Zoning Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone, to the planning board meeting of August 17. We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And I have the adequate notice statement.

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. We have the roll call.

Chair Bolson-Alvarez? Here. Vice Chair Hamlet? Here. Ms. Bowen? Here. Council Member Crisofoli? Here. Mr. Delmasso?

Here.

Mr. Felman is excused. Ms. Morrison? Here. Mr. Stern? Here. Mr. Staunton? Here. Mr. Golden?

Here.

You have a quorum. You may proceed.

Thank you very much. We have an application tonight. Before we start, I've asked Nancy Holm to make a few comments just to set the stage, and then Mr. Werner will follow up.

But before we do, Madam Chair, I believe we have a recusal.

Oh, sorry. See you later.

Let the record reflect that Board Member Delmasso remains recused from this matter. He recused himself last night.

Thank you. Okay. Ms. Holm?

Can everyone hear me? Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Planning board chair. Thank you very much for the floor. My name is Nancy Holm. I am from Serenity and Edwards, Boozak and Nolan. I represent the city of Summit with regard to affordable housing matters. um by way of background the oe 190 river road application before the planning board is part of the city's fourth round housing element and fair share plan as was amended in march of 2026 because it was included in the city's plan which is as required by the fair housing act the city was obligated to create a realistic opportunity for the for the construction of the project which included adopting zoning so that the applicant can come directly to the planning board for site plan approval with minimal variances. This zoning was required to be adopted by March 15th, 2026 in accordance with the amended Fair Housing Act, which was amended in 2024 prior to the fourth round beginning. That zoning was adopted in accordance with the Fair Housing Act. Thank you.

Thank you. And Steve, did you have anything to add about the application in particular?

certainly just just to be clear this is a quasi-judicial proceeding as our board secretary previously stated uh all that the planning board is considering this evening and throughout these hearings if they go beyond this evening is this particular application for development as proposed on this one and only site 190 river road so other aspects of Fair of affordable housing the fair share plan other aspects of settlement agreements or other components of the city's fourth round plan Those are not what is at issue in this application. It is simply and I don't mean that to mean that it's a Modest issue, but it is solely the development application on 190 River Road That's an issue and the applicant presents it. They have the burden of proof. Members of the public can ask questions at the end, make comments under oath, and then the board will deliberate and vote, whether it's this evening or another evening.

Okay. Thank you. And the way we proceed is the applicant brings up different experts, such as their architect, their engineer, et cetera, and each one will provide their testimony, and then the board members will ask questions in an orderly fashion to each expert, and then the public will have a chance to ask questions of those experts. each one going along in order. So that's how we'll proceed. So are you ready? Ready to go. Okay.

Okay, good evening Madam Chair, members of the board, members of the public, professionals, Jason Tuval on behalf of the applicant. As the board is aware, this is a site plan application for 190 River Road. It's for a multifamily development. We were here back in July, I believe it was July 27th, so it's only been about three weeks since we've been here. At that meeting the board heard testimony from our civil engineer Robert fruit we went through the site plan extensively and there were some comments that were made by members of the board by members of the public That we hope to also address this evening as well So the game plan this evening and I'll talk also about some of the items we resubmitted so I'm gonna call up our traffic engineer Craig Paraguay to start this evening and And the reason I'm doing that is as follows. If the board recalls, one of the main points of, one of the main topics at the last meeting was the size of the loading area, which actually we needed relief from as part of the application. And the board expressed some concern about the size of that loading area and how it would interplay with emergency service vehicles. So what we did in the meantime, we didn't resubmit a full site plan set, but resubmitted a site plan exhibit that modified that loading area. It now complies, and we've also demonstrated how emergency service vehicles can go through that. So I'm going to have Mr. Paraguay, as part of his traffic testimony, incorporate that as an extensive part of it, because it was something brought up by the board and by the public at the last meeting. He'll also go through trip generation, parking, and all the other facets of traffic engineering, but I just wanted to let you know that he was going to focus on that area. addition to that um there was a crosswalk a mid-block crosswalk that was initially proposed we thought that was something that the city may have wanted to the golf course property across the street we have eliminated that because the board had also expressed some concern about the mid-block crosswalk so i'll have craig go over those items as part of his testimony The one other revision that we made that was also based on some public comment was, if you know the loading area that we're proposing is adjacent to the building. There were some comments, although we don't expect a lot of loading activity. This isn't a retail establishment, a supermarket, an industrial type property. there was a fair comment made about the visibility of that loading area from the street. So we did incorporate as part of our revision some landscaping that will now buffer that area even further and make it hopefully not visible from the right of way or from the adjacent streets. So I'm going to have Craig go over that very briefly as part of his testimony. But then the next witness will be our landscape architect, Tom Bauer. So he will go through the entirety of the landscaping proposed for this project, some of the green infrastructure that we're proposing. There's a green roof as part of the application. So he'll go through that in great detail. then if we the further we get along we'll have our project architect who will obviously go through the building elevations the building floor plans and then our final witness as always will be our professional planner we've eliminated a good portion of the variances as part of this application there weren't many to begin with obviously but um they're really down to signage at this point some others but mainly as it relates to signage With that, Madam Chair, I'd like to call Mr. Paraguay. Sorry, Steve.

I was just going to ask the Chair if I could just address a predicate matter because the applicant did re-notice. I want to put that on the record. Frankly, it was not required, but there's no penalty for providing more notice than is required. There's only a penalty if you provide less notice than is required. as you might imagine so I did have an opportunity to review the notice that the second notice that was provided specifically for this evening the content was sufficient it was timely served and published certified mail and published both on August 7th if I got it correct both of which are at least 10 days prior to this evening so the board continued excuse me yes the board continues to have jurisdiction to hear and decide the application and at the last hearing on the record applicants council at my request gave the board an extension of time to act through the end of September just in case so we have that as well so the board can proceed knowing it has jurisdiction

The one other thing I wanted to mention is we have other business that, you know, we have another applicants waiting for the resolution that we have to go over and approve tonight and minutes. So we're going to try and stop at 10 30. So try and get through as much as you can by 10 30, and then we'll do our other business.

Okay. I guess the only other ministerial item that I just wanted to make sure was on the record, the board did request to do a site visit or members of the board. That did take place as far as I'm aware. So I just wanted to make sure that that was on the record as well.

And if I may, Madam Chair, the site visits by the board members were less than, well less than a quorum in any group that visited the site. And there was no communication, ex parte communications with any representatives of the applicant. or anyone else for that matter other than for limited to purposes of directional pointing as to what is where will be is proposed for where that's all consistent with the municipal land use law and the governing case law and frankly encouraged our board members do make visits they also make for lack of a better term and i wish i could think of a better term i call them drive-bys uh to visit to see sites as well uh so our board members who are volunteer board members do quite a bit of work both before during and after these hearings that you see them at so i want to throw a little uh kudos to our board members for their volunteer service and i'll stop there take it away okay so i'd like to call our first witness of this evening craig paragoy who's our traffic engineer with dynamic traffic Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you weren't with us last time.

You didn't get sworn in last time.

Yeah, I did. There you go. See, I wasn't wrong. You remain under oath.

I don't think I've ever seen somebody willingly doing it. That's right. There you go.

Craig, I don't think you were sworn in.

If you can go through your credentials and your experience for the record, professional background, educational background, license, test upon before similar boards in the state of New Jersey?

Sure. I have a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Virginia Tech. I'm a licensed professional engineer in New Jersey. As you can tell, I testify pretty much on a nightly basis as an expert in traffic, including here in Summit many, many times in the past.

Thank you. Okay. So just for points of reference, if we do introduce another exhibit based on my book review of the transfer, So, Chris, as part of your testimony, I'd like you to break it down into several components so that the board and the public are aware, and you can take them in any order that you please. Trip generation, site circulation, including what I spoke about at the beginning of the hearing, and then if you could also describe the parking on site, that would be greatly appreciated.

Sure. I guess we'll start with the fire truck circulation, since you brought it up, with the loading zones. Those TVs work in those TV zones.

We may be checking on that right now, I'm guessing.

Depending on which side of the room you're on, it may not matter.

Thank you. This is must-see television.

So everybody can see.

this will all be focused in that direction yeah for those of you at home we were just waiting for other monitors this is really all I have is this one

Sorry, did you just identify this for the record, please?

Yeah, this is called Fire Truck Circulation Exhibit. It is dated today. And if you recall at the last meeting, we had the loading zone that was right as you come in off of River Road to the left of the garage door. And it was a little narrower, and the board expressed concern for, well, for two reasons. It didn't meet the requirements of the ordinance, which is a 12 by 60 loading zone. It now does in this exhibit.

Can you slow that down?

Yeah. 12 by 60 is required, so it now meets that requirement. Mm-hmm. the other concern was and rightfully so we we knew that it would work fine with passenger cars and everyday traffic but if a fire truck were to try to get in there would it would it work so we wanted to do two things here we made that loading zone a little bit wider simply by bumping out the drive aisle closer to river road gives you the clearance and then this truck the yellow path there that you can see is the turning path of a fire truck That could get in with.

Steve, just for the record, this should be page four of the code that was provided. It has that yellow highlight on it. Yeah, it's different.

Right.

Did you widen that? Did you get that turning radian?

Yeah. So and we're showing here to two trucks now sitting in this loading zone, which would be almost never occur. And the fire truck is able to make the swing and get past them. So I think that was a better, good, good suggestion by the board. We were, you know, fairly easily able to accommodate it, as you can see here.

Sorry, you're going to have to talk. You know, it's just lower. Yeah, yeah.

That helps to help me.

So everyone can hear. Okay.

Okay. So that's the that's that's the pretty picture that I have. No, the rest of it is the edge of your seat traffic testimony, which I will try.

The concern was that a fire truck could not make that turn if there was a moving van there or a garbage truck there, which is also going to be happening in that location. It's now wider and will allow for a fire truck to easily get by.

Exactly right. Yep. And obviously with

I know. I shouldn't be talking. I should be waiting until you're done.

Sure. Just a quick question. Can you just point out the emergency access on the other side of the building?

Yeah. The emergency driveway is this other driveway. Right.

I'm just having a hard time figuring out in my head where that... So that's coming off of...

that's the that's the one that DEP required yes okay are you gonna walk through all of the exits and all the circulation yeah all right well you know what we'll stick with it we'll stick with the plan for now I know this was testified to the last meeting but just to refresh everybody's memory the essentially the existing driveway that served the office building is going to remain as the main driveway which then provides a straight shot into the lower levels of the parking garage. This secondary access is actually two requirements. The DEP requires it, and RSIS, if you provide more than 100 parking spaces, wants a secondary means of access for emergencies, or a boulevard, which doesn't really make sense here. So it serves two purposes, is this emergency access. This side of River Road, because it serves as sort of a jug handle for the state highway, is actually under NJDOT jurisdiction. So we have an application pending with them for this emergency driveway. We've yet to receive comments back. But like I said, it's the requirement of two separate agencies. It's not something that they're really going to be able to push back on. It's just a matter of how it's going to look at the end of the day. We'll be up to the DOT.

