pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everybody could we have a sunshine announcement please cam yes um good evening chairman um today is Tuesday January 23rd in the year 2024 this is a Jersey City planning board meeting with a scheduled 5:30 p.m. start time and in accordance with the open public meetings act notice of this meeting has been given to the editor of the Jersey journal the Jersey City Reporter and posted with the city clerk on January 19th of this year um this meeting was also posted on the Jersey City division of City Planning web page and all distribution materials made available to the board were published and available to the public um and here is the sunshine announcement for marking into the record there we go go thank you thank you Cam thanks Mike can we have a roll call please cam yes um Vice chair Dr Gonzales here commissioner uh genen here commissioner Cruz here commissioner Torres here and chairman Langston here we have five Commissioners present we have a quorum thank you could we swear in the staff please Mike yes thank you uh do we have correspondence cam yes chairman okay so we have eight items in total reques and carry with preservation of notice um I'm just going to go straight down the list so uh item 14 on the agenda it's case p2023 d69 it's for preliminary and final major site plan Amendment the address is 180 uh 10th Street 543 and A5 Manila Avenue and 545 Manila Avenue they've requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th uh our next regularly scheduled meeting um item 15 on the agenda it's case p2023 d70 uh this is for a preliminary and final major site plan Amendment address is 20410 street address uh also includes 5432 Manila Avenue and 5 45 Manila Avenue um they have also requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th of this year um item 16 on the agenda it's case p23 d92 a preliminary and final major site plan a uh address is 612 to 616 communa Avenue and they have requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th of this year item 18 on the agenda uh it is uh case P22 D12 9 for a preliminary and final major site plan the address is 385 to 387 communal Avenue and they have also requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th of this year um item 19 on the agenda case P22 d189 it's for preliminary and final major site plan with variances uh address is 216 Palisades Avenue they have requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th of this year item 20 on the agenda case p2023 0044 uh for a preliminary preliminary and final uh for a preliminary and major site plan address is 35 Fairview Avenue and they have requested a carry with preservation of notice to February 6th of this year and lastly um item 21 on the agenda case P22 d187 for preliminary and final major site plan with variances address is 191 to 193 Academy Street they've requested a carry to uh uh February 6th with preservation of notice um and then we have one item requesting a carry to oh okay all right Academy would like to go to the 20th I think we can accommodate that so the six is looking pretty busy um all right so I will note that um item 21 on the agenda that is again pa uh case p221 187 preliminary and final major site plan with variances address is 191 to 193 Academy Street they're requesting to carry with preservation of notice to February 20th of this year and um last last uh item to be carried is item 22 on the agenda case p2023 0053 it's for a preliminary and final major site plan and interim use address is 675 to 695 Grand Street they've requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 20th of this year um so that concludes the uh items requesting to carry okay thanks cam um do you want to read the adjournments in or uh sure yeah noticed already do we have to read them in um why not okay so uh under item six on the agenda you'll find adjournments uh adjournments a through f um so here we go um so adjournment a is case P22 d227 it is for a preliminary and final major site plan with variances the address is 605 to 607 Grove Street um they have adjourned to February 6th with preservation of notice um adjournment B uh it's case p23 020 it's for prelimary and final major site plan with variances the address is 3442 Street and they have uh requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th uh adjournment c um this is case P20 uh 23- 0082 a preliminary and final major site plan address is 681 to 685 Newark Avenue and they have requested a carry with preservation of notice to February 6th um item D under adjournments it's case p23 032 for preliminary and final major site plan with a conditional use and C variances address is 791 to 805 Westside Avenue they've requested a carry with preservation of notice to February 6th um item e under adjournment is case P20 23- 0074 it's a site plan Amendment address is 239 to 259 Cole Street uh they've requested to carry with preservation of notice to February 6th and uh last under the adjournments item f it is KSP 23- 070 a minor site plan with see variances address is 355 to 357 Sip Avenue um and they are requesting to carry uh to February 6th with preservation notice so that concludes all of the adjournments okay thank you Cam so let's get into Old business we'll call case P22 d140 is a preliminary and final major site plan for 152 Ogden Avenue uh this was carried from the meeting on um it's not correct but January 9th of 24 uh cam what I'm sorry counil what was the the meeting where we actually took testimony it was on November 28th 2023 okay so we had taken testimony previously on November 28th um okay Council the floor is yours okay thank you for the record Charles Harrington of conell Foley on behalf of the applicant uh as uh the chairman just noted this was originally heard uh on November 28th 2023 it was carried to January 9th uh 2024 uh we did ren notice uh for that notwithstanding that we left that meeting saying there was not required so I'd ask that they be reviewed and marked into evidence as well chairman I am and receive the affidavit and notice proof of publication with respect to the meeting here this evening uh I concur with Council that the notice was not required but out of an abundance of caution Council has chose to Ren notice the application it does appear to be in order we can mark it as A1 for purposes of the record thank you Council thank you and just before we proceed I I I know for a record to Dr gonzale was not here at the last hearing so I asked uh that he represent that he read the transcript or or uh viewed the video indeed I have Council thank you okay so um at the last hearing we we adjourned uh there were a few open issues um that uh the board um wanted to hear more about uh there was also um uh a question about the the driveway uh curb cut into the uh into the property uh that was raised in the Jersey City engineering comment letter um so what we have done is uh we met with Jersey City engineering traffic and engineering department in the meantime uh and uh we uh they they agreed to um a relocation of the driveway and you'll see that as part of the plans it's on it's in the plans that are on the portal where we moved it slightly to the South uh so that is not conflicting with the crosswalk anymore and uh you'll see see uh in the new engineering uh comment letter that comment has been removed so uh I'm going to bring up our engineer civil engineer um to to uh speak to that