frontages for emergency services and I believe yes good no and I believe I believe there was a letter issued today from the fire official confirming that based upon everything we've talked about, that this satisfies their concerns. We have added additional stairwells that were some of his requirements in the building as well.

Right. At some point, can you guys drill down more on all of the ways that, that they can access, that they can turn around? Can you show those turnarounds and can you show how they can access so that we get comfortable with that?

Certainly, so we have vehicle circulation.

I don't mean you have to do it this second, because that's probably not what you had planned, but at some point.

I'm in access and circulation, so that was a good time. Right. So we have vehicle circulation plans as part of the plan set. I can bring those up.

Cause there's certain turning radius radiuses for, for fire trucks and, um, the concern of the atrium, like how are you getting people in and out of the atrium portion? I know that that was an earlier concern. Um, but you know, if, if that's not what you're prepared to talk about, we can talk about it at another night.

We can get into that. Nope. This is perfect. Yeah. And we worked very diligently with the fire official. I think you had multiple meetings to satisfy their guests.

Right. i mean i i uh i have some of the correspondence but clearly we weren't in the room and it would be helpful to understand and make sure we understand how you got there and how you're making sure that you that was a critical concern uh to the fire department as well to make sure that there was adequate access here so this particular exhibit is the vehicle circulation exhibit for the fire truck

is also sheet 21 of that revision 6 from June 8th 2026 so it's part of the plan set that's before you and that shows the fire truck coming in from River Road being able to make essentially 180 degree movement on to the access lane that comes up to the top and staging along that front uh drop-off area there there are no overhangs there it's full access for a vehicle to be able to come in and out to get out it would require a multi-point movement to get out but we've reviewed that with him and typically at that point there's other first responders there to help with traffic control And that was not a concern. We did also review with them staging along JFK Parkway in the event of emergency to access upper floors, staging along 124 in the event of emergency, and again, staging along River Road. in the event of an emergency for access to upper floors. We took into account the elevation of the ground, the elevation of the top floor of the building, the reach of the ladder to show that it could get to the majority of the balconies on that upper floor. And in part of that conversation is when we added an additional stairwell to come out.

Right. That was one of his suggestions. Rob, just point out where that is, just on the, or just the location.

So the stairwells, So here on the north side, we have an additional stairwell here. And what you see is there's a door here and an emergency. There will be a path here that would be accessible if you're coming out of the building to get out to the public right of way this way. And that's appropriate grade for egress from the building. back to a3 and again we also looked at the garbage trucks and the that su-30 or box truck showing coming in and staging along here and coming out the driveways again I'll briefly go through the parking standards here. Again, as Jason mentioned, this is a bit of a unique application because very often we're looking at parking with a microscope to make sure that there is enough parking. We're comparing RSI as maybe to some local realities of increased parking. This is a great situation where we have an abundance of parking because we're reusing the existing structure. Overall, the parking structure has 584 parking spaces. When following RSIS standards, based upon the breakdown of one, two, and three bedroom units, there are 384 spaces required. So there are 200 additional spaces beyond those required by RSIS. included within those 384 spaces would be the appropriate accessible spaces ada compliant spaces both on the first and second level of parking there will be four on each including van accessible spaces in this case those spaces are approximate to the lobby area here on the south side of that parking garage area We also have a complement of EV spaces appropriate for the EV statutes of 15% of the residential parking that's required, which totals 58 EV spaces. And those are broken down about 50-50 between the two floors. There are 30 on the floor that you see here located central to the parking area and closer and along that corridor. East wall that's closest to River Road and below that on the lower floor. There's another 28 EV spaces and those are put there For purpose and for reason because that is close to the water and the pump room so that we can provide additional fire suppression in that area That's something we've also discussed with the fire official Of those 200 extra spaces, as Jason mentioned, 25 are, as per the ordinance, reserved for the City of Summit, and 175 would be available for third-party leasing in accordance with the ordinance standards.

Just as a quick question on that. Yeah. For the 175, I'm assuming those are on the lowest level of the garage. So has DEP opined on if I would just imagine just as a layman, if you're putting 175 cars, leasing them out, if that's your area for prone to flooding for X number of year storm, how is how we manage that?

So the DEP standards for parking vehicles in a flood-prone area are, number one, that for residential, one space per unit needs to be above the flood elevation. By having the parking that we have on the second floor, we far exceed that. So there's at least one space for each unit on the upper floor. When you have parking in the lower floor, what is the standard is it would be signed and noticed that it would be flood-prone. In this case, it's only a foot or two, so we don't have the same risk of cars floating away if you were on a deeper riverbank or something like that. But it's all contained within the garage. But yes, it would be signed and noticed, and any leaseholders in that area would be aware that it would be flood-prone. Also included in the RSIS criteria, baked into the calculations of the 384 spaces, is one half of a parking space per unit for guests. So out of the 384, it's assumed that there are about 100 spaces for guests. From a bulk zoning and criteria standpoint, as Jason mentioned, this is prominently and mostly compliant with all the bulk standards. The only deviation, as we pointed out, is that one area in the northwest corner where the existing parking structure is 0.2 feet closer than what the ordinance says for 25 feet. Otherwise, all the setbacks are compliant. The coverages are compliant. We do have a slight increase in impervious coverage. We're at 80% now. We're going to go to 81.9%. And that's really the result of the widening of this drive on the west side to allow for two-way traffic. And what I'll get into in a minute is how we're mitigating that through stormwater management. But that's still below the 85% allowed. From a building coverage standpoint, 45% is allowed. we're at 41 percent coverage our floor area ratio is 1.59 where 1.65 is allowed so all of the bulk criteria again are satisfied with this application so it's really pretty unique to be able to come in here and talk about a project that has an abundance of parking and also satisfies the ordinance standards Briefly to talk about pedestrian circulation, today there is sidewalk all the way around the property. That will be maintained in the future. There's also in the southeast corner and the southwest corner, there are existing crosswalks and access to the south on River Road and also across the street. And we will be adding a crosswalk near the entrance of River Road to get over to the golf course. That's added. We'll provide ADA ramps in those areas as well.