So NJDOT and the county?

Yes, in the county. It's very strange. The county's jurisdiction is the northbound side of River Road, and DOT's is the southbound.

Okay. Yeah.

Just as many review agencies as we can possibly fit in here, we're trying to do.

Isn't Morris County somewhere right around there also?

I didn't think like across the street. Yeah, right across the street.

Across JFK.

Yeah, but we're not proposing anything there, so they're not involved necessarily in this. Okay, so now on to the traffic study. We submitted a traffic impact study dated April 29th, 2026. I'll take you through the highlights of that.

Sorry, time out. Does anybody have any questions on the update on the fire lanes and the circulation around for fire safety?

I have a quick question. If you consider bad things happen, and what if there's also some flooding going on, is that all possible as well?

That's why the secondary driveway is there, because that's out of where it would be flooded. But the purpose here was if the fire truck was responding and there wasn't a flood, they're going to go into the main driveway. And if there was a loading vehicle there, it would have been difficult.

Do you want to point to that so they understand where the secondary driveway is?

Secondary driveway, it's closer to this connector road between River Road and JFK Parkway.

And it's higher.

That would be high and dry. That's the reason that, one of the reasons we're dividing.

And we should have, I think we said this the last time, but you reminded me of something. You did show this plan to the fire official and worked through comments with that department, correct? Yes.

Is that in our packets?

Yeah, it should be. There was a fire department comment letter. Actually, just before the last meeting, Ms. Bowman, they issued an updated letter saying that they were satisfied with the design. Okay. Go ahead.

they haven't seen these changes that you just know that we just that we enhance the no that unless um they could have been circulated but we don't have a review letter on that okay i just have questions on um and if you if you're doing it later i can wait but i'm assuming the fire truck reach you'll get to later

Yeah. Mr. Fruit did that at the last meeting, but we can go over that again. That's fine.

Okay.

On the, on the opposite side of the building.

I just had a question, but it can, that's fine. It's now. Okay. Do you want to wait?

It's up to you. If I know the answer, I'll try.

Um, can you just confirm, sorry, I had it up here somewhere. The, um, from JFK Parkway and river road, it's 85 feet to the building. So is that, is the fire truck reached to the patio? And I guess with that being said, would ground ladders be needed in addition to that?

Where exactly? If you're talking about this connector road, they'd be able to get on.

Yeah, JFK Parkway and River Road.

Yeah, they can get onto the site. You can see where he's sitting right here, right at the front door. The concern was more if they needed to get elsewhere around the side of the building. And my understanding is that I wasn't necessarily directly involved in those discussions with Mr. Frood. you know they looked at the ladder height and and were able to satisfy the fire department that they could access the building from those other roadways but from where you're talking about where we're far away the truck could get on site right there as like basically where he's sitting on this image okay

And just to remind everybody, in addition to the change in the front prior, the applicant added another egress stair is my understanding that satisfied a lot of the fire department's concerns.

Yeah, that's correct. We had Mr. Fruit testify to that at the last meeting, but I can also have the architect reiterate that when he's going through the building.

Right. I just want to make sure it's safe. Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, we've added this with the fire department for several months.

Right. Okay. So do we have any other questions on this topic before we get to general traffic? This kind of different item. Thank you for covering it. Okay. I think we do not.

So I guess maybe I didn't answer my question the right way. Is the 85 feet to the patio, to the building, like which part are you measuring the 85 feet from? I guess if you don't have the answer now. Yeah, I don't know.

If you want to answer that at the next meeting.

Or I can have Mr. Fruit come back later and just take that answer.

Okay, onto the traffic impact side of things from our traffic impact analysis. We started as we typically do with any traffic impact study. We took traffic counts. We looked at the existing driveway, even though it wasn't very active, and the golf course driveway across the street, and then the two ends of that river road connector road, the signalized intersection at JFK Parkway, and then the ramp where it comes in and meets our frontage portion of river road so we took traffic counts there from seven to nine and four to six thirty on a weekday uh we're looking for the busiest hour within those two windows of time and what we do can you repeat the times yes seven to nine in the morning and four to six thirty in the evening

I think the document says 430 to 630. Is that why you're asking?

It's 4 to 630. Oh, OK. It says that it's a typo there. And just for your information, we picked the busiest hour within there. We're looking for the peak hour here. The day that we counted, it would vary day to day. But it was 7.45 in the morning, 7.45 to 8.45 in the morning, and 4.45 to 5.45 in the evening was the busiest single hour. And then what we really want to do is assume that this building is going to generate its highest traffic during that exact same hour. So we're looking at a worst case scenario. And obviously, when you're talking about a residential building, that's going to be when its peak time is, people leaving for work in the morning, coming back in the evening. You'll have traffic in and out throughout the day, but when you're going to see the heaviest hourly volumes will be those time periods. We also need to take into account future growth. New Jersey DOT for this area publishes a growth rate of 2.25% per year. So those traffic volumes that we counted, we increased it by that times three years. But I went back and looked at the historical data. DOT has some count stations right near here, and we use that sort of to verify our counts as well. And the volumes have been steady and even slightly decreasing over time. Part of it could have been, you know, when the office building was removed, but, I mean, even in recent years. So we're being a little extra conservative by adding that growth rate, but that's the standard practice that is typically done. So that gives us a future baseline of the traffic volumes that will be out there. And the next thing I need to do is identify how much traffic that the proposed building would generate during those peak times. We use the ITE, the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual. It's basically a compilation of research traffic counts taken throughout the country and other land uses. In this case, this size residential building in this setting, what it says would be generated is about 75 trips in the peak hour. It's 75 in the morning, 74 in the evening. A trip is a vehicle either entering or exiting the property. So obviously in the morning, most people are leaving, going to work. In the evening, they're coming back home. So we're on the order of 75 trips. NJDOT considers a significant increase in traffic as 100 or more peak hour trips. So we're under that threshold where you typically wouldn't necessarily do a full traffic study, although we did one here. But I think it's important to point out the historical use of that property as an office building. If I use the ITE numbers for that, it's 200 trips in the peak hour. So we're generating an insignificant per DOT volume of traffic, but we're significantly over 100 trips per hour less than an office building, which makes sense. Office building, everybody's arriving at once and leaving at once, whereas a residential building, it's more spread out over time. In the morning, people work in different places, different fields. Some people work from home, different hours. This is actually going to be a much lower generator than what was historically there. When I put my analysis together, the building was already vacant and being torn down or renovated. We didn't include any of that, but I think that's just good information. I'm basically looking at this as if we built this residential building over a forest, over vacant land, what's the impact? So when we have the amount of traffic, we have that future baseline traffic volume with the growth rate, and the traffic volumes generated by this project, which we then overlay on that, we're able to do a comparative analysis of the future condition. We call it the no build and the build scenario. So essentially, if nothing happens, this project doesn't move forward, here's what these intersections would operate like. We add this traffic, and here's what the change is. That analysis is a pretty complicated software that gives you, based on the traffic signal timing, stop signs, lane widths, grades. There's a lot of input data that goes into it from what we collected. And it gives you an average delay per vehicle, which is then related to a level of service. I'm sure you've heard this from other traffic engineers. A being the best level of service or the least delay, with an F being the worst. delay not exactly like grades in school because you would typically design to for peak hours at a level service d and i wasn't i'm sure none of us were aiming for a d in school so i never like when people say it's like it's like grades in school but in this case all the turning movements that those Two intersections of the River Road connector operate at a level of service C or better, and that's with or without this project. So we don't even change any of those levels of service, which, again, I expected because it's generating less than 100 or an insignificant amount of traffic. But the analysis bears that out. The driveway itself, the main driveway on River Road operates at will operate at level of service B. So we have good levels of service. We're not changing those levels of service. And I think more importantly, we're getting rid of that office building that generated more traffic historically. So that's a big improvement, bringing up much lower traffic generating potential on the site. So that's the summary version, essentially, of the traffic impact part of things.

So Craig, just to summarize that, because it's a lot of technical information. I know. So the intersection that you studied, JFK Parkway and River Road, in the AM no-build, which means if nothing occurred, correct?

Correct.

Okay. That operates in the no-build as a level of service B.

Yes, overall B. We look at each individual turning movement, like a left from JFK, but the overall intersection itself is a B.

Right. With this project and the growth rate that you also factored in, correct? Yep. It still operates at what level of service?

B. All right, so no change in the level. And that's both in the morning and in the evening, both of those peak hours that we looked at. And that's assuming that this building generates its peak traffic at the exact same hour that the roadways have their peak traffic. So there's a conservative layer built into that.

Okay, so the point that I wanted to make sure to show that we investigated is that in the no build versus constructing our project with future growth rate, there's no impact on the delays at that intersection.

Correct. The impacts, the minimal increases in delay, but not enough to change the level of service, which is really how you sort of grade the intersection.

Gotcha. Okay. And then the River Road and Connector Road, same thing, that today operates as a level of service B? Yes. And in the build condition? B. And in the PMP?

Same thing, B and B.

Okay, so it stays at that level of service B. Correct. And then finally, the site driveway. In the billed condition, what will that be? Because I guess there's, in the no bill, the residential doesn't exist today, right?

Correct, yeah. Well, the golf course driveway too, because I look at it as like a four-leg intersection, but yeah, that would also operate at a level of service B.

Okay, and in your professional opinion, a level of service B is more than acceptable?

yes absolutely if we were designing this as a new facility which you'd shoot for a d like i said okay kind of what the the aim is for the peak hours i just wanted to make sure that that was clear so let's go over let's go to the next topic yeah and you make a good point and the idea is that the the rest of the day like we're looking at the peak on peak so the rest of the day it's going to be better than this we want this is the worst case um and then as far as uh the parking i know the testimony was provided at the last meeting but i'll just go through those numbers again uh when you when you do the math with the 1.8 spaces per one bedroom two spaces per two bedroom and 2.1 spaces per three bedroom comes out to a requirement of 384 spaces plus we have that set aside for city vehicles of 25 spaces so the total requirement then is 409 and we have 584 spaces provided so there's a surplus of parking available on the site and I understand that it's written into the ordinance that that could be used for some sort of long-term vehicle storage if that ever materializes not something that would generate daily traffic in and out but maybe a car dealership needs to put some put some vehicles so

know hopefully that hopefully that com becomes the case so it's not a waste of space essentially so the project as a whole meets the rsis the residential site improvement standards which is a statewide standards as to the number of parking spaces

It exceeds the standard in terms of the number of parking spaces. And that number, now the RSIS is a maximum. So technically, when you exceed it, you need to go explain to them why and get an exception. But since we have the city vehicles and the potential for long-term vehicle storage in there, then we don't have to make that exception. But now you have to inform them when you provide more parking than they require, not when you provide less, which is interesting. Have you had a chance?