briefly uh and uh he also has an a further exhibit to show the cut and fill operations um what is being cut and and what is remaining at the property so I want to introduce that as well to the board uh then as the board may recall there was a discussion about the Bedrock and the depth of the Bedrock um and the load capacity um so what has happened since the last meeting is um uh we've had a brand new report uh completed by Mr jundy of Jay-Z andn engineering um and Mr jundy will will come come and speak to that uh for the board and and the other issues contained within his report um so I you know beyond that I I I will have additional Witnesses I I have a uh structural engineer that will speak uh to the proposed foundations at the building and how they will work um and then my architect Mr vanderark will take you through the project and as a reminder we are you know the the project being proposed tonight is as of right um in that we are not requesting uh any variances um so uh with that said i' I'd like to bring up uh our civil engineer Brian I always kill Brian's Liv Le Tru truth I do sure Brian leusin l i EB e s k i n d Mr liskin good evening uh you were qualified at the last hearing uh is your license still current tonight it is okay thank you sir you're qualified again good evening everyone uh um so it's just alluded to um since the November hearing um we addressed one of the comments in the Syd engineering memo um regarding the driveway location and the proximity to the existing crosswalk um across agav um so uh Since U that the last hearing we had a conversation with uh City engineering and the division of Transportation uh to discuss the uh relocation options um to facilitate um you pedestrian traffic across the street um and turning movements for vehicles um in and out of the driveway um so the Revis site plan uh which is on the screen um see 301 in the S Set uh shows the driveway shifted uh 10 ft to the South uh directly abing the uh neighbors driveway way um which uh both uh the the city professionals and U the project team felt was a a wise uh relocation um for for traffic reasons um aligning with uh the intersection um and also um providing sufficient clearance with that uh existing crosswalk so the operations of the U the drive AIS uh adjacent to the um the garage parking uh is staying the same um the only difference is the um the curb cut uh off of agav and the the transition uh to that that drrive VI the uh 10-ft separation between the um that drive a and and the property line um it was consistent with what we previously showed um and the uh the entry access uh with pedestrian warning lights uh gate apron are all um you know consistent with the original design Bri nothing has changed with regard to the building or the the parking spaces is that correct correct okay and and then could you just maybe touch upon the exhibit that I I referred to I sure um so there were uh some uh questions uh at the the last hearing U regarding the comp components of the peod uh checklist items and in in addition to all the documents that have been prepared to date um for the uh the site geology uh the characteristics of the uh the landform uh we have provided this cut fill exhibit to to supplement you know what is written out in the engineers report um and so what you're looking at here um what sorry before you go into the details I'd like to mark this I think we're up to A6 that is uh we are up to A6 but we marked the notices A1 the new notice so for purposes of the record let's correct the prior marking this evening we'll make that as a six and now what is on the screen showing as exhibit two we're going to Mark as A7 Mr Harrington why don't we identify the date on the plan the title of the plan okay Brian could you do that please um so the drawing title is cut fill analysis plan with a a date of uh December 27th 2023 uh scale of 1 in equals 10 ft uh and again this is um this was not part of the original C plan set that was submitted as an exhibit you said dated December 27th 20223 correct that is A7 thank you okay Brian could you walk us through uh this exhibit sure um so the color cing that you see represents the a comparison between the existing surface of the site and the proposed finished grades so the majority of the site which is colored in the light green and and beige uh represents a a slight increase um you know raising of grade or remaining the same uh the darker brown colors uh within the building footprint uh signify the areas um of Sellar and uh and below ground parking um as part of the tray system so the uh elevations in red uh note the you know the proposed elevations of those um those finished grades um and again the the color coding uh is the the difference between the existing elevations for the survey and the proposed elevations of uh both the site and the building itself uh any any questions for for Brian any questions any body no okay thank you Council um so the the remainder of the engineering testimony um that provided in in November would still um be unchanged so uh I mean if there are any questions related to the driveway relocation or this um cut fill exhibit I can answer those um I believe uh all the other matters uh I spoke to at the prior hearing okay thank you uh Miss hajis do you want to cross examine yes chairman let's have Miss hajis put her representation on the record and then we can have her question the witness you want to sit I would like to thank you Miss haanas I think that mic if you hit work okay just got to hit the button testing okay thanks okay good evening Commissioners I'm here on behalf of Riverview neighborhood association and for the record my name is Cynthia haanes okay thanks Miss AIS uh the floor is yours okay um Mr lius leusin uh good evening how are you tonight night good evening um so you you just testified about the relocation of the driveway and um I'm wondering um what was was the requirement previously um provided in the engineering memo that the driveway be relocated a minimum of 30 ft away from The Pedestrian cross block the uh the comment that you're referring to uh the 30ft separation is not actually a a city requirement um by code is a it was a suggestion um for traffic reasons that uh does not exist currently is not feasible in in many um Lots in Jersey City the conversation with uh City engineering and and and transportation um acknowledge that uh you know the the um site constraints uh you know only allow for um certain separation the uh 4.1 ft um that's currently uh provided between the edge of the the driveway and the crosswalk was was deemed acceptable and um we feel an improvement um even from the existing conditions um but just going back to the memo dated February 17 2023 from Lewan Wang in uh City engineering what did he what what was the rationale for the original 30 foot requirement I I I can't speak to why uh they requested that that number um but that that comment has since been uh removed from the the engineering comments and and we have been um have confirmation from both engineering and transportation that they are accept the new driveway location so the city was persuaded to just dispense with the 30 foot requirement somehow again it's not a requirement that they were noting it's it's merely a uh you know an ideal uh separation for Traffic Safety um which you in conversation they understood was not feasible in many cases in Jersey City okay was was there any