I just have another question. I'm sorry. It's okay.

Will there be a rapid flashing beacon there or any type of...

I'm going to have our traffic engineer talk a little bit more detail about the details of that. That will be part of our DOT application as well.

I have a quick question while you're having your drink. I see you said a box truck can get in the driveway. Could a moving van get in there?

So not a... Typically for an apartment like this, a one, two, or three-bedroom apartment, moving is within a U-Haul, which is a 30-foot box truck. So no? So no, correct. Okay.

Quick question.

You said the emergency access is above the floodplain. That's the one to the left. Is that right? Correct. And that's pending some sort of approvals that you said it got DEP, but pending DOT.

DOT application is filed and pending. Yes. So we were we do not have that yet. Obviously, that would be a condition of of if this board were to grant approval, a condition would be to secure the DOT approval. Right. It just takes some time.

Okay. so that was filed recently or it was filed a few months ago it just the dot takes a long time traffic engineer go through the dot permitting of what was required okay sounds good and then as it relates to the floodplain the first level you said is a couple feet in in in the floodplain second level garage is not and the ev parking spaces are mixed between the two is that correct is there any

um concern around the ev parking spaces being in the floodplain equipment would be out of vertically above any flood elevations so equipment would not necessarily be ground mounted or mounted in such a way that it's it's outside the floodplain on the on the ceiling it's going to be mounted on the wall We haven't gotten into that detail yet. There are different methods to do it, but the interior programming to that level of detail hasn't been designed.

But the building department would review that. To mount utilities is very common outside of the flood, and you have to work with the construction department to do that to their satisfaction.

Good. Thank you.

Sure.

So as part of this application, your ordinance has a steep slope ordinance. We have reviewed that. We did submit a steep slope exhibit that shows some very minor steep slopes primarily along this eastern property line next to River Road near where the driveway is and along the north side. We do have some disturbance in those areas. Our disturbance is greater than a thousand square feet, so we're requesting variance relief for that. The purpose for that, again, is to be able to widen this drive that parallels River Road to allow for two-way traffic in that area. But all of this is previously disturbed area. It will be restored. Maximum slope three to one as noted in your steep slope ordinance so that we would satisfy the maximum slope when we return vegetation to that area. And you can see all these areas will be well vegetated upon completion.

So you see no negative impacts for the disturbance of that slope?

no it'll all be and it'll all be stabilized and it's being reviewed by the soil conservation district who would also review and make sure that it's appropriately stabilized thank you i mentioned briefly that we do have a slight increase in impervious coverage as part of this application As part of the review by the DEP, which is complete, this does not meet the criteria of a major development because we are less than one acre of disturbance at about .89 acres and less than a quarter acre of new impervious. One of the benefits of this application, the new DEP criteria that we follow now talks a lot about motor vehicle surface area, and water quality treatments because we are covering everything you see here that's parking, which much of it is surface parking today, exposed to the rain and elements. This will all be covered. So all of our parking will be covered and protected from the rain elements. That'll all be collected on the upper roofs and floors. So we have a significant reduction in motor vehicle surface area through the site of over half an acre. However, because we are disturbing more than 5,000 square feet, we're subject to this solar version instead of control standards for stormwater, which requires a reduction in stormwater for the 2 and 10-year storm. We've achieved that by taking runoff from the expanded driveway here, providing inlets to collect that on site with oversized pipes and a control structure, so we'll be controlling the runoff before it enters the road. All that runoff is tributary to that area today. We'll just be reducing that through the outlet control structure before it discharges. That has been reviewed, and we did receive our certification from the Soil Conservation District on June 2nd. We reviewed that stormwater. Also, obviously, under review of your engineers as well.

Otherwise, all the runoff

occurs as it does today generally by drains within the parking as it does today or it will be roof drains from the upper floors or the outdoor amenity areas and collected into a drainage system that's interior to the building and the structure that ultimately goes into that culvert that exists today. So the drainage patterns are very consistent with what they are today. From a utility perspective, as I mentioned, all existing utilities serve the site. We'll maintain gas service. We'll propose new electric service. You can see here just off the edge of the building where the access drive bumps out from the building a little bit.

There are two light tan squares and then a rectangular one.

Those are two transformer pads and a generator pad that will be installed for the new electric service and the generator service for the building. Those areas our landscape architect will go into a little bit more detail But there is evergreen screening in that landscape area between the drive and River Road to provide some screening for the new electric service and generator It will also be proposing new water service into the building including fire service for the proposed building and sanitary sewer service for the building If you've read the review letters, there were some discussions about sanitary sewer. We've had a lot of ongoing discussions with the city's engineering department about the sanitary sewer for the site today. There is a pump on site for the site that pumps out to River Road and ultimately goes south along River Road to a gravity system. We've performed ongoing investigations working our way downstream, if you will, in that area. First, we checked the pump. then we checked the immediate downstream force main and we're now looking a little bit further down the line what we've learned to date is there's adequate capacity from a treatment standpoint we're in the process of continuing the investigation to make sure that the lines that get from us to the ultimate treatment area have adequate capacity for conveyance Again, those studies are ongoing and we're working in close quarters with your engineering staff and the Department of Public Works to make sure that those studies are to their satisfaction. From a lighting perspective, what we've done is we've looked at the parking and modeled the parking lot lighting. Again, all of that is interior to the building, but we want to make sure that we have adequate lighting there. We also have a series of 19 fixtures that exist along the drive that parallels Rover Road and then out into the circulation drop off area in the south end of the property. Those light fixtures will be adjusted in temperature to match the requirements of the ordinance of 3500 Kelvin that eliminates one of the variances that was noticed your engineers and planners letter otherwise we do have a variance for maximum illumination of the property line what about 1.3 foot candles that's in the area where the driveways are along river road to make sure that we have adequate illumination for safety along river road one foot candles is permitted but in this area we're adjacent to the road and it's an important factor for safety we do satisfy the dot's criteria 0.2 at the curb line So, it diminishes quickly as you get past the property line to the curb line to satisfy the DOT. In that area where there's a driveway, it's important to have enough lighting to be safe.