Have you had a chance to study the size of the spaces?

Yes. All the all the parking. So let me see if I can pull up the plan just so there's any specific questions.

Just refer to the sheet that you're on when you go there.

Yeah. I just wanted to pull up. I'll pull up the previously submitted site plan exhibit. I don't know if this was marked, because this is part of the set.

It's part of the set. We didn't mark it. So just identify the sheet number.

Sheet number 101, this was the site plan exhibit that was pulled up at the last meeting. The only change now is that we have the loading zone. But the interior of the building is exactly the same. And the architect, in his presentation, will go through some of the floors and things like that. But I looked at it in terms from a traffic engineering perspective. Parking stall dimensions, circulation, aisle widths, all compliant, all work very well. we had i think there was a discussion at the last time about any tandem parking is being provided because the space just exists but that would be assigned to a single unit we're not going to have people sharing keys there's no need there's enough parking here but if somebody has that second car that they only use on the weekends or every once in a while that's a good opportunity to be able to have that out of the way and craig can you speak to compliance with the number of ada parking spaces Yes, we're compliant with ADA and the EV parking spaces. Technically, you get a credit for the EV parking spaces, but we don't really need it. We have the physical number, but we have sufficient EV parking spaces. 56 EVs and 8 ADAs are what's required, and that's what we have.

And the aisle widths, I think you said this, but just to reiterate, the aisle widths and the turning radiuses within the parking structure are all sufficient, in your opinion?

Yeah, not only sufficient, but generous. These dimensions work for a surface parking lot, and typically a garage, you sometimes see spaces that are a few inches smaller and drive aisles that are smaller, and you expect that when you're in a garage. This is a very generous layout.

Okay, and then moving to the exterior of the property or the exterior of the building, do the driveways have proper site distances in your opinion and the proper geometry?

They do. We check the site distance because coming off of Route 24, you're coming around that curve, make sure that that was going to be kept clear. Any landscaping in there will be either low enough or limbed high enough that it doesn't interrupt that site visibility. And it was an existing driveway serving an office building for many years, and it seemed to work.

um I guess we could have the landscape architect testify regarding the um the landscaping that we proposed over there so we can we can hold off on that um and then I again not to be redundant but on the outside the dry vials um and turning radiuses are all are all sufficiently designed in your opinion yes yes and Mr fruit testified the last time with the regards of circulation and and um of deliveries and the fire truck and all those things and I concur with what he said we don't have to go through all that again Okay, and then the last item, I mentioned this when we started the hearing, we did remove that crosswalk from the mid block crosswalk. Can you just speak to that please?

Yeah, I understood the concerns that came up the last time. And just like I wanted to ensure that site distance work because of people coming around the corner, we thought that crosswalk's going to get very little usage. And it probably would create more problems than it necessarily would solve. So we've eliminated that crosswalk. If there ever was the opportunity or the need for another crossing, it would make more sense to be at the intersection.

rather than a mid block crossing a crossroad road which comes with its own set of headaches with multiple jurisdictions as you pointed out I think Steve just for the record I'm looking at my notes on the on the markings we should probably just mark this as a five just because I didn't have this marked at the last meeting just just called site plan exhibit so let's just for the abundance of caution just mark this as a five

Craig, what was the date on it? This is updated. I'm looking at the loading zone.

Because it has the crossing walk gone. Because I can't quite see it.

This is dated August 6th.

Yeah, this might have been exactly what we submitted 10 days in advance, but we'll just mark it to be safe.

Thank you. It was in a folder that said previously shown, but it couldn't have been. Okay.

So that's all I have for Mr. Paraguay. Is there anything else you want to add?

No, I think that covers it.

Thank you. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with Mr. Staunton, and we're going to go around the dais with questions. Okay. Do you have any questions?

Just to confirm, this is the upper level of the parking deck. Actually, I'm sorry, this is the lower.

upper level has yes this is the lower level you can see where it goes straight in and that's a5 when we're saying this upper level has got some do you have a shot of the upper level as well it has some of the building on the front entrance the circle the driveway i don't know let me see perhaps the one with the yellow highlighting with that show i know it's on the ark if not we can come back to that yeah just let's see if you can get it real quick to answer your question hold on one second okay there you go that's probably right okay so this is the previous submitted plan set all right just indicate the date on it craig and just just reference the sheet yeah this is uh sheet seven it's the second floor plan dated last revised June 8th I'm sorry so what was your question so we can answer and I apologize so this is the earlier version just so you know yeah this is this is from the last time the second and third floors haven't changed at all let me know if you want me to zoom in on anything okay

No questions? No, no questions. Okay. Ms. Morrison?

I guess the only thing I would question is when it was an office building, the traffic- Mike, sorry. People at- Sorry. My question would be, when it was an office building, the traffic was Monday through Friday. Meanwhile, the golf course, pretty empty during the week or at least in the middle of the day. Are there any concerns about on weekends, let's say the fishing derby or just a lot of traffic in and out of the golf course on weekends and also now out of this residential complex?

this the peak hours for the weekend in general are going to be lower from this building and the roadway volumes are quite often very much lower so right the worst case is more of the weekday so no I don't have any concerns about the weekend but you make a fair point that the office was quiet on the weekend so this will be a little more active but if it works during rush hour it's going to work fine on the weekend

And the entrances line up between the golf course and the building?

Yeah, just as they do today. It's exactly what you see today. Right, okay.

Mr. Stern?

Yeah, I have a few. Why did you choose that date, just out of curiosity? Middle of the winter, President's Day weekend. Did you check to see if all the schools were in session?

Oh, yeah, we checked for schools. And when I do these, when we do these counts, we use other data sources. We have other counts that we've done in the area up and downstream. The DOT has count stations. They actually have a June 2026 count along JFK Parkway that I always check that. Of course, traffic volumes can fluctuate day to day, 10 to 15 percent, but if you're in the right ballpark with those numbers and using those other data sources to verify that, you know you're good because we've built some of that conservative nature into the analysis using that growth rate that is not really happening and assuming a peak on peak. take takes into account those fluctuations so there's no there were no anomalies based on any of the other data that i have in the area did you include any seasonal adjustment i mean to miss morrison's point thursday in the winter is very different than a thursday in the summer given the adjacency of the golf course um no we didn't make any seasonal adjustment you'd do that if you were you know near like near the beach or when you know school's out but typically day to day you don't see that much variety so in the summertime you're right there may be more people going to the golf course but there's also more people on vacation so less people commuting to work so it tends to even out and the like I said the DOT data has several days a week and it goes back to I think 2018 with traffic volumes, and they're all right in the same ballpark. There's no anomalies.

Have you ever driven River Road during rush hour during the week?

I have. What did you experience? Once you get past here, going south, it gets a little rougher. I know that new signal went in there, what was that, maybe four years ago?

And does the analysis include any of the additional approved There's another one going up in Chatham across from River Grill. There's the potential for a 55 plus community near the mall. Does it include any of that?

Anything that was, yeah, that growth rate accounts for that type of thing. Anything that was in the immediate vicinity, we would specifically look at. But when you're talking about that kind of distance away, I mean, I know a couple of projects I've worked on farther down the Tri-Connell Park. I don't know what's going on with that. you know that that's a little bit farther down the road when you're talking that distance their specific traffic has trickled apart so far from by the time it gets here so that growth weight account growth rate accounts for that but if the golf course was being redeveloped with you know another office building that would be a different scenario where you would look more closely at that and when you said you you used the um the counts based on the office building

being occupied, not vacant, right?

Yeah, just for comparison purposes, yeah.

Where did you get those numbers from?

The same thing. The ITE, if we were going to build an office building, their latest rates for an office building.

because were you able to ever look at like what this specific like if you went back six years pre-covid office building is 100 occupied are you able to get any sort of traffic count going back that far the the dot has the the through volume counts and they are from 2018 was probably the highest and then it's gone steadily down since obviously there's a big dip in 2020.

But I can't tell who was coming in and out of this office. But by using those ITE rates, it accounts for like the post-COVID world. So that's what if we were going to build an office building that size on here, it would generate 130 more trips than what we're proposing here now. And again, my analysis doesn't take any credit for that. I just thought that's good information to sort of get an idea of the magnitude of difference. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you. So my main concern And questions for you are pedestrian safety and how do you, do you want to walk somewhere? How do you walk safely out of here? Particularly school children who want to, we're walking, we don't have busing in this town and kids walk to school. So I'd like to understand, uh, how they get from the site to, they're not going to walk down river road. They're going to walk to Iris or along there. and how are they gonna get there safely?

Yeah, and there's a lot of incomplete or missing sidewalks. I don't know, maybe because it was an office building, but there's no, you know, we're providing on all our frontage, all the sidewalk infrastructure that there is, but it would have to be, you mentioned walking to the mall the last time. Sidewalk takes you under 24, but then it disappears and there's really, if you look at that mall, there's no pedestrian connections into the mall.

Right, but I'm more concerned about the students.

Yeah, that would be the type of scenario where we could either add a crosswalk to the other side of River Road or across the Connected Road, but there's no contiguous sidewalk to get you all the way to Iris.

Right. So where would be the safest place considering the understanding of where cars are going and how quickly they're going to put a crosswalk to get to a sidewalk that's on the Muni side?

Yeah, that would be at this Connector Road intersection would be the best place. There is a crosswalk.

Wait, wait, wait. You're saying the diagonal crosswalk that's currently there.

That's currently there, and then you could continue that crosswalk to the opposite side to get to...

How safe is that long a crosswalk, diagonal crosswalk? I feel like shorter and 90 degrees makes more sense.

That's why it's at a diagonal, because it's a ramp. So you want the driver to be perpendicular to the crossing to have the best visibility. So that's why it was done like that, because it's on that curved ramp.

Yeah, I'm not comfortable with it, but I'm not an engineer. But I feel like we have to solve for this being residential, which is what your applicant's proposing, and figuring out a way to get students across and safely to a sidewalk system, which starts at Iris. So Marie, can you help us here? Do you have any suggestions or questions to try and solve for that?

So understanding that the crosswalk directly to the golf course was removed. And there were discussions pre-application that was a desirable crossing without understanding the traffic situations. It just looked on paper from the city standpoint to say, hey, what about these people wanting to get across the street? Of course, we've all looked at that and thought, well, maybe that's not the best thing. That was just to get people to the golf course. Um, is there anything on the other side of river road, um, that would connect those series of crosswalks to a sidewalk that's near Iris?

The sidewalk, the sidewalk near Iris comes partially down the ramp and then it goes away and doesn't connect all the way to that intersection.

Right.

Um, we've, we've looked, you know, we've,

gone through driven it if there was a sidewalk yeah where it connects and it's if there was a sidewalk on the muni side uh where would be the best place for a crosswalk if you if you had to put one in there have you looked at it enough to see that

An extension of a sidewalk maybe 50 feet would improve it. Is there anything there that would look logical to you?