consideration of Alternatives such as not having a driveway we reviewed multiple Alternatives with the city and and deem that this was the best placement um for the project and for uh both pedestrians and for for vehicles okay and when I'm I'm just going to read to you from his memo because I do to me as a lawyer and in legal parlance we would call this a prior inconsistent statement Mr Wang wrote in his memo this driveway must be relocated a minimum of 30 ft away from The Pedestrian crosswalk and then that was deleted that comment was deleted in a subsequent memo which is dated today and just uploaded to the portal shortly before the hearing and there's no explanation as to why he deleted that comment and and and what what is your what is your understanding as to why he dispensed with that requirement again for the reasons I I just explained that that this is not a a code requirement uh and uh in the conversations with Miss Wang we went over uh what was an acceptable separation uh and we honored their request to keep the existing crosswalk location with with the curb cuts on both sides of the street which we have done um and made the adjustments U you know with the the driveway itself so I I can't speak to to why uh uh this way you know had the com originally um but I can tell you again it's not it was a suggestion and not uh citing a specific land use requirement so miss hajan just for the board's clarification the memo states that Miss Wang reviewed the revised plans dated December 27th 2023 and that comment that M hajian just read about the 30 foot distance has been removed from the latest City engineering comment letter okay and so now what's the distance from The Pedestrian crosswalk how or or let me rephrase that how far is the driveway from The Pedestrian crosswalk now it's 4.1 ft fet 4.1 ft and um and you had testified that now it's aligning with the intersection the uh existing driveway to the south of our site um which we will be AB budding uh is within the um the existing intersection um with with far Street and the suggestion was that uh to consolidate those curve cuts to a lookat ours adjacent to to the ne's driveway it is uh the curve location on on the plan uh is uh slightly misleading and uh the actual intersection is a little bit um north of of where it's it's shown here okay do you have a way to point to it on your screen just because I I I I'm not that good at reading plans so the existing crosswalk and curb cut on uh the west side of of aav that that is all staying um and so what what appears to be a little bit larger a uh distance U between that curve cut and um and Terry is actually um closer um and the the radius of of that is around where my my hand is now so um to answer your question it's uh within the it's opposite of of Fair Street um okay um is is it safer to put the driveway closer to the intersection that that was our um belief and that was the uh also the opinion of the city professionals okay um on you you had just testified that now um the uh the plan are compliant with the peod ordinances technical um requirements do is there any sort of exhibit or um something in your report that summarizes the compliance the landform analysis which was provided as part of the engineers report walks through each of the provisions of the peod and and the side characteristics that I I testified to previously did you testify about erosion potential I did okay and you testified about loadbearing capacity no I deferred that to the geot technical engineer okay um how about um depth to bedrock we reviewed that um as part of the original uh Geotech report but I would defer those questions to the geotechnical engineer that we have okay okay and I wanted to ask you about um the the cut and fill analysis plan um do you do you know what the actual depth of the maximum excavation uh required for the deepest portion of the basement or and and car storage so the uh again the color coding on the plan reflects the uh so the level of of cut uh or fill you know comparing uh existing conditions to propose um so the uh highest range um that's shown would be a at most a 10 foot cut on on the plants um again the um the geotechnical engineer can can talk in more detail about you know the actual um excavation and cut but the overall characteristics uh reflect on the exhibit uh it's approximately you know 10 ft but but the cut and fill is your plan right it's not the Geotech Engineers plan correct this is an overall representation of the you the earthwork activities for the project okay so you're saying there's a level so why do you give it an as a level instead of actual an actual measurement in feet and inches the the colorcoded ranges on the plan are are twoot intervals so I'm saying the the darkest brown color on here represents between a 10-ft cut and an 8ot cut okay um what is the volume in cubic yards of material materials that will be excavated that is not something that we Quantified um nor was that a requirement in in the pood regulations I uh to be truthful I think it is um inappropriate to to give uh you know an an estimate um of that volume given the um sort of the design complexities of you know the materials that are on site the materials that would be removed the uh the volume of uh pavement volume of concrete there's a lot of things that go into overall Earth workor a cubic yard of soil taken out of the ground and put back into the ground is uh not the same volume so it's I I think unfair to you represent that um on the plan so the the the total areas of those cuts you know are shown in the Legend um so you could you do the multiplication and and arrive at you know approximation of what that that is but I will repeat it you know this plan is simply um comparing the existing surface to the proposed surface um does not reflect you know material adjustments again from the building slab pavement Etc um what what methods are going to be used for excavation I I I would defer those questions to the jch LA here okay um so um since you didn't calculate the volume I'm not I'm not sure you're going to be able to answer the next question but do you know how many trucks will be required to export the soil um that's going to be moved I I did not do those calculations okay all right I think that's it for my questions for now thank you Mr Harrington do you have anything to add just a few uh follow-up questions uh to clarify your discussion with the traffic uh and engineer in Department uh when you met with it's it's Miss Wang right yes okay when you met with Miss Wang you met with other professionals from the traffic department in Jersey City correct corre so this was not just a decision made by Miss Wang it was a uh decision made by the Jersey City engineering and the traffic professionals that work for Jersey City correct correct the original um review memers that we receiv received from the city um did not include any comments from the division of Transportation um we took it upon ourselves to include them in this conversation um to identify the best location for the driveway okay and I know the the uh updated engineering comment letter is dated today and was updated today but in fact did you meet with them in early December yes okay and and a decision was made that this was an acceptable relocation was mid December is that accurate some sometime around that time yes that's that's all I just want to clarify that okay thank you Council anybody else any