And, Rob, that won't, in your opinion, negatively impact any surrounding properties? No.

You have River Road and the golf course immediately adjacent, so there's no negative impacts. There are no residents in the immediate area at that point.

I just have a question. If you were to go to the first road of residential, which I forget the name of that street.

Is it Iris?

Iris. Yeah. How is it going to impact the Iris residence? Because I would imagine there's been nothing there forever. And now all of a sudden we're you know, it's got how would like do you have any photometric?

So I will go to I can go to the lighting plan, but first I just want to go to the aerial. So This is A1, right? So this is the overall aerial plan. The property is outlined in yellow. Then the next yellow dash line is 200 feet. So probably 400 to 500 feet is when you get to the first residential south. And we're talking about the driveway that is another probably 250 feet north of that south property line. So we're... seven just by eye I'm guessing about 700 feet at least from those residential areas to that driveway and again for context we have not done a study of existing conditions that is a driveway today and I imagine that there is some level of illumination at that driveway when the and for that matter the entire parking area and upper deck probably is illuminated and that is exposed because it's not interior. So we'll be taking the majority of this area and bringing that inside in parking area and significantly reducing the sort of the visibility of where that parking is from those residents.

Those fixtures have shields and...

So all the fixtures are an LED, energy efficient light. They're downward focused, so there is no glare from the fixtures. And they're 15 feet high, which is within the ordinance standard there.

Will there be any photometric renderings that we can see from that area? Or if you haven't done it, I understand. I was just curious.

We did do a lighting study that's part of the application package. I don't know if they have that one. immediately handy we can get it it is part of the site plan set though the photometrics and that's what shows that just in that area where the driveway is is where it gets over uh the 0.1 foot candles at 1.3 otherwise we're compliant so at the south end of the property where we're closer but i wouldn't say close to the residents we satisfy the ordinance standards

Yeah, and like Rob was saying earlier, we're at that 1.3, which isn't that high to begin with, but when you get to the curb line, it gets reduced to 0.2.

Right, and that's a DOT requirement. So we're at 0.2 foot candles. Full moon on a clear night is half a foot candle, so we're well below a moonlit night, not to mention the constructive interference of streetlights and things like that that are in the area. So in my opinion, there would be no noticeable light effect from the driveway at the midpoint of the property for the residents to the south.

What about taking the driveway out of that? What about if every apartment had their lights on? That's sort of where I'm thinking.

so we have not modeled that that would be in this case maybe not different than if the office had lights on at night but our architect can probably go in a little bit more detail about the type of glass that's used things like that and how that would be managed these lights i'll just go back to the A3, which is the rendering the lights that will exist on the perimeter area here on the access. These will be on from dusk to dawn for security and safety for residents that may be coming and going. Our landscape architect and architect can get into more detail about the lights at the building and the area outdoor amenity areas and those lights which will be controlled and they will not be on all night.

Sorry, a quick question on just the back to the crosswalk. it just goes to the municipal golf course i mean i i can't recall is there sidewalks over there like what's the intention other than crossing the street and there's just the municipal golf course and then residential like around the corner there's not really any business or school right there so that was a request as part of the rezoning and review process to add that so we're certainly amenable to doing that as far as access to

really the activity and the residents to the south those neighborhoods to the south right there is existing uh and you can see it here on the southeast corner there is existing sidewalk and crosswalks that come to the middle island and then continue south along that area so there's connective sidewalk to that area further south but the crosswalk goes The crosswalk that we're adding goes directly across River Road.

My concern is around what you were talking about. Adding a crosswalk is going to encourage people to cross down there. It's kind of busy on River Road these days. There's a lot of development going on. Even though it's helpful to have a crosswalk if people are crossing, it's also encouraging people to cross on a very busy road. i don't know what the answer was to the beacons or whatnot but just generally um 198 units people crossing the road down there at the end of river road before you access 24 and things like that it's just something that i don't have the answer i don't have the answer either i just know that we've specifically spent a lot of time as a city putting in sidewalks in that area

for that reason, because it is I don't know if you notice, but you go in one way in the golf course and it's almost like not the right way. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I have to put more thought into it. But the one thing I was also thinking of is I was driving by a few times today and on the this is the what's the i guess it's the jfk parkway side it's almost like the sidewalks are sort of invisible now like they sort of um and i'm sure it's just because nobody's used them why would anybody use them i'm assuming you're going to enhance that piece of those sidewalks and make them as as wide and nice as the ones that are kind of currently there or is that not part of the plan

yeah in this case i think some of the uh overstory of the the tree area here is just covering it from a visibility standpoint but the sidewalk is there and we'll we'll make sure that it's maintained because i would i would imagine if i was living here i'd probably want to walk over to the mall or i'm not sure what i'm not sure how much thought has been put into that but

I guess that's just we could all have the traffic engineer addressing because there might be some DOT requirements associated with some of these items. So I'm glad that you're asking the questions now. Right. Prepare for one.

Yeah, I was looking at it today and it's just I was thinking to myself, like, how do you how do you navigate people around here?

Yeah, I mean, it's like surrounded by, I would say, pretty busy roads, not necessarily highways, but access to highways. Right.

Well, just looking at Google Maps here, there's no sidewalk along the golf course side of the highway. So you're dumping pedestrians across a crosswalk, and there's no sidewalk that would link the golf course to the rest of town.