Can I just interrupt? Yeah. OK. My suggestion is this is a very important topic, and we've got to get it right. And sometimes when you do this on the fly, when it's very technical, it's It's not the prudent thing to do. So I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, and I just don't think there was a lot of time with August and maybe some vacations. We should meet with your board engineer and go through this and get it right and see where we can do it. I have no issue doing that whatsoever.

How to solve for that total problem.

I also wanted to mention one more thing that is more of an operational issue than a design issue. The applicant is providing a shuttle service to the downtown at the property. So I understand the school children's an issue because they're not taking the shuttle to go to work. But in terms of just reducing the amount of pedestrian traffic, there would be people utilizing that shuttle service that the applicant is providing. By the way, they run that shuttle service from their management company. They don't third-party it to someone else. So they control that. So I think between that and working with your board engineer to resolve the problem that you just mentioned or the issue, we're more than happy to do that.

Okay. And we'll get testimony next time on that.

Yeah. Our goal would be to meet with them, and then hopefully we can provide a design or some alternative that's acceptable to your professionals on that.

great okay that sounds like a plan thanks and it's something that we've thought about that's why I yeah how would I know where the sidewalk could begin and end because we've looked everywhere and I think it's in the best interest of the applicant to do it also so it's not just the city as well so yeah great okay I just want to check my notes real quick is there way to memorialize that the long-term parking The differential that makes this fewer trips from this site, now that it's residential, is that there are fewer cars. And when it was an office, it was up to 700 cars, some crazy number. Part of that is now just going to be long-term parking for something like a car dealership. Is that memorialized somewhere so that that doesn't change? And then we have just as much generation.

So there would be there's there's two things that would protect the board or the city on that. One is it's in the settlement agreement on the affordable housing. It mentions like it defines basically what what type of but if the board obviously Mr. Warner can chime in, wants to make it a more express condition if you want to have better language than we have in the settlement agreement. obviously you have the right to do that to ensure that that use the way it's constantly i know that's fully the intent i just don't want it to we have no issue with that and if we want to even make it further clarity on that that's fine great i've never denied the opportunity for any of my boards to have a more explicit detailed condition of approval and resolution i'm not going to start now

thank you okay so this okay got that and we're gonna hear about the pedestrians later uh do you have visitor spaces because you mentioned an extra car now and then and you'd have to tandem them but you're gonna have built-in i just didn't check but yeah the numbers the requirement builds in the visitor spaces that are half space per unit and now the tandems would not be for visitors no i just think tandem seems so unnecessary on your particular site with an existing giant garage Okay, I think I'm good. You're up.

Just curious why the study area was limited for traffic to those couple of intersections when, as Paul mentioned, I think most of us here recognize that River Road gets completely jammed. Was there any thought of looking into how it can impact the traffic?

Yeah, the maximum impact are going to be right at this signalized intersection because that's where most of the traffic, some people are going to go back out on the 24th, but that's where most of the traffic is. Then beyond there, it's dispersed even farther. So we're already just coming out of the driveway an insignificant amount of traffic. And then they go left or right, so then it's even less than that. And then the traffic going south, where I know the concerns are, it's a very small number. So it's not going to, if we're not changing the level of service at this intersection that we're directly maximizing the impact, it's not going to change it there. I know that we're probably not getting a level of service C's and B's as you go farther into town, but the delta is what my focus is, and the maximum delta is going to be right at the site.

Okay. Given that this application proposes 198 residential units, did you evaluate whether the school dismissal period creates a separate afternoon peak traffic?

Yeah, we look like I said, those D.O.T. council, they're all day counts and we're not getting a school peak here in the school. I'll let the planner we'll talk about the schoolchildren, but this is not going to happen.

But how did you look at school the afternoon schoolchildren when it was four o'clock? I guess that's my question.

The DOT counts, when I compare them up, before we do our counts, I look for whatever information I had to see if that situation might occur, whether you have a big bump because the school's nearby. There's no school in the immediate area.

I guess, Craig, just to be clear, the DOT data that you're describing that I think you mentioned goes back, I think you said, almost about eight years?

2018 is, yeah, they have dated back to 2018.

Okay, so the reason that you're relying on that is because it has counts throughout the day, correct?

Yes. Yeah, they're 24-hour counts.

And DOT is saying that River Road is currently running at a level B at 5 o'clock. Is that correct? No. No, no.

My analysis is based on my counts. I use the DOT data to make sure that I didn't go out there on a strange day or get some weird information or, you know, why is this off by, like, 50%? You know, I validate that. I also look at that to see if there is some sort of I mean obviously you can look and see if there's a school right across the street or right in the area then it's it's a concern but some places you do have a bit of a school peak and that doesn't occur here it's literally the rush hours of the busiest

and that data of the dot data is in the uh traffic study as well no it's a it's public it's online okay you can just provide that for us that's fine yeah yeah yeah of course yeah um how can we ask the shuttle can we have it somehow not go through the residential streets like a certain can we see what the plan is to get the shuttle oh

Yeah, I can. You want just you want us to show to just provide as an exhibit like the path. Yeah, that's great. That's fine.

And then are there handicapped electric vehicle chargers? Yeah, I'm sorry. There's eight. Is that what you said? There is. Yes, there are ADA accessible. Yes. Whatever the problem is. And then. I think that might be it for me for right now. Go ahead, Susan.

All right. I'd like to, well, first of all, have you done a traffic study for an office building conversion to residential? Presumably that there will be children living there. Have you done that before?

Yeah, quite a few.

I for me I would like to see the data between three and four as well if you can go down from four but down to three because I'm really concerned about children getting in and out of this building and I'm looking at I'm imagining a child or a mom or someone going down that service road toward River Road. So let's assume, first example, the parent is in the car with the child. So they go out of the driveway. They're in the right lane, presumably. And then immediately, I'm going to use a technical term, have to ooch to the left lane because they're going toward town, presumably, toward school. I'm thinking there's going to be a lot of cars there, and that ouching process is going to be much more complicated than it was before. Because the regular flow of traffic is people coming off 24, coming down, and sort of setting their car into the lane they want to be. But these folks are, in a very short period, going to be going from the right lane, having to ouch, into the left to go into town. And I'm just wondering how you quantify that, how you describe that, and if there's any extra danger associated with that.

Yeah, well, the uching is, when we model these intersections, it's graphically, like the distance between the intersections and all the lanes. So that uching process is accounted for in the analysis. And when this was in office, there was a lot more uching. I think that...

i understand better the right-hand people the people taking it right out of the driveway and the right toward the mall or something but the folks coming out of the driveway are coming into traffic that's already established and moving at some pace you know 30 miles an hour or something and in a very short person period of time that person is going to have to get in the right lane ooch over to the left lane and i think that is going to cause a traffic complication

Just let me make sure I understand what you're talking about. When you come out of the driveway and you make a right.

And you mean to go left up river. Right.

You make this right and you need to get over to the left lane to make the left.

And you're doing it in a very short period when the cars behind you are already established at their rate of speed, I think.

Well, there's no cars coming. It's not a fourth leg there, so you're either making the left because you're making the U-turn off the ramp.

Well, aren't people going to be behind you? As you're making your right, you're going to have to see if there are people behind you, right? Or are you traveling on the road?

No, it's just there's no through movement there. This is just one continuous lane.

but aren't there people already, maybe I'm wrong and I'm imagining it wrong, but I think there are gonna be people already traveling from the road that's between the Muni and the new residential building, right? Aren't there gonna be people already established coming down there?

Who came off the ramp from 24? Yeah.

So they're gonna be going 30 miles an hour or something. So, The first thing you're going to have to do is figure out your way to get into that to make your right turn, right, to get into that line of traffic. Right, yeah. And then you have to do the ouch. I'm just considering that that's something that needs to be thought through.

So I guess that's why I asked Craig when he was testifying that all the sight distances made sense so everybody can see each direction. And then the other question I have is the police did they have any concern with the traffic? No. Wait, we don't. saying out loud i i just wanted to just respond and say that the police department did review traffic patterns and didn't have a concern with the issue and we also meet all the site distance requirements that are required under all the All right.

And I also am going to want much more fulsome data for I'm assuming it's going to be very few children walking to school from this building. But the ones that might be walking are kids in high school because it's not that far. And I don't know if you've owned a kid from high school, but they're not the most sensible people.

I currently have one.

And so I think you really have to be really fulsome in your understanding and our understanding because kids don't do what they want you to do. And I'm thinking they're not going to want to go to Irish Road because you know what they're going to want? Dunkin' Donuts or a bagel. So they may very well be going right into this traffic that's actually moving. So I really want to have a good understanding because you can't trust them to do the right thing.

So just so I can respond appropriately,

Mr. Tuvok, could you speak into the mic, please?

Thanks. Just so we could respond appropriately, the chairwoman also requested that we coordinate with your board engineer regarding sidewalk connection between the pedestrian path. I think you asked for, correct me, I just want to make sure we're getting everything right. You asked for additional data between 3 and 4.

I think for me, other than the fact that It's not great to have this building here when it wasn't there before. I'm really concerned about safety. And I was just thinking about high school kids who don't, they're not going to do what you want.

To be clear though, as far as where we want to know pedestrians can go, you're saying not Irish road. Where are you saying they're, they need to go?

I'm saying if I'm a 15 year old boy, I want a bagel or I want a donut before I go to school. So I'm probably not going to go on iris. I'm probably going to keep going river road.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And I just want to make sure that I'm safe. I want, I want these children to be safe.

Yeah. And crossing there is not going to be. Yeah.

And you know, now that I have the aerial up, this was marked the last time it's the aerial exhibit dated July 27th, probably. the aerial just is a is a one actually yeah i think it you could see a little bit better there is a crosswalk crossing the connector and then there's a sidewalk on the west side of the river road ramp that just ends and then it picks up And approximately that location on the opposite side and connects to Iris. So there's just, you know, whatever went on, there's some disconnect and we want to connect to the sidewalk network in the most efficient way for exactly what you're saying, but how best to do that.

I think we need to, we need to understand that really, really well because no apartment building is worth a dead 15 year old. Right. This is not.

Right, and Marie's going to work with them to come up with a plan, and then they're going to present it at the September meeting, what they came up with. Okay. Okay, correct? Yes. Okay, great. So, next.

Well, thank you, Chairman. Some of my questions have already been addressed, but I guess one of your earlier comments, Mr. Paraguay, and thanks for your remarks, you mentioned that the historic data showed a decrease in traffic at certain intersections over time and the perception in Summit is that the traffic on River Road is getting worse I'm curious about that what if that is in fact what you said and where we can find that data uh to back that up yeah it's it's the NJDOT has count stations in certain places and they have one actually right on River Road that didn't go as as recent as 2026 but

They also have another one on JFK Parkway, and that's the one that's actually going down. There's a lot of things that impact what the perception is. It may be less volume, but there's more traffic signals or more, you know, if you're in an urban area, more on street parking maneuvers. There's a lot of things that affect traffic other than the number of cars. So I suspect that's why the perception is that it's getting worse. But those volumes are consistent and somewhat dropping, not growing by 2.25% per year for sure.