questions um I could just sure just just on what was discussed there limited to the qu so you just testified you met with somebody from Transportation correct yeah we M with Mike Manel and and Lindy scoffield from from Transportation okay but they did they did either of them sign the memo that was uploaded to the portal today the the conversation was with both City engineering and city transportation um all parties in attendance at that meeting uh in uh confirmed um that this was an acceptable location okay is any are any of those people here today to testify uh again it's reflected in the updated comment letter that this is um you know no longer a comment from the city okay I mean I'm I'm just have a I'm not going to bother objecting the board can weigh that however they would like to but I I I do just want to note for the record that the other people are not signatories to this memo and we don't have uh anything you know other other than Mr libin's characterization we don't have anything evidencing that they were on board with this decision to relocate the drive way the way that the way that it was done thank you Miss hajis for the board's edification I have emails from the traffic department confirming that this is an acceptable location uh this this letter that they updated was a result of us asking them to to put in writing a formal writing uh that that they agreed on the location okay thank you Council so the the emails aren't for the board's privy obviously you know we have the engineering report and that's what we go by okay all right thank you Mr olis thank you okay my next witness uh is uh Mr jundy who who was uh before this board the last meeting as I noted he has prepared a a new report uh and uh he'll walk you through that and address the the Bedrock issues and and the load bearing capacity ities and other issues sure you any testimony you give tonight it's going to be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I do can you speak uh Nim jundi NE ejm last name jundi j n d i Mr jundy was qualified at the last meeting and asked he that he yes Mr jundy good evening uh your licens is current tonight yes okay thank you sir you're qualified so Mr jundy uh you prepared a report uh for the the project is that correct yes we were we were retained by the developer to take over as the Geotech engineer of record for his development so we we redid the investigation on site by via drilling soil borings and rock coring and uh we prepared a report in addition we the slope stability analysis for the for the rock slope uh to see if adding the building would cause any harm to the slope okay and that report that you're referring to is what's on the screen now prepared by JC engineering dated December 29th 2023 is that correct correct okay so could you uh and and and you've reviewed the project correct I wrote the report yes yes and and and the proposed project that is being presented okay uh so can you walk through uh your report um with the board noting you you you remember at the last meeting there were questions about the depth of the Bedrock and and the load capacity could you address that as part of your overview sure so the first thing we did is we took the borings that were done by Johnson soil company for the I believe they were done for the seller of the property we reviewed those borings and then decided that we will do three additional borings two by the slope area which is to the east of the site and one to the west of the site uh where the borings were taken all the way to refusal on rock and then to confirm this rock we CED 15 ft um into the Rock in the two locations closer to the slope and then we C 5 ft into the Rock uh on the west side of the site which is closer to Ogden Bel Avenue and in both in all three cases The Rock was confirmed to be competent and it's diab rock and it's towards the slope it's about 8 to 9 ft below existing GR ra and towards Ogden is about 11 ft that's the Top of the Rock and then from there we C 5 ft in Ogden and 15 ft just to qualify the rock type so it is confirmed that the rock is there at between let's say 8 and 11 ft depending where you are on S Mr jundy I think you just said you referred to diabase rock could you clarify that is that is that the Bedrock you're referring to yes it's a type of frog um we have spoken in preparation to this uh geod report we have spoken to the project structural engineer to understand the load takeown of the building and how is it going to be supported and basically this building is will be supported on shallow footings bearing directly on Bedrock so we're going to excavate down to rock and just put the footing to support the building and in speaking with him we also took uh the the uh uh the the weight of the building converted to bearing capacity sorry stress uh on the ground which came up to be 1500 Kips per square foot which is 15,000 pound per square foot of load up averaged across the whole building because that's what we needed to do the slope stability analysis um so what we did I'm just trying to go to the figure um we took a crosssection kind of in the central portion of the building with the slope information that we have from the survey and we came up with a um uh a cross-section representing the slope the solar conditions and The Rock um and you can see it up on the screen is cross-section a we took that and run a fin an element method using the hook PR meth uh criteria which basically in rock it talks about the reduction in Shear strength so basically how much are you reducing the capacity of the Rock by applying a load so the first thing we did was assume there's nothing it's a parking lot so what is the available uh Shear strength of The Rock and slope which is basically a factor of safety and it was found to be 10.63 and that's called the sheer Rock U uh reduction factor and then we took the average weight of the building uh actually the I'm sorry the stress applied by the building on the on the ground um oh there and we applied the uh 1.5 KS of square foot load of the building as represented here and that sheer Rock uh sheer reduction Factor was found to be 10.49 so it's a a reduction of give or take 1% of the sheer strength of the rock which is negligible um and when you say it was a reduction could you maybe explain that further what do you mean what caused that reduction or would cause that reduction well when you um uh the diabase rock is a homogeneous U rock formation that is very intact it might be fractured in the top but is very intact at the bottom as a one whole Mass so if you imagine um it has a certain strength and and that was and to exceed it you have to apply a lot more load and the sheer strength of it uh with uh the factor of safety of or to reduce that Shear strength would take about 10 times more the load basically than we applied and we are not changing the load being applied on that slope by much only by 1% so we still have available 10 times more to actually cause a failure because of the building then and when you say you're not causing any additional change you you're assuming that the project is being built is that correct correct this load is assuming the building is finished and occupied okay and I I might have missed it I might have looked down but did did you state what the depth of the bedrocks are um yes uh it's about 8 to 9 ft towards the slope or the east side of the property and about 11 ft towards the West which