Note, order of agenda can be modified based on arrival of attorney/ presenter(s)/developer(s). Breakfast to be provided.
1. Conditional Use Zoning – HG- this is being punted to be discussed under the new Master Plan (under way)
2. Bischoff’s – DK- Bischoff owners presented and stated their intentions are to open a pop up from Memorial Day until Labor Day with just a few quick modifications such as a paint job. Should it be successful they will then close for the winter, sign a long-term lease and renovate. They detailed some items needing town consent such as awnings, service windows, outdoor dining and others, which will be reviewed upon their formal request.
3. Gil Rivera – River Commons New Bridge Road- wanted Council to change the site’s zoning to allow for first floor medical. He also stated he has a pending application before the BOA in June. ZSC advised him to advise Council after they make their determination and if further action is still needed we can circle back then.
4. East Restaurant – DK- operator of the restaurant is looking for space to re-open. Very limited space available in town
5. Accessible dwelling units- Will be discussed at next meeting and/or punted to the Master Plan.
6. 54 West Englewood – MS- applicant met with us and presented plans for a 5 story building. Planner suggested less parking and CM Schwartz suggested to move down some units to ground floor to change the building to a 4 story. Applicant requested three weeks to fine tune and circle back. Part of the application is for the builder to widen the town street at his expense and with his land.
7. American Legion Drive community meeting- developer to porcine [sic.] dates at which he can present to the community his renderings.
8. Cedar Lane business owners’ breakfast (9:30 AM)- no owners showed. Subsequent email from CM Schwartz to hold a council retreat to discuss the future of Cedar Lane. DM Belcher stated we should provide incentivization to ownership to either develop or sell etc.
9. Chase Cedar Lane meeting- meeting to be set with ownership.
NEXT MEETING FRIDAY JUNE 2ND 830AM
Respectfully submitted,
Mark J Schwartz, Council member
Voices Commentary on these Zoning Subcommittee Minutes
Three concerns:
a) The Zoning subcommittee is a Council Subcommittee. Yet its minutes appear here in the Council agenda on the Manager’s letterhead. When asked by Voices, the Clerk could not explain why.
b) Minutes of official town bodies invariably include names of the participants and their roles. In these subcommittee minutes, participants – presumably Council members and town administrative personnel - are identified for the most part only by their initials. Some participants are identified only as unnamed “developers” or “applicants”. Why?
c) The discussion of “plans for a 5-story building“ at 54 W. Englewood Ave. is woefully incomplete and misleading. Neither the name nor the role of the person appearing before the subcommittee as “applicant” for this proposal is identified.
But there is a much more substantial flaw here. Not noted in these minutes is the fact that the proposed building clearly violates the current R/S [residential/single] zoning for this property.
In fact, a proposal for a much smaller (3-story; 20 unit) facility on this same lot was considered from 2020-2022 by the Board of Adjustment(BofA) in 7 separate hearings which culminated in a 2+ hour hearing on July 21, 2022 (Click Here for the Town video). At the conclusion of this 7th hearing, the BofA voted decisively (5-2) to DENY the application.
The BofA members who made the motion to deny this multi-family application stated that the applicant’s proposal was much too large for the proposed lot.
What the applicant did at the zoning subcommittee mtg. on April 28, 2023 was to draw up an even much larger building proposal than the 3-story one that the BofA had just last July rejected.
· Voices reminds its readers that the BofA is the only entity in town statutorily empowered to approve/disapprove proposals that require a D1 variance (Change of Use variance).
Therefore, when the previous Town Council designated this 54 W. Englewood Ave. property as part of its most recent blighted Area in Need of Redevelopment (AINR) less than five weeks (August 30, 2022), after the BofA had said no, Council was seizing the redevelopment statute both to circumvent the normal state Municipal Land Use Law (MLUL) statute requirements and to violate both the Town’s current zoning rules and its current Master Plan. Both promise to protect existing single-family residential housing.
Apparently, the new Council’s new zoning subcommittee – or at least one of its members - is negotiating in secret to give a 54 W. Englewood “applicant” another way around the Town’s zoning rules. Mr. Schwartz’s subcommittee minutes surely owed the public its recognition of this fact.
All of these closed zoning subcommittee land use matters should make the renewed discussion of a revised Master Plan (MP) more important. Apparently, this time Council is taking the “new Master Plan” rhetoric sufficiently seriously to have begun to form a committee of 10 persons which will first meet (in closed session?) on June 14 and will engage the Town’s Phillips, Preiss planning firm as its consultant.
Whether the frequently stated commitment to seek public input at every stage in this new MP development process actually occurs will need active resident surveillance.
· P.S. As Voices previously noted (5/7 edition Click Here), the very successful May 2 Town Development Forum at the Rodda Center had featured significant opportunity for public input – both in-person and virtual. The Forum had been zoom videoed but the Town had not successfully saved the video tape for post-Forum watching and review. There had still been some hope for days that the tape might still be recovered but that effort has not been successful. When residents are finally given a chance to express their views, the public record disappears?
" Whoops, we lost the video" is a too frequent occurrence in the Town’s own taping of public meetings that all agree must nottcontinue.
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