Well, if you could share that data, I would be very interested to see.

Yeah, we wrote that. I wrote that down as you wanted us to provide that as part of it.

That's terrific. um there was a question about the other potential uses of the long-term long-term storage parking area in a similar vein is there a possibility to have memberships to the pool or to a health facility that could be attracting others to come to this site they're only for the residents so there's no there's no possibility of having that zero And I noted that the traffic study conducted on the 19th of February was the Thursday after President's Day, which is a week where a lot of people take vacation time. So I don't know if that is the best time to have done it. I don't know if there's a way to adjust for that.

I think Mr. Stern also mentioned that, and then you can address it again if you'd like.

And like I said, there's always, everything is a national something day or whatever, so you look for what's a typical day when schools are open to do the traffic counts, and then I'm able to use other data to compare it to. That's how.

Okay, so I missed, I didn't hear him say that, so.

mm-hmm yeah it's a valid question because it's it's typically a lesser a lot of people are away so I can tell you with these levels of service even if the volumes were 15 to 20 percent low which would be unusual even for any other any type of holiday the change in conditions from this, with or without this, would not be impacted. Focus more on the delta than the specifics, and that's really what the analysis does. By being conservative with high growth rates, assuming peak on peak, you were able to take some of those questions out, like, what if the next day it was a little bit higher, or the next day it was a little bit lower? You're kind of buffering for that when you do these analyses.

So when you look at the 3 o'clock hour to the 4 o'clock, the reason I think a lot of this traffic is felt in the community is because there are four schools basically going up Morris. So if you have any of those data points along Morris that could inform, that would help as well.

Sure.

Mr. Christopher, do you have any other questions? No.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So PSH, per site hour, is that what we're talking about? Peak street hour. So how do you come up with the number of trips? Do you look at 198 units, an average number of cars per unit?

and you plug it into the the software the the it's the ite it's a they have it's the trip generation manual it's like five volumes this big of uh you know everything you start out with the projection of number of cars number well and for for this it's the number of units so 198 units and a mid-rise residential building in a suburban location and that's how you get the car number

But don't you factor in the number of cars per unit?

That's factored in. We have to break because one of our members went to the bathroom and I said he could, but he shouldn't. We don't want him to miss any testimony. So we're going to take a five minute break.

Five minute break. Thank you.

Sorry.

Sorry about that.

Okay, are we ready to proceed?

I didn't know we had an injured player.

I didn't either. I did not know she was injured either. I'm saying that.

You ready, Mr. Tuval? Who's that? Yep.

we're back on record okay um i think we were at the last question from uh board member oh oh sorry to interrupt the the trip generation so the ite publishes traffic counts that are conducted at various land uses throughout the country in this case like i said we're looking at a mid-rise residential building in a suburban location they have uh dense urban and center city like because obviously the traffic generation characteristics are different residential is one of the the most studied land uses that it has so there's a lot of data and the the independent variable that you use is the number of units so of buildings of this nature, somebody sat there and counted how many cars go in and how many cars go out, and then you get a rate from the number of units. So that's what we do. Thank you.

we've asked all our questions any follow-ups real quick we just have one oh okay uh you mentioned there's um a letter from the police on um when we were discussing board i don't think it's in our packet so if we could have that sent to the board regarding the regarding the um the exiting and the movement remember yeah i saw the response letter to I saw like a one liner, but if we get the original letter just for the packet, that'd be great. I don't know who, I guess it'd be you. I'm sorry, which was it? The letter from the police chief. Regarding the new driveway and site triangles and-

What was that? Was that from the informal TRC?

I think there was something. I'll double check. I thought there was something from the police department in the packet, but I'll double check it. I think it just says no comments.

It was something that wasn't included in staff comments? Something longer than what was included in the staff comments?

I guess, would it be appropriate to ask what was in the TRC then? If it was in TRC, if there was a document in TRC.

I was sitting in the TRC meeting and there was the police officer was in the room somebody mentioned the driveway and oh no we're good with it so that that's that was my recollection what got in writing we should um let's get that in writing please from whoever's in the city is responsible for I guess obtaining those so just some kind of comment from the police chief about circulation a formal written report

And maybe it should, after Marie works with them regarding the pedestrians and that whole area, maybe then they can look at it.

We could also include the police department in those discussions, too, if that's something you want us to do.

I think it might be more relevant then, actually. Good idea.

We did get something in writing. I knew we did, but I didn't have it. It's dated June 30th. No, that's the Commons due date. They're dated June 30th. And the police, I just ask that the guidelines set forth for traffic safety are followed without any deviation unless permission is granted ahead of time by the SPD. all right and like i said my my personal conversation with them in the trc meeting we talked about the driveway they were happy to staying where it is but based on the comments that we had before we're happy to incorporate them in those discussions but yeah i knew i knew they issued some versus comment letter we're going to have some changes so that's fine i just want to confirm uh vice chair hamlet that was included in the staff comments but that's not what you wanted

if there was more detail I would say let's get it but it's not no but I think we're resolving that now by incorporating them in that process great okay so are you gonna bring your next witness or oh public comment I'm so sorry do you wanna it is time for board professionals then public comment jumping the gun I'm so sorry that's okay that's okay

Could you talk about, um, some of the site distance, um, at the, um, entrances and exits onto river road?

Yeah. The, uh, the, the site distance from, uh, exiting the driveway, looking to the left is the, you know, obviously the most critical, otherwise the road's pretty straight. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted him to pull up the proposed so yeah so the the the main visibility that I wanted to check and make sure was that the site distance from turning right looking to your left when you come out of River Road and we meet the site distance for you know the minimum visibility as you're coming around that corner for 40 45 miles per hour and that's there's a You really couldn't take that turn at that speed, but there's an advisory sign for 20 miles per hour. By the letter of the law, we're not even close, but I wanted to look at the more realistic. Do we meet it? Yes, the visibility will be there. The only thing that we need to be sure of, and we will, is to make sure that any of the landscaping or anything that's proposed in this area isn't an obstruction.

And we'll hear about landscaping later on from the landscape architects. So I'll hold off on questions on that. So just to reiterate, what you're saying is that those site triangles that you're showing on there are for 45 miles an hour.

and and but you're saying that that turn can't even be taken at that and it's also signed for less is that correct it's signed for less yeah these the site triangles that you're seeing on site plan are that's the site triangle where you know you keep things from being right immediate to the driveway i'm talking about the actual ashto site distance okay yeah all right And if you like, we can put that on the plan as well.

That would actually be good, right? Thank you. The 58 electric vehicle charging spaces, will they all be up and running at the time of occupancy, or are they going to be staged over the next six years?

I think we would just comply with the statute in terms of the phasing requirements.

Okay. You would put some of them in at the beginning and others three years later?

Right.

We would at a minimum comply with what the statute requires. Okay. I'm sure you're aware of this, but I just want to put it on the record. Now that we're changing some of the engineering plans for the width of the roadway, the loading space, I just want to make sure they're incorporated into the plan set.

Yeah, no, of course. We just wanted, like I said, there was only a few weeks between meetings, and I know that that was one of the board's main comments, so we just wanted to get that in. But yeah, the full set would be updated. Great. Of course.

Great, and I appreciate that there was a short amount of time and it's much easier for me to review those as well when there's only a small change. So I appreciate that. No problem. The exhibit that has the fire truck

The one that we presented tonight.

Right. Do you have can you talk about the exiting on that as well? I mean, it shows the entrance of the fire truck. Could you talk about if there are any constraints for the exiting of that fire truck?

Well, it's essentially take the reverse path. The only constraint is if he pulls into this circle like he is swinging that left would take a reverse maneuver and back but presumably that's when the you know that's obviously when the emergency is done and he's clearing out of there i think that's um that's all i had for now

Madam Chair.

Also, I forgot to swear you in because I swore in your colleague last time.

Do you swear to God or affirm testimony about to give us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

I do.

Thank you, and I know you're going to ask questions first probably.

Certainly, and just to identify myself, Edward Snykus with the firm of Burgess Associates, filling in for Joe Burgess this evening. Thank you. Who's out of town. Just a few quick questions with regard to the site distances from the entrance. I also wanted to know if you felt you took a look at the monument sign that is near the exit of Route 24 onto River Road.

I did. I used that as basically the limiting factor for the visibility. Okay. Although I think that's going to sit down low, so you may be able to see beyond it, but I thought that was the important kind of cutoff point.

okay you feel that there's still a safe enough distance for a car turning onto river road and possibly some minor stacking on river road going into the entrance of the driveway yes in the worst case okay um With regard to the loading and unloading area, typically on move-in day, that's where that loading area will be used? Sort of move-in day for the residents?

Yeah, a building like this typically would be scheduled. So when you're moving in, if you need the loading zone, most people probably move into these apartments with smaller vehicles and can just use their parking space. But if you need that loading zone because you have a larger vehicle, you'd schedule the time so there won't be any conflicts with it.

okay i guess that would be scheduled as far as loading and unloading yeah okay um also for that seems to be adjacent to your trash area for the building so a trash truck can make that's that turn as well as obviously the fire truck but then the trash truck to leave the site would go up and around that same uh i guess drop off area at the south end of the building

They could or they could, we consider the possibility of them coming out of the emergency driveway when it's a delivery vehicle or something like that. Okay. Because it would be a little bit quicker but they could circulate.

But the trash truck wouldn't do the emergency access at that point. Yeah. But they can make the turn at the drop off area. Yes.

That's really my point. Fire truck gets a little tight.

Okay. And most of the deliveries I would imagine would be your parcel vehicles like UPS or Amazon. They would go up to that central main entrance at the south end of the building.

Yeah, the loading zone would be for building function loading, move in and move out, or somebody ordered a refrigerator or something like that.

Got it, okay. And I'm sorry if I didn't hear this or wasn't aware that this may have been covered by the engineer, but the generator that's proposed to the building, is that natural gas? Do we know? Or is that going to be diesel fuel?

Natural gas.

Natural gas. Okay, so there's no need for a delivery for that then. Thank you. No further questions.

Okay, thank you. Now, if you can go to the public.

Just to clarify, this is just questions of this witness? Yes. Based on the testimony?

Based on the traffic. Okay. Yeah. So what you do is you come up to the podium and you state your name and your address and ask the questions of this witness. If you have a question about architecture or some other something, then you just wait until that witness comes.

Okay, thank you. Hi, I'm Carly Mulvey. I live at 7 Iris Road. in Summit. I have a couple questions. So I'm going to go slowly here. So I apologize. But I just want to make sure I read your traffic study. It's very thorough. There's a lot of information. i want to make sure i understand the baseline correctly so we're talking about two hypothetical scenarios we're talking about uh no build which is currently a vacant office building that we're assuming is fully occupied but in the current environment no i i didn't assume that my analysis okay i it's vacant now so you did my analysis as if we were doing this over trees So is there any sort of base of like as is traffic on River Road and then a no build and a residential?