I don't think so. Sorry, go ahead, Rob.

Yeah, I think that's a secondary consideration is just being able to get pedestrians residents who potentially might want to use the golf course to get to that side again the the primary and i just went back on the screen to a2 just to be able to see a little bit broader perspective of what's happening but there the the primary sidewalk coming from the site uh and there is connectivity at the south end and you'll see it on the site plan but there is sidewalk that connects to uh all the sidewalks on river road to the south that come from the site so again If you're coming out of the, and I guess I'm flipping back and forth here, I apologize, but if you are coming out of the lobby area of the building, you can see, and our landscape architect can probably present this a little bit better than I can, but you come out of the lobby area here, and we've created a sense of connectivity here, and you can see the sidewalk stretching from the lobby across our entrance and connecting to that sidewalk system. So I think this is a stronger connection of sidewalk than what comes across River Road. That's really from the lower level and that provides access if you're going to the golf course, but I think the stronger connectivity is coming out of the lobby and coming off that front walkway area.

I think we agree with where you're saying it's stronger. We're a little concerned about it. Can I make a suggestion? Yeah, we'll address it with the other.

Not even that. The crosswalk was something I believe that was requested at some point that we were reviewing it. We're indifferent to whether we provide it or not in terms of the ad. We thought we were providing it because it's something that the city wanted. But we can speak to your board planner and engineer and discuss it. And if the professionals think, believe it's required, we could keep it. If the consensus is it really isn't necessary, unless DOT or another jurisdiction feels it's required, we can eliminate it. But we can talk.

I think the overall goal would be pedestrian safety around the whole site. Of course. No, of course. getting to the muni walking along the muni to get back into your main entrance all of that is interesting we're not finishing tonight so we can we can touch base with your board of junior slander and let you know collectively what we come up with that sounds great yeah all right thank you

So the last thing I want to point out tonight for the board, and then you'll hear a little bit more from our landscape architect and architect are some of the signage that's proposed here. Uh, we have, uh, two free standing signs. Uh, one of them, uh, is up on the corner of, uh, where you're coming in off river road.

and the other is at the south end.

You'll get a really good perspective of this from landscape architect is actually built into the wall. There's some nice features there that you'll see in some perspectives from him. There are also a series of building mounted signs. One of them is a smaller one over the entrance on the south side. We have an identifier of the Vander Lee over the garage. And then there's a sign up on the building on the north side that you'll see from 124. And again, you'll see those on the elevation. Just want to give some perspective from a site standpoint as to where they are. uh so that the board has awareness of that and then there will also be some temporary signs that we're requesting uh during lease up uh one of those would be uh on the river road driveway here and one is at the again at the intersection uh excuse me at the intersection with jfk here just identifying the property for lease up as well as some signs on the building again those are temporary signs you'll hear and see of those from our architect and our planner as well.

Okay. And Rob, you had the chance to review the board professional review letters? I did, yes. And if there's any outstanding technical comments that you didn't address during testimony, can we comply with the board engineer's letter?

We can. I think I've put as much as I can into the testimony to cover that. Anything else that I haven't touched on is probably technical and we would certainly comply with unless there's any questions in that.

I'd like, if you'll indulge me, to have Marie fill in anything that she doesn't think we covered so that everybody has the benefit of that information.

So yeah, I think we went over site circulation. I think he adequately discussed that with deliveries, garbage pickup, emergency vehicles, being able to get around there. you're still working on your your dot permits they just take time to get through your ada parking spaces everything will be compliant with ada both your parking spaces your access to those parking spaces I don't know if this is something you can talk about, but do you know how you're going to be managing the guest spaces versus the city reserve spaces and the car dealership spaces? Is there any way that you're going to have an agreement with that? Are they going to be signed?

for the city will be signed. I think they're designated on the plan. They're designated on the plan on the first floor.

Excuse me just a second. Just make sure you're sharing the mic because people at home can hear you.

The city spaces are designated on the plan and the city will have access to use those via a key fob or whatever security measure that the building implements. And then same thing with the spaces, if they are leased. And they're all on the first floor, as Rob indicated during his testimony.

Okay. We talked about the EV charging spaces that you're still working on, where the equipment's going to be. That'll be part of that level of granular detail will be coming out later on with your building permits. We talked about the seven foot wide loading zone. I think what I heard was that a lot of times they're wider loading zones because of truck doors opening, and that's not necessarily something that's going to be happening too much at this. There's not a whole lot of deliveries. Am I right on that?

The frequency is relatively rare, the move in and move outs, yeah, and it would be scheduled one at a time. Okay.

Yeah, and speaking with the applicant that has thousands of units and many projects throughout the state, as everybody knows, they schedule these through property management that dictates what type of vehicle can be used on the property, and they're done one in the morning and one in the evening during off-peak hours. property management really controls, A, the type of vehicles and the timing that they can be done and when they can be done.

Okay. I think that's helpful to know. Sure. So thanks. You have the site triangles shown on there, and I think maybe I can ask some questions of the traffic engineer about that later on. Could you talk maybe about the construction staging or maybe where the contractors are gonna park? Is that something that you can discuss?

i i can give an overview and i think if there's more detail that you're looking for we we can get into that but generally again you have the existing first floor parking that's there today that would be available for contractor parking while everything's happening vertically above that as well as staging so we don't expect everything would be housed on property basically okay during construction okay so um do you anticipate any like pedestrian detours at all on the sidewalks I don't think the sidewalks will be impacted no everything would be inside the property okay other than you know minor uh interruptions when the the new entrance is being uh constructed things like that but nothing long term from construction

there's some tandem parking spaces in the parking garage is there any way how are they going to be assigned would they be you know the same unit would have tandem spots so that they can

communicate with each other you can move your car so i can get out or yeah so that's handled through the the management leasing office and they would go together so if you were a apartment user a couple that had multiple vehicles you would be able to lease tandem spaces together would not be to two individuals okay they would go together to a unit

covered a lot of it, so I'm still going through it. yeah you know in our letter um just to clarify we had talked about um getting access to that um that culvert that's underneath the building and there was discussions with the city about well how is the access going to happen um but it sounds to me like this is a large culvert it's not it's not just a small pipe under the ground could you talk about that a little bit uh certainly so