is Ogden Avenue so it's fairly leveled and based upon your analysis and review uh and your analysis of the load capacity do you see any issues with uh any of the foundation proposals to build this project no no we don't and is is that the reason for that is is that what you just explained because it's not changing anything yes it's not changing the stress overall on the global stability of the rock of the rock slope and Mr jundi does does your report uh speak to methods to excavate at the property and and and with regard to filling at the property yeah sure um um the the overburden soil is basically more Sandy and and grally can be easily excavated with an excavator any normal excavator and the project side already have two below ground areas for the elevator for the carpets and uh we don't we don't see any need or major excavation for the rock so everything could be accomplished with just normal excavators and does your report address methods in which to excavate and uh uh the the site well we we talk about it generally if we actually tell the contractor how to excavate a site that would be inferent of me method and we cannot really do that as Engineers there's a fine line between how a contractor actually excavate and how an engineer designs it means and Method uh we we basically advise the contractors that you can excavate using normal machines and excavator machine like any other site okay anything further you want to touch upon in your report no excuse me I don't know what the protoc is I live sir we'll have we'll have public comment once all the testimony is given a question for the engineer are you a member of the RNA so miss haanas can can address any any testimony given yeah I was wondering about sure I'm sure miss hajis you could handle that question that's yourent right well the organization is yes sure we uh we need that on the record so for the recording as well just uh just want to re reiterate that for people now that we're not on Zoom right Mike did you get that yeah okay okay Mr jundy that's your testimony yes okay anybody from the board no anyone okay Miss Alanis I did something to switch this please I'm not okay thank you okay okay good evening Mr jundy Morning Minute how are you I'm good how are you all right okay so um you just um testified that the diabase is fractured at the top would you explain what you meant by that yeah any any rock formation would have seams in it a fractures but it doesn't mean that the rock is not stable okay [Music] um and [Music] um uh so so what does what do the fractures mean then okay so um when you look at the Rock Mass you look at the shear strength of the rock there's two parts of the shear strength one is the intact part of it and one is the interaction of those uh fractures right and that's what the shear string reduction factor is talking about the weaker part would be the fracture any Rock mass at the top of it the few inches will be fractured as you go deeper it will be more solid and those fractures become faren apart uh being at the surface is doesn't affect the stability of the soil because we're going to be resting a little bit on that so it's not going to be affecting the global stability of a rock Mass okay um when when the test borings were done did you find fractures in the Rock cores below the surface yes we did and uh we used uh I'm going to just pull out for you uh we did um rqd value and recovery and you can see it took us 11 minute 8 minutes 7 minutes to core through the rock um in comparison for example if you have a Sandstone rock it will take you 1 minute to go 2 minutes to go through the uh through the rock but diabase is so strong it took you know 11 minutes 12 minutes to go through it okay there is fracture in every Rock Mass there's no such thing as rock Mass without fracture okay okay um we take that into account typically anything above or close to 80% rqd is considered massive Rock meaning if you were to come and excavate it you basically need Hammers and dynamite to remove it what what does um rqd stand for Quality designation okay um and and I think some of the notes on the test spring logs uh did did say that there was a a flat to moderately dipping fracture inclination is that correct yes and do do know if the fracture inclination dipped downhill in our analysis we assume they're all doing downhill because that's the worst case Okay so if not opposite like if it's dipping toward Ogden actually would help the job we assume the digging dur through the slope okay so if there's a fracture and the and I'm I'm assuming or I shouldn't assume are these horizontal fractures some are and some are depend okay um so do you know uh how whether these are continuous fractures or no they're not how how could you tell that with only three borings uh in geotechnical engineering we cannot go and put a boring every 5 Ines mhm so uh it it we we we look at the geology of the buildings sorry of the formation we know how rock is fractured in diabase uh we confirm it with the borings uh it's impossible to know if they are all connected the the assumption is uh with the reduction we use from Hook Brown uh it would reduce a lot and assume con some kind of interlocking between the two and that's how we come up with with a mass Global and this method of analysis just to let you know is accepted by the Port Authority is accepted by the pass station it's accepted by the MTA is accepted by New York City building department this is not something just specific to this job or locality um and let me ask you do fractures make the The Rock more susceptible to a landslide uh and if uh yes they do but that's why you calculate what is the factor of safety against landsliding okay is the and where is that in the report the factor of safety against the landslide okay so we looked at the slope stability analysis using the hook and brown method and it's called stress reduction factor that method of analysis and if you want me more specific sorry okay so we came up with the quality of the rock the soil parameters all based on different kind of inputs from different Federal Highway Administration uh uh balls recommendation T zagi soil Mechanics for the soil uh we used G GSI method hook Brown uh failure citation so in rock it's is different analysis than typical soil because it's impossible to know how the fractures are so different scientists and Engineers develop different methods to look at how these things could be reduced to make an assumption of to make a an engineering model how it's going to behave and that's what we used to input into our final element method and then and then your model is on this final page here as I said we did two things that's the results of it uh sorry I keep clicking on the wrong spot sorry which one here be this time all right thank you so this is the existing conditions the if you if I can zoom in you can read that the uh the critical srf okay is 10.63 so this is the what you have available for you against any failure and the slope and the next thing is we compared it by adding the building uh at the elevation we're supposed to be supporting it and that number went from 10.63 to 10.49 which is a reduction of less than 1.1% okay did did you um I mean I don't I don't did and you use some kind of software to generate this diagram okay and I'm assuming you put some kind of number you know to you put some kind of inputs into the software to generate this yeah did you was one