Yeah, the counts we did are the 2026 volumes. We grow them. This case, I did three years to get to 2029 baseline volumes. Okay. Analyze that. And then I add the traffic from this project and then analyze it again and see what the difference is.

Okay. Okay. So your baseline is as is.

Yes.

And then a hypothetical residential, right?

Okay. The office, I just, that was for information, but I didn't take credit for that.

Okay. So the assumptions that you put into your report are, are very important for the residential aspect of this, cuz that is hypothetical. So the assumptions of the traffic and the build and the cars and the growth rate, those are very important. yes okay so i'm going to start with the 2.5 growth number so we're all very familiar with this right um we're all residents of the town although it's a county road we all use this all the time and there's a ton of complaints about congestion and traffic so i think we can all align there as a base I worked with the City of Summit for three years recently to get the no left median that is now on Iris Road from River Road. The City of Summit conducted three years worth of traffic studies to conclude that the traffic on Iris Road had increased over 30% within three years. So I'm going to finish before I ask a follow-up question on that. But is your 2.5% growth rate applied only to River Road?

But to all the council that we took. So the River Road, the Connector Road, the ramp.

But no off streets. So no one's saying, I'm frustrated on River Road. I'm turning.

No, I think that that's why you received the increase on irises because people were using it as a, as a cut through when the new signal went in.

Right, right. So we see as the city of summit, it just has to be a question only because I didn't understand the 2.5% growth rate. So now I do. Okay. So my question is, So a one-day study, is that standard?

Yes.

Okay. Is that standard for the City of Summit?

The questions have to be of the witness. Okay.

Can I ask, I don't know if I can ask this, but has our city engineer provided any feedback on the independent traffic study that you provided or the county?

Your board engineer, sorry not you, the board's engineer reviews our traffic report as part of their review. In addition to that, the county looks at it, the DOT looks at it, and I believe, like I said before, the police department looked at it as well. So multiple layers of jurisdictions looked at it and that's why Craig was indicating all the methodologies that they accept as part of the analysis so is there any feedback or commentary that's that can be public or no it just goes through no all of that's public all of like the city engineer and everyone's feedback is public every document whether the county responds the state responds the city responds every document is public that's correct

Is that located on the website or does that, what, what source would we be able to see that documentation notes?

Um, I think for the city, maybe Jessica can indicate is all the, all the dot, all the review letters are with your office, correct?

yes you can come to the dcs counter if you want to view the application file or you can look on the city website we have staff comments yeah so the board engineers comments are in there okay okay i i missed something though i guess but um okay one thing that i didn't understand and maybe you can explain this to me in the roots and everyone has kind of alluded to this but I couldn't clearly see the roots that you're assuming students will take to elementary, high school, or middle school in terms of quantifiable numbers of where it increases from a residential versus a non-build. You would assume that if it's a residential building, not an office building. My assumption would be that there's people who are residents of Summit who need to go to schools.

couldn't understand from your tables what roots you were building in for those people to get to school but that's we had we were just having that discussion we've been looking into it because the sidewalk network is so incomplete around here and there's so many different options on how to connect it that we're gonna work with your board engineer and the police department to figure out the best way to do that but just cars alone I mean elementary school students you're not gonna have a

first, second, third, fourth grader walk. They're going to be driven. So that wasn't built into your assumptions.

Oh, that's built in then, yeah. Because any other building that the ITE data counted would have had children who were being taken to school and not. Anybody who turns into and out of one of these projects is where that data is sourced from. Now, I should point out that the shuttle service they're providing is probably going to take a lot of those put them all in one van and drive them to the train station. I didn't take credit for that. I used the straight up ITE numbers, but all those vehicles are included.

So for Washington, what was the route you assumed? Morris Ave or back up to Canoe Brook Parkway based on where you're located?

I don't look into the specific route for each individual person living there. You look at the overall traffic patterns and then you assign the overall traffic based on those traffic patterns.

Right. But you would see the root built into the numbers.

So just so we're all on the same page, your question is, because I just want to make sure there's no disconnect in your question. Your question is, did he, as part of his study, build in a walkable route for his- No, a driving route. No, she's talking about- A driving route. Okay, for us to go there. Okay.

Right. And if you look, figure four shows the distribution, the percentage distribution chart. Right. But it's not done by saying, okay, the person who lives in unit six is going to work here, and the person who goes to this school is going to go here. It's done based on the overall traffic patterns and where arterial roadways are. It's a best-guess projection. Could five more people turn right than I said, or five more people turn left? Of course. We're doing the best projection that we can. You can't microanalyze where every single person is going to go because we don't know who's going to live there.

yeah the schools are a set destination so i just assumed it would be clear in the report but i i hear what you're saying so i'll move on um so my next question is peak holiday shopping periods so we talked about a lot about you know weekday traffic um mornings evenings one day study in february have you accounted for holiday traffic to the short hills mall no i'm looking at typical days you don't look for anomaly days that's the what you it's a season typical day i mean it's an anomaly season in fairness um i i would just wonder if that you know maybe should be considered um so i'll move on from that as well so i do have um i think that's all my questions on that so you still you this part of the testimony was regarding parking and snow removal correct can i ask a question on that parking parking parking okay so I'm wondering where snow will be stored on this property after a significant snowstorm, and I ask that because I've driven past this property for approximately 10 years, and the parking lot regularly has substantial snow accumulation and large snow banks.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but again, just so everyone's clear on the rules. There'll be a public comment period if it's pertinent to the question, but I think you might have asked the question without going through what happened the last 10 years. Where's the snow removal going to happen? How's it going to work, right?

Okay. Is there a plan for snow storage that demonstrates adequate parking emergency access and what will happen after a major snow event? Has that been thought through?

yeah we don't we don't have a specific snow storage plan because the vast majority of the parking is indoors so there's not a snow issue it's just these circuits these out outside circulation roads there's room for a smaller event to to plow it into the landscaped areas if it's a three footer we'll probably have to hire somebody to truck it off just like any place

okay so but it'll look better than the office because there's going to actually be active people living here so they're going to want to clean no it's not a concern about aesthetics it's a concern about safety so that's what the question was based in um but i think that covers all my questions thank you

Good evening. Peter Kane, 3 Iris Road. So I'm not sure if you answered the last question. So I am also familiar, as my neighbor was, with the traffic study that was done by the city engineer. God bless him, Aaron Schrager. I miss him. Which I think he found something in the order of 300, 600 additional cars on Iris Road over the course of his study, which is extraordinary. Thank goodness, because that's how we got the no left turn. So did you look at that study information and is it available to you and have you incorporated that into your figures?

that when we did the counts that was already that was already done did you look at aaron schrager's analysis of iris road yes and that that was due to cut through traffic from a different condition that has nothing from river road correct Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So from River Road, 300 to 600 cars a day on Irish Road. You looked at that data and you incorporated that into your analysis.

I didn't need to incorporate it into the analysis. It's already been taken care of.

Really? With your conservative, quote unquote, conservative estimates?

Yeah, I didn't analyze the intersection of Iris Road and River Road, so anybody who is going through this area was accounted for.

There's also been recent traffic studies on Canoe Parkway that is a feeder road, indirect feeder road. Have you incorporated those into your analysis? No. Have you incorporated the impact since we had the no lap turn implemented on Iris Road to Woodland and River Road and Fay and Brainerd?

I'm not doing a traffic study for the city and for their circulation issues. I'm doing a traffic study to determine the impacts of putting this building- And we're trying to determine the quality of life, thank you. And that's what this does.

The change in your quality of life and the change in the traffic impacts from this building is what my report- Are you aware of the impact that the current construction traffic has had on ancillary roads?

That's irrelevant.

Okay. The sidewalks. Why was the crosswalk eliminated?

It was a concern that it was kind of in the middle of the block, in the middle of a stretch of road where you're coming off a highway ramp. It just didn't seem... It didn't seem like the best place to do it, and then it just crosses you to the golf course. It still doesn't connect you to any place else. So at some point, we thought the crosswalk was needed.

I'm sorry, sir, sir. In fairness, you have to let him finish the answer to your question. As does he let me finish. Sir, and I'm not done yet, so please let me finish. Please do. Thank you, sir. He has to finish the answer for it to work properly under the law. He has to allow you to finish the question for it to work properly under the law. So I'm asking you both to do that. Okay? Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Please proceed.

So instead of putting that mid-block crossing that just gets you to the golf course, we want to make sure we connect to the existing sidewalk network, and we want to do that in the best way possible. And there's going to be a team approach with your board engineer and with the police and our team to make sure that we do that the right way.

Have we looked at the possibility of extending the, by my count, about 15 foot of sidewalk extension from the corner of Iris on River Road towards the golf course? Have we looked to extending that down the grassy median towards the golf course entrance on the golf course side as a sidewalk option?

That's an option. There's a lot of options. We need to figure out the best way.

I would recommend that you look at it. I beg your pardon. I would recommend you look at it. Okay. I think those are my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you. Laney Seeger, 60 Canoebrook Parkway. I have a question. You mentioned ITE several times and how that's something that you utilize to determine traffic out of a building such as this. Thank you. Are those ITE state specific or are they national? No.

Unfortunately, they're national, which gives us an overestimation. New Jersey, especially residential, tends to have less traffic generation than you would say in Oklahoma because we have a lot more mass transit and a lot more density here. But it's a national publication.

Okay. So it's not specific to the state of New Jersey. Correct. And then in the last meeting, there was mention for the traffic pattern that only a box truck could fit for moving. Does that now change given the for move ins and move outs? Does that change given the new driveway?

Yeah, the loading zone could fit the, you know, a tractor trailer if need be. But that's not the type of moving vehicles we see in a building like this.

Okay. I mean, my mom moved one bedroom into a building like this and used a full moving truck. But okay, thank you.

thank you welcome thank you Lisa Allen 27 Plain Street a couple quick questions does this it doesn't sound like it does but does it trigger busing I think that's a good it's a good question but I think it's more of like a Board of Ed question they would the Board of Ed would be in charge of busing I think I don't really think it would be something that the traffic engineer could could answer but it is a good question but I don't but I think it's more for the Board of Ed than it would be for the traffic engineer

OK. Do we know how far away? I think it's like a mile that you have to be within a mile of the school.

Craig, do you know the answer to that point? I don't.

That's OK. We can. OK. All right. So OK. So does it trigger busing? That was the first one. To confirm, oh, I was confused. And Ms. Bowen brought something up in terms of going in and out of traffic. So are there entrances in and out on both sides or only on one side of the building?

Just the ones that the where the driveway to the office building is is where the main driveway to this is the same spot.

And it's on the side that would be going out of town onto Route 24. Is that correct? That's what it looks like to me.