And Marie, if I may, the one thing I know that DCS hasn't submitted any comments, but we have to fill that gap somehow. We have to get information from the city on how the city is going to maintain access to that culvert and there's or how the applicant's going to maintain or how they have to sorry but but they but the city should still the city should still be able to access it i believe and without dcs opining it puts us in a little bit of a so we have to make sure that we can request dcs to if they're having informal conversations or whatever we have to document it properly i guess and that's fine i mean if anything it'll be a benefit over what exists today because we'll be able to delineate the access give an easement to the city figure out how it'd be maintained both by the developer and by the city if needed

so we'll be able to work out those details so if anything it's going to be way better than it is now but rob we can continue to work with the um with the city on that issue right

Absolutely. So it's a significant culvert. We could walk down there side by side through this culvert. So there's really access from either side for people to get in there. And as discussed, we would be providing an easement that would give the city the backup rights to get in, but ultimately maintenance of that would be on the property owner.

My one question is, any idea why the golf course pond is always overflowing? Is that if that culvert's so big, what's the problem?

So I don't know particulars on why the golf course is overflowing.

The culvert starts, right? I mean, the golf course, its pond is here, and it starts to back up typically from Canoe Brook Parkway the last probably 20 houses or so. And I'm just curious. I mean, we don't have to answer it now, but I think that that area is constantly overflowing.

you know, it's the first one, it's the first thing to flood is that area.

So I don't know how that conversation in the culvert, um, but I'm sure there's smart people in the professionals that can figure it out, but it's a, it's a real serious concern for the residents down there have spent many hours.

So we did do a study of the area and a study of at least our reach of it. We went back to the golf course, but we didn't study particularly the mechanics of what and when things are happening on the course, but we did look, at our property as to what was happening. And we went as far as the Passaic River, and I think a lot of the flooding situation happens at the Passaic River throughout the area is over. overflowing, right? So that becomes a lot of the source of flooding. But this was reviewed in detail by the DEP to confirm why and how it operates. And it's essentially an existing condition. We're doing our part to improve it by by number one, providing the long term maintenance and the easement, but also by reducing our stormwater contribution to that.

How's the condition of it?

I'm sorry.

How's the condition of it?

I'm not intimately aware of the condition right now, but we have been doing some studies of it to make sure that it's structurally sound.

And one of the items that we've been talking about with your professionals, and we've done it, we cleaned it. So I don't know if that's going to help as well. So I don't know if previously in the past. what the maintenance was in terms of debris but the developer has cleaned it which is a good thing and then the video of it was sent to your board engineer so they videoed it to see what the what the condition of it was so yes okay yeah did you receive that if it wasn't sent to you then it might have just been sent to the city right so we'll make sure you get it also thanks okay

So I share the concern about this watershed. Upstream just a bit, you have repeated flooding and yes, the existing use is just dumping all the water into that culvert. I guess one question is under the proposed and now delayed DEP regulations that were supposed to take effect this month, would they have required additional remediation on the site by the developer?

Not really. So the regulations that have been delayed by the DEP, their primary focus was on the coastal areas and the increased flotillation there. There were also some minor components related to green infrastructure and water quality. But the previous round of regulation changes is what we're really looking at, which is it's increased the elevation by two feet that we designed towards. It also looks at more intense storms. But again, this is a it's a minor project, so we really felt below the threshold because it's such a minor project to be reviewed to those rates.

Yeah, I guess because of the existing problems in that watershed, is there an opportunity or did you consider other mechanisms, dry wells or other retention mechanisms on the property?

So the architect will go over, Rob, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's some green space on some of the decks and things of that nature, like green roof type features that we have that haven't been accounted for, Rob, in your analysis, correct? That's right.

I was trying to scan for those. I know. I'm ahead of you.

I know. I hear what you're saying. It's a valid point. So the architect will go through those as well as maybe the landscape architect in a little bit more detail. But there are areas above the ground that were used to facilitate the retention that you're talking about.

So what this plan doesn't show is that as you get to the upper levels, there are some prominent outdoor amenity spaces that include some landscaping and some green roof type structures. We haven't accounted for that in our stormwater calculations, but they certainly exist to provide additional mitigation. Right. So ours are more conservative by not accounting for those.

Correct.

Can anybody just, for the benefit of the public, I know we're calling it a minor site plan, but can you go over and just explain to the board the differences and the criteria that I think has recently changed for the major development?

So just to be clear, this application is a major site plan. Right, right, right. From the city's perspective, you're talking about his response about the DEP. Yes, and the TSS. I just want to be clear.

I meant to ask earlier. Make sure you have a mic.

Certainly. major and minor project from a stormwater standpoint whether it's in your ordinance or in the DEP standard is an acre of disturbance or a quarter acre of new impervious coverage specifically focused on motor vehicle surface area so as I mentioned we have an increase in impervious coverage that is less than an acre so that does not cross the threshold of being a major development we also have less than a quarter acre, we actually have a reduction in motor vehicle surface area by virtue of covering the majority of the parking lot today. So that's a significant improvement from a water quality standpoint. All of that water is now, whether it's on the green roof or on the general roof structure, collected as opposed to being on the motor vehicle surface area, which is where you get more of the silt and debris. So all that's gonna be handled through interior maintenance of the parking garage. So that's an improvement there. So again, we're below that threshold. So as a minor project, we're really focused on the soil conservation district standards, which is managing the two and 10 year storm, not the hundred year storm, which would be added in with the DEP, with a higher standard, with a major development.