of those inputs pounds per square foot yes and and what was your assumption about uh the the pounds per square foot for the building it's not an assumption I spoke to the stral engineer and we asked him what is the way weight pressure of the building on on this rock Mass on the foundation and the averaged load of the building including like because you have columns that have loads you have slab that doesn't have load right mm so the columns may have 100 KBS and the slab may have 40 KBS so but in totality the building will be applying about 1.5 Kips which is, 1500 lb per square foot on on the soil on the on the ground did the Johnson soils report have another number for the load bearing you're talking about two different things here okay so the allow bearing capacity right by code in New Jersey on diabase Rock will be a maximum of 6 tons per square foot which is 12 KS per square foot that's a bearing capacity that's not a pressure okay okay I'm over I'm I'm I'm in over my head now with the the engineering okay so um did your uh let me just move on to slop stability did you oh wait I have one more question about the fractures um did you identify any location uh where there's a potential failure of the surfaces uh at the site yeah on the surface we couldn't uny anything at the surface is a gravel paved parking lot we can't see anything okay um let we dug down we drill down a hole that is 4 in in diameter 5 in in diameter what about the surface between the overburden and the Bedrock that's shown on this diagram kind of right here okay uh what what what's your specific question um is is that the location of any potential surface failure not from the building because the building you see the bottom where the arrow is the bottom of that that's where the load of the building is going not on the soil that you are identifying so when you're saying not from the building would there be any other reason for right slope failure I can't tell you what I'm not God I can't tell you what's going to happen in the future if somebody digs there removes there regrade it that's an open Ed question well okay um so um so you you didn't you didn't do anything to model the slope stability of the remaining overburden material no because my load is being applied on the Rock not on uh soil so this model represents how but if you want me to interpret it right now that's fine uh you see the uh uh lighter bluish okay is saying that we are relieving stress by -2 KSF basically okay why why is is that because we removed the soil and we applying the soil below the top of that surface okay okay um so so the section of the slope that's going to be in front of the building did you evaluate the stability of that just independent of the [Music] building I'm I'm sorry I don't understand the question did did so there's a section of the slope in front of the building where the overburden meets The diabase Rock okay did you evaluate the stability of that section of the slope on a its own I don't need to for building stability my load is being applied 11 ft below the surface okay okay so in a global sense I am not putting any load on that soil you're talking about okay um I'm actually relieving the stress because I'm removing soil that was applying soil to the store so D but during construction will that be impacted At All by vibrations or any kind of construction activity the slop stability yeah well to be a to be able to dig down that deep they probably maybe have to use support of excavation okay or they have to slope it the other way but any case you are removing stress you're removing load you're creating a hole so basically you had a sack of apples that weighed 10 lb and now you removed 4 pound of it that sack is going to hold less it's going to be stronger is you're not apply you're removing pressure okay okay I see what you're saying okay so did you um look at at storm water at all in your analysis storm water for what um like the storm water that's going to be sto stored below the parking lot I don't understand the question well you did a geotechnical study did you factor in the storm water at all where is geotechnical has to do with stor Water Management um well I would think that well you you're going to tell me I'm not going to I I think I'm supposed to ask you the question not not the other way around answering your question because I need to understand it specifically to be able to to answer you specifically but so sir if you don't understand the question just say you don't understand the question Council you have to rephrase it so the witness can answer the question okay so let me ask Council let's let's keep this within the realm of the direct testimony please would would introducing storm water to the subsurface for groundwater recharge have an effect on the overall stability of the diabase rock uh diabas rock is imperviable you cannot infiltrate water through it okay okay what about the impact to the stability of the overburden again the building is being supported way below the overburden or directly on the diabase how the water storm water management is being taken care of is that through the civil engineering they're probably uh designing a storage system redirecting the water somehow to meet the regulations but stor water is not going to impact the stability of the slope or the M uh or the building I am sure they're not recharging the water into the diase H right now the existing site is a paved gravel surface so when it rains when it snows the water just travel down and go on its own merry way On Top of the Rock M nothing is happening to the slope it's been like that for ages same thing goes for exiting properties to the North and South there's residential buildings to the north and south of this lot and they've been sitting there for 100 years give or take have you evaluated how this construction might impact the adjacent properties we are well away from any of the properties so we we should not have an impact okay okay have you reviewed the conditions of those adjacent buildings at all I was on site when they did the soil borings for portion of it so I took a look from I cannot enter those buildings we are not impacting them we're not constructing a party wall or within 5 ft of any existing Bing and um did you look at seasonal groundwater at all when you did your analysis no for what reason um how it might impact stability no okay when we did the borings we didn't find any ground water okay so your so your testimony is that the storm water and seasonal groundwater won't impact stability seasonal High ground water is a definition made by D in New Jersey and actually other states to to measure the highest level of groundwater elevation measured in a soil condition or in a site is typically determined by looking at the uh uh irons uh pepples in the soil when the water goes up and down the the soil loses the iron in it and it leaves orange marks dots basically in this case we didn't even find water table on the site and we stated that in our report so seasonal high is not going to factor in because there's no water table that goes up and down okay the water only comes from the r because it's an open lot and then it comes down it hits the diabase it's not going to go anywhere it's just going to follow the surface of diabas in this case down the slope and the slope as is right now it's been stable for a longest time that has been a parking paved area for the longest time