It's on. Well, I'll put the aerial back up and you can see it's the same driveway. That's what you look at today. That's the building. It's in the same spot.

So it's the it's heading towards they would exit onto the one way towards Route 24.

If you made a left out, you could go out onto Route 24 east. If you made a right out, then you get to the signal at JFK Parkway, you could go north or south.

Okay, so you have to go, in order to come out of the building, you're going onto a one-way towards Route 24, which means that how do people come back around?

It's two-way, River Road's two-way.

Coming out of there, it's too late. Can you go, can you?

That's why I put the arrow up, I figured it'd be.

Yeah, we'll zoom in just so you can see a little bit better.

So you see this red car is heading this direction and you could have another car.

Excuse me, can you just orient everyone? So Plan South is the Muny.

Plan South, yeah, this is the municipal golf course parking lot, River Road.

Plan North is 191. Okay, and then where each street is so people can really understand where we are.

The site is, well this is an aerial, so this is the old office building that was there.

uh 24 is off to the right side of the page and then that little connector road between jfk parkway and river road is to the left side of the page so this part of river road's two-way okay so i do agree with miss bowen it's going to be really dangerous because um i don't do it but you can definitely see people going 55 50 miles an hour as they head out of town on river road academically it sounds really great that there's two ways there but um The problem is, is that you do have people going out towards a highway and they go really fast. So, and you do have the Muni across the street. It would be very valuable. I would even think of a footbridge because for kids coming out of there, people are coming in and off a highway. It's very unconventional for families just to be, you know, So I would think you really have to consider how that crosswalk works. I personally do not think the diagonal would work. Just my opinion. I'm sorry, that was my question. Hold on.

Just so you know, you might have missed it, but our board engineer and the applicant are going to work together to figure out a very safe way for pedestrians to get in and out of that building and to a sidewalk. Okay.

But your question is for them to consider that as part of that process, correct? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

And they're going to come back and testify to what they've come up with, and we're going to get to review it next time.

Okay, yeah. I would just love if it's either on both sides, an entrance and an exit on both sides, so that you're not just blocking up the one side for people trying to get onto the highway or a footbridge.

Understood. The board made it clear that that's something they want us to really analyze and make sure we get right.

Okay. I've lived here for 18 years, but in 15 years, I've seen two lights go up on River Road because the traffic has gotten so bad. We have another aside from Chad and we had talked about it, but there are 47 units going up on River Road and Morris in Summit. There was an article, and just to lead up to my question, there was an article on NJ21.com that mentioned that the engineer had asked for evidence that the channel, I guess there's water, has enough capacity for storm water flows and that the new building won't harm the existing flood conveyance system. But the project doesn't trigger the New Jersey major development, I'm quoting this verbatim for the article, The project, this project you're talking about, doesn't trigger the New Jersey's major development stormwater management requirements because the disturbed area is less than an acre and the increase in new impervious coverage is less than a quarter acre. I'm very concerned about stormwater management in town. We've had so much flooding. So I'm just wondering how you guys would address stormwater management with such a large building.

No, it's a good question. We dealt with this at the last meeting. I don't know if Steve will let me summarize what was said. I don't preside over the hearings. The chair does. But this isn't the right witness for that because Craig just did traffic. But we did speak to that at the last meeting. There's a whole stormwater plan and report that was submitted. Again, I think another member of the public asked if reports were available. And the city's engineer did review our stormwater report. So that's in there as well. Any comments we agree to stipulate to? um i don't know again if you want me to summarize but basically we we were decreasing um runoff and we were abiding by all the flood rules we have in the state of new jersey department of environmental protection permit for the property so we're complying with all rules as it relates to flooding and stormwater management okay all right those are my questions thank you thank you hello

Good evening. Uh, Jacqueline rung 13 Greenfield app. Um, unfortunately my better half is a structural engineer, but he left for dad duties. So you guys get me. Um, I do have some general questions about the study. So, uh, the study has a comparison that was done against the trip generation potential of a fully occupied office building. But, uh, as many have pointed out, the reality is it's actually currently vacant. Um, so I just want to clarify the 75 AM and 74 PM peak hour trips are in fact additional

trips is that right yes correct okay is there a separate trip generation component in the analysis for the 175 third-party parking spaces and if so can you share where in your report we can find that no because we don't know who's going to use those but in any event it's long-term vehicle storage so it's not going to be something that's active on a daily basis and if somebody does need to access those vehicles they're certainly not going to do it during rush hour time it's in the middle of the

Okay, got it. I think that's a pretty significant operating assumption, and I'm not sure if this may have been asked before, but is that proposed as a condition restricting the third party parking use going forward? We discussed that. Okay.

But you can ask the witness.

okay yeah is that uh is that proposed as a condition restricting the third party parking it's in the um there's a there was a settlement agreement i don't know if you heard me say that earlier in january yeah with the um in that for the housing plan and that type of use was um was vetted in that it was going to be on a bulk basis but then i indicated to the board that if the board wanted to refer refine that a little further to get some more clarity on it okay based on you know the comment you made and the comment that The board made that we were fine with that. There's no issue with that. There's no intent to make it something that would be at all high turnover whatsoever.

Got it, okay. So you mentioned the model level of service remains B, but the level of service, the way I understand, is an average measure. Does your model also show the change in 95th percentile queue length and whether that queue can spill back into upstream intersections and other access points? So the main concern, southbound River Road has traffic merging from JFK, the ramp from 24, and the ramp from Chatham 124. So now you're adding residents making the left from the connector onto River Road. Obviously, that can have clear congestion implications. So what is the 95th percentile queue length?

You're talking about coming off of JFK and making the left onto River on the Connector Road?

I'm saying the queue length on River Road in general because it's taking three, as it is right now, it's taking traffic from three different areas, JFK, the ramp from 24, and Chatham 124. And now you're going to add residents from your project making a left onto River Road. And so what is that actually doing to the queue length? And what is the 95th percentile length in that case?

There wouldn't be a queue length along River Road. It's through traffic. you're you're there would be where you have a stop sign or a red traffic signal is where you would build a queue but there is yeah but there's one right there there's a lot there's no stopping on river road in front of the building you have to stop to exit the driveway no no there's a lot there's a light

Yeah, there's a light right in the corner there. Yeah, right here.

That's what I said. Then you said no along River Road.

Well, it's the connector. It's the connector.

It's in the analysis. I'd have to go through and dig it up.

Okay, yeah. If you could provide that, that would be great. Question on the method of study. Were actual queue lengths observed and recorded in your Feb 19 field counts, and did you compare that against the real-world queues that day with the queues produced by your synchro model?

No.

Okay, is there any reason why you wouldn't have done that?

We know if there's a boring queuing condition where only half of the cars are getting through on a green, then that's noted and then we look into that, but that wasn't the case at this signal.

Okay, I guess if you're already there taking counts, why wouldn't you just observe the queues and check them against the output from your model?

We do observe the queues, but if there's not an extended queuing condition, if the light's clearing, it doesn't have any impact.

Okay. I'm going to move on. Side street access. So in determining your study area, and I think this goes to the Iris Road question also, did you evaluate whether the additional project traffic on River Road can materially affect residents entering River Road from these streets that don't have signals? So gap acceptance or side street delay analysis for Iris, Woodland, Fay, Brainerd, Butler, Greenfield, Lewis. Is there any analysis on gap acceptance or side street delay? No. Any any reasoning behind that?

We're generating so few cars past those intersections, it wouldn't have any impact.

Sorry. OK. That's clearly not the lived experience of the neighbors here. But I guess that goes to my last question. You mentioned that you've driven River Road during rush hour. Obviously, many of our neighbors here can speak to the existing frequent queue spillback along River Road associated with, I think, the Chatham Road signal. Does your model include that intersection and capture the resulting spillback along River Road?

No. We analyzed the nearest intersection where we're going to have the maximum impacts and find that we have no impact to that intersection. All those other intersections farther up and down will have less of an impact. Again, I'm looking at the impact of this project, not doing a corridor analysis for the city.

It's two different things. OK. So if you were looking at the traffic impact to River Road, you have to look at one intersection removed from where your project is going up. Because all the backup that happens is at Chatham Road and River Road intersection. When that light is red, you cannot make a left turn onto River Road. You probably can't make a right turn onto River Road. So I'd like to hear some reasoning for why you are isolating your particular study to just this one intersection, this one light right in front of your project, when clearly there are much broader implications.

So that's all commentary, it's not questions.

I mean, it's why is it not being included? Ma'am, was the question, isn't that correct?

sorry what was the question isn't that correct yeah isn't that correct you attorneys get away with all kinds of stuff that that i know the intersection you're talking about because we looked at that when it was first happening when we were doing the tri-connell park project that's right right near there so i i understand your concern with that intersection but What I am trying to do with this traffic study is not fix that corridor, not figure out why the traffic problems are bad, is find out how much this project is going to have an impact on it. So if the intersection right next to it where most of the traffic goes through doesn't have a negative impact, where there's a much smaller percentage down at that intersection, it's going to be even less of a change. Is that intersection going to work any differently with this project? No. being impacted nearly at all really.

I think this is true. I mean, it seems like this is just turning a blind eye to, you know, compounding existing at a certain point.

We do have to limit it to questions and the public comment period will come. You'll be on the road and can make all these points.

Thanks. All right. Um, that's all my questions then. Thank you. Thank you.

welcome good evening don nelson 20 plain street i'm not going to be as eloquent as this young lady i shoot from the hip so beware so can you uh tell me the dates or dates that you did the traffic study

The, we did the, our traffic counts, February 19th, 20, 26.

And that's when we talked about the school being out for vacation, possibly we're not a hundred percent positive. So, um, and then you also mentioned that there was a counter out on Morris avenue. It wasn't counting.

No, the, the, the DOT, the river road, DOT has counts. The NJ DOT has count stations out in various locations throughout the state.

Did you mention that one of them was not counting on river road?

The one on River Road, the data that was available wasn't as extensive as the one on JFK. I don't have it in front of me, the exact dates.

So can you tell me the exact number of cars that travel River Road in a day?

In a day? Yeah. The DOT data could. Well, I'm asking you. Mine is just based on the peak hours. So if you want the numbers, River Road in a peak hour, it's about 500 to 600 vehicles per hour travel on River Road.

So what's considered a peak hour?

The busiest single hour between 7 and 9 on a weekday morning and between 4 and 6.30 on a weekday evening.

Would it surprise you to say that in 2001, the traffic count on River Road was 20,000 cars a day? I know that for a fact. What part of River Road? The whole road. The whole road. In Summit, 20,000 cars a day. The reason why I ask that is because if you do a traffic study, you say it goes up by 2.5% a year. Based on what number?

All right. Let's slow down.

And you can answer my question.

River Road, the little piece of River Road that we are fronting on, has never carried 20,000 vehicles a day. Farther down, when you get past where it merges in with JFK. I agree with you. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.

So how many cars pass in front of the project, the project?

