The Municipal Land use Board (MLUB) will have on its regular meeting’s agenda for Monday, June 13th, the application for site plan approval for Meridia On Westfield. The developer, Meridia – a Capodagli Property Company (CPC) – was formally appointed the conditional redeveloper at the special June 8, 2016 Mayor & Council meeting after the redevelopment plan – named the “West Westfield Avenue Redevelopment Plan I” – was approved by both the governing body and the MLUB. Monday night’s application will be for both the preliminary and final site plans.
The 27-page application lists the property address as 200-250 West Westfield Avenue on block 314, lots 8 through 12 and has 213 residential units and 340 parking spaces. Lots 6, 7, and 14 which were on the original redevelopment study have since been removed from the project. The development will consist of two (2) separate buildings with parking on the first two floors as well as in between the two main structures. Building A is the smaller of the two structures.
The size of the lots on the first page of the application gives the total lot size as 397.5 sq. ft. x 187 sq. ft. but then incorrectly states the total acreage as 1.8 acres. Using the conversion rate of one (1) square foot equaling 0.000022956841138659 of an acre (or 2.29568e-5 acres), the lot size comes out to 1.71 acres. If the information from the tax records are taken into account, the total acreage comes to 1.74 acres.
| Block | Lot | Acreage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 314 | 8 | 0.1288 | |
| 314 | 9 | 0.2146 | |
| 314 | 10 | 0.4316 | |
| 314 | 11 | 0.4132 | |
| 314 | 12 | 0.5510 | |
Total | 1.7392 |
The only variance being asked for in the application – a “C” variance – is to increase the height of the development by two feet to 74 feet high. The redevelopment plan’s height, as well as the B-3 Arterial Business Zone’s height maximum is 72 feet. The reason given for the variance if to ‘accommodate duct work in the parking area’. There is no request for re-division to combine the five (5) lots into one on the tax maps nor any request for a waiver to expand the units from the 209 maximum to the proposed 213.
The application requests a waiver from New Jersey’s Residential Site Improvement Standards (RSIS) for a parking space from nine (9) feet in width to 8½ feet.
A Traffic Impact Study, prepared by Dynamic Traffic, was also included in the application package. In that study, it refers to 210 units – not 213 – with 7,000 square feet of commercial space and 352 parking spaces. According to Dynamic Traffic, the development will generate a maximum of 27 entering trips and 53 exiting trips during the morning peak hour and 64 entering trips and 52 exiting trips during the evening peak hour. The projections were based on traffic at the intersections of West Westfield Avenue with Columbus Place and West Westfield Avenue with Roosevelt Street. Manual turning movement counts, which is an individual pressing a correlating button for every vehicle that enters and moves through the intersection, were conducted on May 16th from 4 p.m. – 6 p.m. and May 17th from 7 a.m. to 9 o’clock in the morning. The study concluded that the development “is anticipated to have little, if any [sic] discernible [sic] traffic impact along the surrounding roadway network” and that “the adjacent street system of the Borough of Roselle Park and County of Union will not experience any significant degradation in operating conditions with the construction of The Project.”
The set of drawings which had 11 pages shows the various aspects of the project. The title sheet lists 12 different drawings with sheet A-130 being listed twice and sheet A-170 actually being a second sheet of A-160 in the set. There are significant differences between this set of plans and the original rendered concept plan is that this formal plan has the two floors of parking on the ground level and second level as opposed to the basement and ground level. This brings the project to six stories instead of five. There are 201 parking spaces in total on the ground level for the two buildings and center open plaza area. The second level has 139 parking spaces for the two buildings. The third through sixth floors each have 13 units for Building A and 40 units in Building B with the third floor of Building B having a courtyard. The majority of the rest of the drawings demonstrate the various styles and types of apartments. They are broken down into the following:
- 1 bedroom with 1 bathroom
- 1 bedroom and 1 den with 1 bathroom
- 1 bedroom and 1 den with 2 bathrooms
- 2 bedroom with 1 bathroom
- 2 bedrooms with 2 bathrooms
Building A will have a lobby, a utilities room, and a transformer room. Building B has a sales office, a lobby , and 6,000 square feet of retail space marked out.
The actual seven page site plan has drawings that detail a grading plan, water demand and sanitary sewer projected flows, stormwater computations, soil erosion and sediment control, sequence of construction, landscaping, and other construction details.
There is no mention or reference to whether other relevant development project issues – such as tax abatements or Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) or affordable housing – will be discussed at this hearing.
The MLUB meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 13, 2016 inside council chambers or borough hall at 7 p.m. Borough hall at the Roselle Park Municipal Complex located at 110 East Westfield Avenue.
Copies of the application, drawings, and site plan are available below for viewing or download:
Download Application
Download Drawings
Download Site Plan
Download Traffic Impact Study