Union County Hawk journalist Fred Rossi has published a scathing article about the contentious approval of the 383 South Ave project by the Fanwood Planning Board. We only have the print copy at the moment, but I’ll make it available here for the time being.
A property on South Avenue, the former site of several restaurants including the Chippery and Nostimo, will be demolished to make way for a new development project.
By FRED T. ROSSI
Residents Decry Approval of South Ave. Apt. Application
FANWOOD — Despite opposition from neighborhood residents, the planning board last month approved an application to develop property on South Avenue into a 16-unit apartment building.
NB Home Improvements LLC will construct a three-story, triangular-shaped building at 383 South Avenue, located between South Avenue and Old South Avenue, which will contain 16 apartments and 24 parking spaces underneath the building. The property, which is slightly less than a half acre in size, was home to the Chippery restaurant for many years and, most recently, was the site of the Nostimo Mediterranean Greek restaurant.
The plan is for two floors of apartments— one one-bedroom, six two-bedroom, and one three-bedroom on each floor. Three of the units will be designated as affordable to help the borough comply with its affordable housing mandates. The 16 units represent a reduction from the 24 units proposed in the original application. A ground-level garage will be accessible from Old South Avenue and will include a bicycle storage area at the western end, with trash being collected from Old South Avenue, which, along with nearby Locust Avenue, is a neighborhood of single-family residences.
The board’s 8-to-1 vote to approve on June 18, with Councilman Anthony Carter voting against it, came after two public hearings totaling about seven hours, during which residents aired their numerous concerns about the project. Among these concerns were traffic safety, noise, privacy, lighting, the building’s setbacks from the street and trash removal. Parking was another concern, with neighborhood residents saying that the 24 on-site parking spaces would not be adequate and would result in cars parking on neighborhood streets. Mr. Carter described the plan as a “monstrosity” at the June 18 meeting.
In the wake of the planning board’s approval of the project, residents were still angered by the decision. Lee Dorry, a Locust Avenue resident who lives a block from the planned development, called the project “a disgraceful abomination,” telling Union County HAWK that it was “sped through in a highly questionable process with zero regard for the families impacted” and added that it “serves absolutely no public good for the Fanwood community.”
Gary Morris lives adjacent to the site on South Avenue and he told HAWK that it felt like the planning board was “just checking off a box” as it approved the application. He said there was “ample evidence of wrongdoing,” including that the board, at its initial hearing on the application in May, never gave the public a chance to weigh in on the plan. He claimed the board maintained that it had allowed the public to speak after the residents had left.
Mr. Morris also claimed that the overlay zone allowing the apartment complex was implemented without any notice to neighborhood residents. “You’re going to build a 16-unit apartment next to my house without telling me?” he asked. He also said the registered letter notifying residents of the May 18 planning-board meeting arrived in mailboxes too close to the actual meeting date and that the paperwork for the application itself was flawed in multiple ways.
Helen Street resident Carolyn Daly Brink told HAWK she sees Fanwood “moving from New Jersey’s Best Small Town,” a designation the borough received several years back, to what she called “Jam-wood” because “they’re jamming this apartment complex onto this little triangle” of land. She criticized local officials for not being transparent and not making the site plans readily available in advance of the planning board’s consideration of the application. Had the public seen the plans with plenty of advance notice, Ms. Brink said the board would have needed to hold the hearing “in MetLife Stadium because so many people would have shown up.”
Ms. Brink noted that the color renderings of the apartment building failed to include the residences along SouthAvenue and Old SouthAvenue. She said that neighborhood is comprised of many veterans and senior citizens who have lived there for many years and now will be subject to noise from, first, a construction project, and then from daily deliveries to the new building as well as regular trash pickups and residents’ cars entering and leaving the garage.
She also claimed that people were not allowed adequate time to speak at the board’s public hearings in May and June and criticized Mayor Colleen Mahr’s absence from the June 18 vote, saying her “absence and silence are deafening.”
A group of residents recently started up a Facebook site, “Fanwood Residents Against Overdevelopment,” which describes itself as a grassroots community group concerned with residential overdevelopment in Fanwood. The group believes overdevelopment “is and will continue to strain our public schools, police, infrastructure and roadways” and thinks it has “occurred as a result of poor government leadership and a lack of foresight, stemming from a failure to investigate all alternatives related to affordable housing mandates.”
The group, with close to 140 members, accuses the municipal government of abandoning homeowners and supporting developers, “who are infringing upon our residential streets and buffer zones.”