Business & Tech

Planning Board Continues to Look at 122 Main St.

Hearing will continue at Feb. 23 meeting.

The Madison Planning Board spent the large majority of its meeting Tuesday night listening to testimony from the group attempting to develop the property at the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Main Street.

Greenwood Property Group is proposing to take the land located at 122 Main St. and develop it as a mixed-use building, with the top floor for office use and the ground floor for retail use.

The site had previously been used as an Exxon service station.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

Though most of the testimony seemed to be acceptable by the board, there was discussion that came up at the end over a disputed variance.

Attorney Nino Coviello, a partner at Saiber, LLC in Florham Park, represented the group to the board.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

The main portion of the group's testimony came from traffic expert Gary Dean and Richard Preiss of Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, the applicant's planner. Preiss is also the former planning consultant for Chatham Borough.

Dean told the board that the numbers he used to calculate the traffic increase the proposed site plan could bring were derived by using hypothetical medical/dental use for the top floor. He said that use would generate the most possible traffic trips, therefore showing the greatest impact the site could theoretically have.

Dean's study showed that the morning weekday peak hours would generate about 65 total vehicle trips on Main Street, mostly by employees reporting to work at the site. The evening peak hours would produce about 190 total traffic movements, 85 coming into the site and 105 departing. That time period would create the most traffic of people coming for the retail business, mainly from those driving home and stopping from work. It would also bring in a limited amount of patients if the top floor was used as medical/dental office space.

Dean said Saturday would drive the highest amount of traffic counts to and from the site, with 255 total trips generated, and that number roughly split by in-bound and out-bound traffic.

Dean also said that the site, as currently planned, would contain 125 parking spaces.

Dean said that the parking numbers to him seem more than adequate for any of the tenants the applicant may have at the property.

"I think it is a nice way to develop the site for vital business and not over-pave it with parking that never gets used," Dean said.

Preiss went over what the applicant's group believes are the only two variances the project needs as presented. Preiss' testimony was that both the front yard setback increase the group is looking for from the required 30 feet, and the light intensity variance from 1.1 foot candles to .5 foot candles, are proper and cause no detriment to the area.

"There is retail and office space to enliven and expand the downtown," Preiss said. "The continuation of the retail street wall is a benefit. It is an improvement over a gas station."

The only real contention between board members and the applicant's group came at the end of the meeting when there was a disagreement on the amount of space required for landscaping based on the total area in the property. The applicant's landscape architect Brian Shortino and Coviello both believe the numbers to be within the borough's ordinance. However, one of the planning board's consultants, Susan Blickstein, said she believes the numbers were calculated incorrectly by using measurements not intended by the ordinance.

The meeting ended with the hearing being held over to Feb. 23. In the time before that meeting, the applicant will work with the board professionals to iron out discrepancies between the two groups. Coviello had hoped to have more testimony from the applicant's professionals so they wouldn't have to come back at the Feb. 23 meeting, but the work between the applicant and the board professionals may prevent that from being necessary.

"Let's have the applicant work with the board professionals," Planning Board Chair Steve Tombalakian said. "If you can make these two people (Blickstein and Frank Russo) comfortable, then maybe we won't need them to come back."

 


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here