So if you, what about the fact that it's a parking garage that you're, so you're taking off, sorry, you're taking off the top, taking off the office building portion. Does that count towards one of those criteria because that area is being reconfigured? You might be able to, I think you.

Substantial change.

Right. Like I thought that the new rules for, if the criteria didn't meet, uh with like a renovation but maybe if you didn't catch it marie then um no i i you're talking about something different right like a substantial improvement to uh to a house you'd have to raise it up no no i was just i'm talking specifically about the four criteria for it it's okay yeah you might be Right. I think you might be right.

And this is also very unique because our, our ground disturbance is really limited to that, that driveway that's parallel to river road, the parking structure. We're not taking anything out of the ground. We're not doing ground disturbance. That's usually a significant criteria. Right. Thank you.

Right. Uh, other questions.

for the engineer i do one regarding the sierras i saw the fire department's memo from earlier today that you're going to add a fourth stairwell is that right yes uh elevators still three elevators uh i'm gonna defer to the architectures i'm not 100 sure how many elevators are going to all to the garage or or upper floors so i'll let the architect confirm that i don't want to misspeak

When you have the traffic person or engineer, are they going to discuss anything further with regard to your loading and offloading area, or is that just your engineer? Do you want him to? I do have a few more questions about that. um that's fine no if you say what they are if rob can't answer them i can always defer to the traffic engineer right i'm just trying i want you to try and help us understand how we're not going to have a problem if you have a garbage truck sitting there and then there's a fire and then the fire truck has to get beyond him because isn't the garbage getting picked up right there too at your seven foot width Yeah, I mean, yes, I mean, and moving vans, you know, are going to be at that some foot. What's right behind? It's just parking right behind there, right? I'm trying to get out. How can we get this a little wider so that we don't have problems?

So one of the challenges here is this is an existing condition. We've got the right-of-way and the building exists today, so we can't move either of those. The turning radius here, we want to maintain that so we can make a 180-degree right turn onto River Road without crossing the center line. So this dimension or this radius here is kind of critical to doing that. It's one of the reasons that we are seeking the relief. but when you have 30 feet and you have a car stage in that seven area, seven foot area, or a garbage truck stage in that area, you still have more than enough room for cars to move in one or even both directions past that, um, out of 30 feet, you can fit.

What's the height of the, of that, um, that section of the garage?

That's all open. None of that is covered, if that's your question.

No, no, no, beyond the seven feet, like towards the building. I'm trying to think of other ways to get some of your vehicles out of the driveway. I'm just brainstorming for a second. I'll just put it this way. Any other ideas that were contemplated when you're trying to figure out where to put loading and offloading and garbage and moving vans? It's a really tough site. I get it. So what were your other options? Because it seems like quite the choke point if you have an emergency situation and you happen to have the garbage truck there. You happen to have a couple moving vans there. I know you said there'd only be one, but you never know.

So good question. A couple things. One is where the loading area is is a combination of interior and exterior programming. So we wanted to make sure that that loading area is immediately outside of an area inside the building where you have a service elevator that can move stuff vertically within the building as well as in and out, as well as the trash room and things like that. So that was considered as part of it as well. I would say if there were an incident and a U-Haul was parked there for a move in or move out or a garbage truck was there, they would probably have time to get out of the way before fire truck, you know, as the As the call goes out before the fire truck gets there, we can clear the space. But again, it's 30 feet wide, so to get a fire truck past there, if there were someone staged there, there should be enough room.

Just operationally, as we indicated, the property management would dictate when the move-in and move-outs can go. In your scenario, what if there was a mistake? the just remember the the length of the loading zone is what's oversized so they would be back to back it wouldn't impede the width of the drive aisle they would be back to back because the length of that loading zone is fairly large but i think the more critical aspect of it is the fact that the developer that not only develops it but then manages the property themselves In this situation, we're lucky to have that. They'll dictate the type of vehicle and the time. But if you want the traffic engineer to maybe get into more of the technical maneuverability of that. Or mock it up. Just to make the board feel.

Get some graphics, show us how it's going to work.

I understand.

So we can get comfortable that that's not going to be a problem.

I understand. So we'll make sure that that's addressed. Thank you. Okay.

We can ask, what's the clearance required to get into the upper level of that parking garage?

the clearance at the at the entrance ceiling height ceiling height uh i'll defer that to the architect i'm not 100 sure what that is exactly what we're showing i assume is the upper level of the parking garage and the building above would occupy is this is access to the upper level on the south face of the building correct but the bill is above it so depending on how high the building is you know something may or may not fit in there

be it a van or a box truck or whatever.

We would not expect a box truck to get inside the building.

There would be no loading or unloading of any vehicles inside the parking structure. It would all occur either at the loading zone or if it was a smaller vehicle, they would pull up right in front of the building like a FedEx truck or UPS, drop it off at the package room or the concierge and then just be on their way.

So that's part of the answer to your question on how you're dealing with the site is that the ceiling heights for the parking deck are too low to have any deliveries, any garbage pickup, any of that sort of thing within the building, which can happen in other sites sometimes, like in the city or whatever. That's what's part of your conundrum is I have to do it on the streetway.

would say and i've done a number of projects with with this applicant this is typical for how they have deliveries and obviously every site's different right right usually you have just a little more loading and deliveries outside the building you don't have a garbage truck you don't have a move-in move-out fedex inside the building on these products yeah yeah

we're just trying to think of other ways to diminish the congestion there that's all yeah a related question kind of is is it the emergency exit that's not in the floodplain is that not the actual exit because it's too close to the loading like why wasn't why why is the only entrance exit in a flood in a floodplain if there's an emergency exit that's not why wouldn't it Right.