This little part of River Road, in the peak hours, it's about 500 to 600 vehicles per hour. In the peak hour on JFK Parkway and then farther down by extension the rest of River Road, it's about 2,500 cars an hour. We're adding, and this goes back to the previous question, in that direction about 20. So it's not, the existing traffic volume is far greater than the additional traffic that's going to come out of this project.

So that peak hour is roughly 500 cars? So what is it, what's it for the whole day? I don't know. I don't have that data. So what is that 2.5% increase based on? The 500 or the whole day?

All those count stations that NJDOT has throughout the state, they look at that data based on the county it's in and then the classification of the roadway and come up with that number. So that 2.25% is is a blanket number that i have to use because they published it but what i looked at was their actual specific data right here and the numbers are staying the same and actually slightly decreasing so when was those when were those numbers last updated june 2026 was the latest date and that's how about the uh the ite manuals that you use what's the latest edition you use that's the the 12th edition is the latest edition they update that every one to two years so that's from when 2024.

no 2025 i believe that okay thank you um you mentioned about um long-term storage of vehicles and the word dealership popped up and what that brings to mind to me is there's a very large car dealership on river road that parks cars across the street from your current project is there any agreement with that car dealership to store cars on your lot no So what are we talking about? Who would store cars there?

That's what we were saying before. I don't know if you were here for that. I was here. Yeah. There's no prospective tenant to lease those spaces now, but it's defined how it could be leased. It's supposed to be on a bulk basis, so it's low turnover and there aren't a lot of cars coming in and out. But again, as I said before, if the board wants to clarify that a little bit further, they're resolution, that's fine. But to answer your question before, there is no end user that has been identified. Okay. Very good. Thank you.

I think I have one more question, but because I shoot from the hip, I don't remember what it was. Well, thank you very much. Well, actually, let's explore one thing. The new entrance that the DEP is requiring you to put in for flood access? The emergency one. Emergency. Is that going to be built into the ramp going up to the second floor parking area?

No, it just connects that existing kind of connector road to River Road. So it almost replicates that existing driveway. I'll put the site planning in the back up so you can see.

Do you have an elevation for that side? Because isn't that a ramp going up? to the second floor parking? Yeah, this this is yes. So that's just going to be for water to flow through or cars to get out or how is that going to work?

No, it's for cars. If there was a situation where there was a flooding emergency, and this driveway was underwater, you still want people to be able to get in and out of their apartments. So that's what it's for.

So I'm confused if that's a ramp going up. You have to build through the ramp, correct? I mean, maybe this is a question for the architect. I don't know. I mean, it's just an asphalt driveway.

I mean, yeah, it'll have a grade to it, but it's not a bridge or a ramp or anything like that.

Okay. I'd have to see what the architect has going on there. Can we talk about the fire truck access? We can talk about whatever you'd like. Keep shooting from the hip. Is the weight capacity enough for all that apparatus? Because you're only showing one piece of apparatus. Usually when a ladder truck goes to the front of the building and it's being used, it takes more than one piece of apparatus to feed it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not a structural engineer, but I... So we have to ask you on the technical question, I would assume.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Welcome. Good evening.

Penny Barth, 79 Tanglewood Drive. I've lived in the town probably over 50 years. This whole new project, as a mother who drove her three children in carpools back and forth, I have a couple questions. On the study, you did a 4 to 630. Most of the people here who are taking their children to school are picking them up anywhere from 2.30 on, back and forth, back and forth. So that's one thing. So I think in your study maybe you should check the times.

Do you have a question like why did he pick that time frame?

Why was that not checked as far as the time? And the date when it was checked was probably a holiday. The other problem- Wait, wait, wait.

Let him answer. Yeah, you want him to answer the question.

Couple reasons. We didn't worry about the school hour because there's no school on River Road or immediately adjacent. That's when you typically get worried about the school having impacts. So the commuter rush hours almost everywhere, even sometimes right in front of a school are, are usually higher than that school line. And the second reason is this type of building is not going to have that many school age children. That testimony will come later, but this isn't going to be, you know, a bunch of kids living here.

It's not a, it's not a, can I also, can I also just try to clarify your question also just give me one second with Craig to do that.

So Craig,

When you study the roadway peak hours, you're studying the busiest hours of the road, correct? Correct. Okay. So when you study seven to nine and four to six, that's because there's the most volume on those roads, right?

Absolutely.

And then you identify within those two or three hour gaps the busiest one hour, right? Correct. Okay. So after you do that, that's when you get the level of service analysis that you published in your report, correct? Right. So anything other than that peak hour would be the level of service would be even better.

Is that correct? Yes, that's the idea. We're looking at the worst-case scenario, the busiest possible.

Right. So it's a good question, and I just want to make sure that you understand why we studied the hours that we studied. Because if I were in your shoes, I'd be asking the same thing. So the point is that that time that school is let out is not as busy as the other hours that you studied, right? Correct? Correct.

so the level of service would actually be better than the level of service b or or around the same in those hours is that right that and the the building itself is going to be generating far fewer traffic because the apartments the people who live in these buildings they're generating their traffic commuting to and from work by and by

And they have no children. These people who are going to be living in 198 units have no children going to school?

Nobody's saying that. What I wanted you to understand from the questions, and I would have asked the same thing if I were you, so that's why I want to answer correctly. is that the point of him doing the studies in the hours that he did is because he did them, which he just testified to, in the busiest time. So anything else outside of that busiest time will be less busy. So if it works in the busiest time, which is what he's concluded, and everyone obviously, all the other professionals are checking that to make sure, but he's concluded that in the busiest time, it's been it works in the when it's less busy it will work even better that's why but the board did ask for us to still be extra cautious and study those hours as well just to be on the safe side but i wanted you to understand he didn't just ignore the school hours he studied it in a in the most conservative way possible but we will double check it as the board had requested

Well, I think the walk, and I just think for people driving their children to these different schools, they're going to have to come out of the building, get in that queue, and try to get out. And if the light's changing, how long is it going to take? Do you have to plan as a mother getting your child to school an extra half an hour to get to Washington, Lincoln, the middle school, or high school because of the traffic?

getting out of your building and again I just onto the road and again and I'm sorry if you're not if I'm not articulating this as well as I could be for you to understand or maybe it's I'm not doing a good job but the point is if it works in the busiest time the points that you're trying to make won't be a concern but but the board asked us to double check it

Please do. And then the thing is, when are you meeting with the engineer and what city engineer are you meeting with?

So the chairwoman, I believe, has directed us to meet with Marie.

Our consulting engineer, Marie, who's right here tonight.

Perfect.

Thank you so much. And I believe she asked us also to try to include the police officials in that.

Right, with a written report. And I would say the fire department, because basically as of July, we have more or less new people in the fire department.

They wrote a letter, but I think we've worked with them extensively. Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Welcome. I couldn't hear you because of the mic.

Oh, I'm sorry. Kuldeep Singh, 8 Iris Road. My question was regarding shuttle service. Can you just expand on that, what the routes are for the shuttle?

Yeah, I believe the vice chair had asked that we provide that to the board, just what that route is going to be. The purpose of the shuttle service that this developer and property owner does for other buildings is to reduce trips on the road and also provide a convenience to its residents so that they can go to mass transit.

But do we have the- I think that's what they asked for.

That's what the vice chair asked for.

I'm sorry, so what was the answer to?

No, no, she asked if we would provide at a later date. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. I'm sorry. A plan showing the route. Got it.

The reason I was asking that question is because there's two ways to get into town.

One is Iris Road and one is- That's probably why the Vice Chair just wanted to know what we had envisioned for it. Okay. It's a good question.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I think our stenographer probably needs a break.

Are we closed on traffic?

So I think we are.

Oh, our vice chair has one follow up, and then we're going to take a break for the sonography.

One question on pedestrian access. So when I was on the site visit, you're basically the cars are going up the ramp, right? How are the how are pedestrians getting down the ramp if they choose to go? What's the what's the exit point from the building to the road?

Do you mean from the building or from the site? From the building, the architect will go through all that.

Okay. I can wait for him then for that question. Yeah. As far as pedestrian access down the ramp.

Yeah. It's good you brought it up because our engineer and you all have to figure out not only how do they get across the street, but how do they get from the door to the street? That all has to get worked out with our engineer.

I've lived in a building like that. It seems like something that everybody would think of, but if there's no way, like Susan said, people are going to do the things that you don't expect them to do, right? They're going to walk down the ramp. So I'm just wondering if there was a... know a corridor where there's for pedestrians to walk or there's a yeah i mean you can see from the in the corner here it takes you right to the crosswalk into the sidewalk and when you look at the side that you're talking about no i'm talking about like on the specific ramp how how will you delineate how pedestrians will walk up and down the ramp so they're going to do it whether you want them to or not and not get hit by a car you mean walk up and down the driveway yeah

I mean, I think you would, if you were going to walk someplace from the building, you would leave from the main entrance of the building and walk onto the sidewalk. I guess if you stopped at your car to get something. Okay.

If there's a way to delete that better, we'll work with your board engineer. If you feel as though it's, we can do better on that. We'll, we'll discuss that with the, with the board engineer.

Because there's a sidewalk connection at the driveway to the sidewalk, and pedestrian access doors, as a matter of fact. But the intent, the idea would be that people would be walking out of the main entrance.

The idea is to make it good enough that they're not going to want to use the ramp. They may, but if this is designed better to get people to where they need to go, they shouldn't be walking up and down the ramp. But yeah, they could do a lot of things to delineate, but let's try and do a better job with the help of the... Call yours.

The other question I had is I think a lot of what I've heard, at least from a lot of the residents is that we do have a lot of in-house knowledge from traffic studies that we've done within the department. What I would like to request Marie is if we can work with our city engineer, as much as you have all the knowledge and you're going back we these residents have spent you know hours and hours and hours talking about access to their streets I think it'd be really valuable if we can include our city engineer in those conversations because he's the one who's been communicating with all these residents and working with them over the last couple years I think it might be helpful if we could do that okay sounds good okay we're gonna take a break five minutes okay

Everybody get seated.

And then we're going to do, we're going to start the architect if we don't finish.

All right. Are we ready to go?

Hello. Hello.

So you are the landscape architect? I am. Yes, ma'am. Nice to see you.

Okay. Tom, just state your name for the record. Yeah.

My name is Thomas Bauer.

All right. And you know that you were previously sworn by the board? Yes, I was. Okay. Can you just state your- And you remain under oath. Please proceed. Can you just state your qualifications for the record as a landscape architect, please?

Sure. Thomas Bauer. I'm a principal and founder of Malil Bauer Carman, landscape architecture firm with our offices in Brielle and Jersey City, New Jersey. I have a degree in landscape architecture from Penn State University in 1976. I'm licensed in New Jersey and several other states as well. And I've been before many municipal boards in New Jersey over the last 47 years.

I'm licensed, current, and in good standing? Yes, it is. Does the board accept Mr. Bauer?