and by us adding a building to it that's not going to affect it so so water flowing underground down the slope hope won't cause erosion it's erosion is the action of water on top of the ground not below the ground okay so so water that's below the surface doesn't disturb and the soil on top of the diabase right now we did not find something that could be identified as a crown water table there's no sitting water forever On Top of the Rock when it rains the water just disperses either coming down moving down the slope on the surface or whatever percolates and stay on top of the surface percolates down and then moves away so there's no if there was a water table constant over there then it would be coming out of the face of that slope okay but we don't have that condition here so where's the water go I mean you said it's I guess I'm just having trouble following in I'm going to move on in a second you're so you're testifying the water goes underground it or water falls onto the majority of onto the flat part of the site and then it flows down the slope doesn't it come out somewhere it just as the as the As you move down the slope right mhm the water follows the Rock and and if you move further east the rock becomes 60 and 70 ft down and sometimes 200 ft down depending how far you are and the water just goes there that's where you find the ground water table but on a condition like this where you're next to the slope there's no actual water table uh that you could is you need to deat for example if you have a basement or you need to De water during construction it's not sitting water okay uh just like in my house uh when it rains on the line on the side on the in the backyard I have a basement the water just flows down uh either follows the surface topography whatever is remaining just perks down nothing happens to my house okay when um this is under construction do do you uh is there going to be any shore [Music] for for to allow for the construction yeah we're way ahead of that conversation we haven't even started with the building foundation design and any of that no one uh but given the depth of it probably they will be Shoring depending on the contractor how would he like to approach the job okay okay I think that's it for my questions thank you no problem thanks thank you Council Mr Harington John okay thank you uh anybody else anybody from the board no okay then uh I'm G to move on with um our structural engineer Jason Tarantino testimon get tonight GNA be the truth the whole truth the truth yes uh Jason Tarantino t a r a n t NL good evening Mr Tarantino uh We've qualified you in the past your license is current tonight yes okay thank you you're qualified again okay okay and just uh for the benefit of the board Mr Tarantino can you uh just give a little bit of um your experience in Jersey City and some of the projects you've worked on that some of which may be similar to to the uh project that issue uh yes so we've worked on uh I don't know probably two dozen or more projects in in you know in the Jersey City area uh two to one of the projects currently completed is uh on Oakland a uh Overlook 15-story building uh overlooks kind of the Palisades and the the uh previous uh Railway um we also have another site which is a 29 story building um two blocks over again along that that same Palisades Palisades kind of Railway um right up against on diabase rock and you know dealing with very similar conditions to the to the site we're dealing with here okay Mr Tarantino um have you had an opportunity to review uh Mr jundy uh report yes and have you had an opportunity to review uh the project that's being proposed at this site yes okay and are you familiar with what types of foundation you would be proposing here yes and could you speak to those types of Foundations and if there are any issues you find with proposing them as part of this development yeah so um in speaking with the architect as well as the geotechnical engineer uh we had looked at the eight-story building took we looked at a few different options as far as building construction types and and we landed on at least for the initial stages a conservative approach utilizing cast in place concrete um estimated the loads um you know presented those to uh to NE for his analysis um and you know we proposed the use of of spread footing foundations for the uh for the support of the building structure those those spread footings would be supported directly on the Rock um and we estimated on a you know pounds per square foot basis of roughly 1.5 Kips per square foot of the of the building area and is there anything unusual uh about the development of uh this project on this site that that would jump out to you um no uh you know standard conditions you know having to excavate below grade uh bearing the building on rock is going to give you the the highest bearing capacity um and hopefully most stable stable Foundation conditions that's unless you have anything to add I that's all I have for Mr Tarantino okay thank you anybody questions just that last uh the last statement you made uh that uh in some cases you find it more stable when it's on Bedrock or solid Bedrock like that found your experience foundations rock is always going to be the the strongest bearing service thank you okay thank you Miss Haj on us nothing sorry be lucky okay um hi Mr Tarantino are you good how are you good okay so [Music] um uh not sure I can read this question okay are there is um will there be any excavation into the Rock at all I believe there'll be excavation down to the Rock um and I guess depending on where on the site I think deim said there was 8 8 to 11 feet I think they'll have to to cut into the Rock slightly to to get to the appropriate footing elevations for the proposed basement okay and well will the foundation be I guess uh enclosed in the Bedrock depending on the depth of the of of the foundation and the thickness of it we may have to dig out certain elevations of rock deeper than other areas okay okay thank you okay thank you Council Mr Harrington anything I have nothing further for Mr okay thank you thank you okay then uh my next witness is our architect large lead up lead up to this so we'll um take you through the proposed project truth the truth Tru I do sure that is Anthony C vandemar Jr vandemark vaan d r m a r k principal of the architectural firm of mvmk architecture Mr vanderark good evening pleasure to see you in person and uh We've qualified you as well in the past your license is current tonight it is chair okay thank you you're qualified thank you okay Mr fander Mark if you could just walk us through the proposed development yes um I have two different slide formats and I would like to Mark the presentation format as an exhibit since we will be showing renderings and different uh existing condition uh photographs and Aerials so if we can mark this exhibit um prior to beginning here A8 I believe we're up to council cor yes I believe so and uh Mr vanderark if you could just uh describe what you are presenting to us as an exhibit how many pages uh yes we have a present ation slide deck of 28 slides um which is a series of renderings photographs um in graphics uh from the existing filing set um that was on the portal uh dated 1218 uh 23 so what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump back and uh forth uh briefly uh between the slide deck uh just marked as an exhibit uh in the