Like, well, in our chapter, I'll get into a little bit of DOT standpoint. We have one one primary entrance.

But why isn't it the one that's not in the floodplain?

Like, why are you moving it very close to the to the loading area?

Right.

Well, no, no. Offsite, you're moving it very close to the intersection here and the radius here. But our traffic engineer, you know, go through the numbers. So it's just like, I don't want the separation of the right situation. Yeah.

So either in a floodplain or too close to an intersection, had to pick one of them.

Right. The the traffic engineer can indicate that there was DOTS requirements for for how close a driveway can be to the intersection. And I'll have to go over that. OK, thanks.

sorry beat that dead horse but um i think it's really an important part of the discussion and if you can mock it up and and show us the turning radius for the fire trucks and all of that that would be very helpful thank you all right so it is 10 20. So, yeah. I think we got through the engineer. Are we good? Oh, yeah. We have to have questions from the public.

Yeah, I was speaking with Joe today as well as Ryan. I think it would be helpful for the board, whether we go as a quorum, we don't have to notice it, or Joe, maybe you can talk a little bit. I think it would be helpful for – those of us who can to go down and see it I'm a C person and I think it would just be helpful probably make the meetings a little shorter so you know I don't know if that would be possible but I think it'd be helpful yeah the applicant can provide access to the building I can coordinate that through

Mr. Warner or through Augusto, however you want me to handle that. I'm happy to do that. Thank you. I think it would be easier to do it without a quorum going to the, but I'll leave that to Mr. Warner to indicate how he thinks.

Although the board will make that decision whether the board wishes to, I won't make the decision whether the board wishes to do it as a a quorum publicly noticed site visit, which is cumbersome, but that's the board's prerogative. Or to do it individually or in smaller non-quorum groups.

Three or less, right?

Four or less. Yeah, because you're a nine-member board. Yeah, we're a nine-member board, so five would be a quarter.

Okay. You can let me know how you want to handle that, and I'll speak to Mr. Warner, and we can provide the access.

I'll liaison.

Thank you.

I won't concierge, but I'll liaison. Great, great.

Okay, so are we good? We're going to close up this part of it and ask the public if they want to ask your engineer any questions. Sure. Great. Mm-hmm. State your name. And address. Yes.

Hi, I'm Lainey Seeger, and I'm a resident at 60 Canoe Brook Parkway. Okay. Yep, S like Sam, E like Edward, G like George, E-A-R. So we have several questions from the community. The first of which is, should that culvert overflow or in a flooding experience, what is the plan to protect the neighborhood beyond the Muny?

I'm sorry, to protect?

To protect the neighborhood beyond the golf course.

So great question. There was an extensive review of this. And one of the things we did here was we went through a long review with the DEP before we even came here to make sure that we satisfied some flood protection standards. So we went through that and we did a study of it. we have made sure that we have clear access we're going to provide the secondary easement over the culvert we've cleaned it and we'll have continual maintenance of that culvert to improve that area throughout and we're also meeting the stormwater criteria for our site on there as well

If I may, and I don't want to interrupt your questioning, but would the maintenance be something that, as a condition of approval, should it be approved, would be stipulated to be recorded with the county clerk's office, like a stormwater O&M manual, or is that...

Yeah, I mean, it's not statutory like the O and M manual in the stormwater rules, but if the board felt that that was an appropriate mechanism in addition to a condition of approval, I can talk to the applicant about that, but that wouldn't be uncommon. I see green roof deed restrictions now being implemented by boards. I see other sort of maintenance agreements requiring recording, but I can speak to the developer. But yeah, I think that's something that we would consider.

We have done maintenance agreements. Murray.

Right, and as he said, they're not statutorily required, but he can talk to his applicant and see if they're... Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's an unreasonable request if that's what the board does request.

Sorry about that. That's okay. I wanted to jump on it while I got it.

Yeah, thank you. Our neighborhood floods quite often, and we have several water main breaks between the streets of River Road and Woodland, up through Karen Way. We had one just this past Saturday, which cut off water supply to many of the residents in the neighborhood. We've had probably one a month in the last year. And I'm wondering if your developer has taken into consideration the potential impacts of 190 plus toilets flushing that weren't there previously impacting the water system.

So we do have an application pending with the water utility, and part of that will be to make sure that there is adequate service for the site, not only for the regular domestic uses, but also for fire protection. So that's part of this project is to work with the water utility.

Okay. We had one just this past Saturday, and every time the water main breaks, several of us lose access to clean water. So we're concerned about that many toilets. Additionally, you mentioned that it slopes down towards the Muni on the River Road side. And considering how much flooding we have in the community, particularly directly in front of the municipal golf course on Canoe Brook Parkway, has that been taken into consideration, the impact of the slope into the golf course into the neighborhood?

So River Road does slope towards the low point where our driveway is, but ultimately everything from that area from our site flows, if not through the culvert, west towards the Passaic River. So everything is flowing away from the golf course and away from the residential community.

OK. Not only your culvert, but also the topology.

The ground topography, correct.

Am I saying it wrong?

No problem. Just to answer the question, because I think it's important on the... Topography.

Excuse me.

We are reducing in certain storms, and overall, this will be a benefit in terms of how the site is being designed to the surrounding area. Correct.

And then also you mentioned similar to your comment about why is the loading and the garbage truck on the River Road side of the property? Am I understanding correctly that that's where that will occur?

That's correct.

So in front of the Muni. Has anybody from your team visited the neighborhood directly on the other side of the Muni?

I've been through the neighborhoods yet. I'm not as familiar obviously as you are with the neighborhoods.

Okay. So has anybody determined if that will impact those neighbors whose backyards are the municipal golf course? If you've been through the neighborhood, it should be quite evident that you can see this building and the property from our neighbor's backyards and their bedroom windows. And why was it chosen to put the garbage, the deliveries, the moving in and moving out on the side of residents versus the other side on JFK Parkway where there would not be residents that would be impacted?

So I guess first primarily the reason that that side of the building was selected is because that's where the entrance is and so that works functionally so that it minimizes circulation around the property and additional traffic but also Again, the trash pickup is just a couple times a week. The move-ins, move-outs are scheduled. They're going to be relatively infrequent. They won't be happening on top of each other. So it won't be that noticeable. And what you see on the plan on the screen, our landscape architect can talk more about it, is substantial improvements to the frontage landscaping here that will help not only soften but screen what's going on there.

Right. I mean, it doesn't seem substantial to you, and I recognize that. But if it's your backyard, that's substantial potential noise, potential movement at times that there is not normal movement. And I'm just wondering, has anybody visited our neighborhood to determine if it's going to impact noise or anybody's ability to see that or hear that?

so noise-wise we have to comply with the dep regulations and the city's ordinance for noise so we're not allowed to get a variance from that so we have to comply um so that's that's that's the answer on that one and then like i said earlier and i understand the concern um the move-in move-outs will be very infrequent especially once the building is leased up then also the garbage pickup it's private hauler so the applicant can work with the board on timing that would be like I said it's two three times a week but we can work on the board with the board on timing that you know the board feels is the least disruptive to the area unlike now where you have you know an office building that would have more traffic more deliveries that doesn't have those restrictions because we're coming in front of the board we can actually now implement those as conditions of approval that may not exist have existed for a prior project or if you just retended the building the way that it was when you say infrequent move-in and move-outs are we to understand as a community that there'll be a requirement of one-year leases or yeah i can get that answer i believe that that's the case but when i said infrequent what i said earlier um was that they would be um twice per day at the most one in the morning and one in the evening and i'll double check that and confirm that and to your question about the leases i'm happy to get that answer for you as well so infrequent isn't what is we don't know what that means no more than twice a day but it could be every day sure

Okay, just to clarify, thank you.

Okay, I think that's it. Thank you. Do you have any other questions from the public? I have a question. Make sure we hear you with the microphone, your name and your address, please.

I'm Carly Mulvey. I live at 7 Iris Road. N as in mom, UL, V as in Victor, EY. Okay. So this might not be a question for the engineer. And if I'm not here at the next session, because I'm guessing this is going to flow over, just maybe more of a thought starter. But just some questions of the traffic studies on River Road specifically. So when that was occupied at full capacity as an office building, the three lights were not on River Road. That have caused a lot of traffic over the last three years. There have been a lot of studies just about cut through traffic on Iris, cut through traffic on Woodland. And that being at full capacity with full-time residents, I'm just wondering if you're going to extend those traffic studies as a town or like for the project to be comprehensive.

Yeah, so I would say that those are probably better questions for when the traffic engineer testifies. He did submit a full report in connection with the application. He's here to hear your comment, so we can incorporate that or he can address that in testimony as to whether what you're speaking about is impactful or whether that was considered.

Yeah, so I guess I would just ask the board to take that into consideration. I can send an email as well. So my other question would be, When I moved in 10 years ago, I got a letter of notification that Wells Fargo was putting a light on top of the building and it had to go out to all the residents within, you know, a certain area. A lot of us just learned about this. A lot of us had no idea this was happening. And I don't want to undermine any of the work and planning that's been done because I value and respect everything. And I do want to give you credit that it's going to look nicer than a vacant office building. So I think that's, you know, fantastic. But not learning about it compared to receiving a letter to come to a hearing that they were going to add a neon sign over an office building nine years ago and learning about this. My question would be how much notification is the community and the area going to get, we just sat here talking about Aubrey's corner sconces and stuff for like 40 minutes. So like lights, you know, things that will impact us, your point about residential lights being on, we can see this, that was acknowledged by the city nine years ago. So like, will there be communication? I guess is my question as the project progresses.

Right. Do you want to speak to how people are notified the process?

I can help you with the process. If you're within 200 feet, you receive the certified mail notice from the applicant according to the records, and those would have been cross-checked by... They're not.

But no neighbors receive them.

No, no, no. I'm saying if you live within 200 feet. But regardless, there's also publication notice. So they did provide the requisite notice for this hearing more than 10 days in advance for the municipal land use law. They may or may not, they don't have to provide further notices going forward. The anticipation is- Each meeting that we carry, which we'll probably be carrying this one very soon, these hearings will continue. We'll be giving you a date, time, and place as to when the hearings would continue. It's an open public meeting hearing process, so all members of the public are welcome to come As every evening that these hearings continue, and you have an opportunity to ask questions of every witness. And then generally at the end, you have an opportunity to make any comments you wish, which I will swear you in so that they have the weight of testimony, just like you saw me swear at the experts there. So it will be ongoing, and it'll also be on the website, I believe, just to further confirm as to when these hearings will continue to be.

Thank you, and just to clear up residential questions on the notification, is the radius, is it different than it was nine years ago, or is it a different scope?

It would be the perimeter of the entire site, the lot. It's one lot, right?

200 feet from the perimeter of the lot.

200 feet from, and if it catches any portion of your property.

Joe's going to show. Why not? Why not? But I'm sorry if my question is not clear, though, because we did receive a notification 10 years ago. I understand that you got it before.

I can't speak to that, but just going to show you the 200-foot map.

We have a list, too.

Here's Iris. This line represents 200 feet from the property.

I totally respect that. Absolutely. I have no idea. And I'm not questioning that. We received that letter. And that was, I think, why so many residents were confused by how far this had gone along with no one knowing and to this point not being able to ask the questions.

Well, that's to be clear, this is the first time we're seeing an app, the application. This is the this is the beginning of this site plan. Yeah.

And we're all like as neighbors catching up.

And so like, please understand, we may be posted on the website, too, so that you can look at all the plans and all the comments.