pre-existing set that is filed on the portal uh that the board has in front of them just to talk about the building and again very happy to be here this evening um to finally actually speak of the structure and the architecture of the project as opposed to maybe the site conditions we're here tonight to talk about uh an 8-story building uh it's 85 ft in height um we are proposing as part of the structure 14 residential units just going back to the actual um filing set uh you have before you the site sits within the R3 Zone District uh here in Jersey City the R3 Zone District permits a multifam midrise construction of this type uh it is an as of right it permits uh a residential multif family format of greater than four units it permits eight stories and 85 ft in total height and that's what we're here uh this evening to present the proposed site has 39,00 ,300 uh excuse me 484 squ ft of s area that is 0.9 Acres um and based on that side area within the R3 Zone you're permitted upwards of 131 units however tonight as previously stated we are proposing 14 units as part of this application the proposed project has two one-bedrooms uh and those sizes are 683 ft to 800 square ft and we have 12 two-bedrooms here at 1, 245 to 1,619 we're proposing 14 parking spaces which is complying with the current R3 uh filing um regulations uh that is at 1: one um we are proposing 16 bicycle parking spaces uh on the interior once again compliant with two outdoor bicycle parking spaces at the sidewalk as part of this proposal we have a 308 square foot uh rooftop amenity we have a 1,61 foot uh roof deck which is on the Eastern portion of the roof we have a volunteered uh large amount of extensive green roof uh located at the eight story that total is 1,214 squ Ft of extensive green roof which is the equivalent to 38% of the overall roof area as part of this application in the driveway apron uh as we go further into this presentation we are proposing a permeable P system uh at the uh interior of the site to the southern portion of the structure going back to the presentation deck that we just marked an exhibit the overall site um and and and I just want to back up and just talk a little bit about existing conditions because I I know the board has been looking at a bunch of two-dimensional Graphics here um in some different uh civil engineering plans let's really just talk about where we are uh briefly um the site again uh 0.9 Acres uh boot shaped um sitting in the R3 Zone we have a 70 foot Frontage uh on Ogden Avenue Ogden Avenue as we all know is a one-way street that runs north to south we have an overall uh 200t depth that runs to the east of the property and from north to south we have 492 ft from side to side so it's it's a large parcel a lot of it uh is on slope uh being a gentle slope um uh on the Palisades however we're developing only on the pre-existing developed area which is the parking lot the pre-existing condition if I go to the next Slide the pre-existing condition is a uh surface grade asphalt parking lot with 26 parking spaces the current uh driveway apron curb cut is is mid property with The Pedestrian crosswalk directly to the South uh followed by the pre-existing curb cut for uh what is 140 Ogden going into the existing structures starting to the South which is a three and a half story masonry building um we have 140 Ogden which is six residential units um it has a uh a 10-ft wide curb cut with a 10-ft wide uh driveway that goes to the rear yard as you can see 100% impervious has six parking spaces in the foreground here uh of the uh slide before you slide three of 28 um immediately to the uh south of page you have 152 uh Ogden Avenue which is a uh three-story masonry structure that is 20 units um as you can see here in this graphic that that building actually projects further uh closer to the slope of the Palisades and Beyond the actual building line it has an additional rear yard with concrete apron and a swimming pool that building does have impact um similar construction not of the same height not of similar loads but you have to understand is that this construction was done a 100 years ago and what we're proposing uh this evening is construction of current date with Structural Engineering of current time and again the red outline or the red boundary uh would be our building footprint here um 418 in uh in width uh facing Ogden and we have approximately um 98 feet 10 in in depth as you can see here we are uh developing only on the Northern portion of the site and I'll get into that when I start talking about the actual site characteristics there's a pre-existing easement on the site that's why the building structure is to the northern portion of the property and the driveway and the permeable P system is to the southern portion of the site going back to pre-existing conditions again three story masonry building at 152 Ogen uh this building has a Sellar so there was excavation involved in the construction of this 100- year old project building to the South again multif family six units uh 3 and half half story masonry structure again with a driveway and a uh parking lot behind the structure uh to the east directly across the street we have wood place um it is a one-way street that runs east to west um this is the intersection in question uh to the previous questions that Miss hajis uh was asking Mr lekin is that uh this intersection as you can see in this graphic is slightly offset of our property Bank boundary and again there's an existing uh parking lot with more cars than what we're presenting today and the crosswalk is actually being moved to a safer condition the current condition right now is that crosswalk is in between two pre-existing curb cuts a parking lot and the driveway apron for 140 Ogden we are marrying those two curb cuts and then moving to the north The Pedestrian crosswalk pre-existing survey um the red line that runs north south in this page is the existing utility easement 12 ft in width uh you cannot construct uh on this easement line within that 12T boundary therefore the building and the building footprint is located to the north of this easement um and the building line itself uh runs to the sky not within the easement boundary itself 70 ft in width on Ogden Avenue 100 ft in depth on the par the parking lot or the improved area with an additional 100 ft down slope of the Palisades again 492 ft in width uh of the property boundary as you can see there's a series of existing structures within the survey uh the larger one directly to the north is the 152 uh Ogden Avenue structure the overall sight plan approach uh the easement line highlighted in red again is running Within within the 22t uh 5 in uh driveway drive a uh building is constructed on the Northern P portion of the property we have an eight-story predominant structure but the first 18 ft of the structure itself is six stories when I go into the elevations of this project is that this developer um has voluntarily given up square footage and actually set the building back at the upper two floors to lessen the impact on Ogden Avenue uh to make it more contextual um within the neighborhood as part of this uh proposal again all the way to the left of the Southern portion of the sidewalk is the 10ft wide uh curb cut uh directly uh to the north of that is The Pedestrian Ada uh ramp system with new crosswalk we are proposing one new Street tree that's compliant with the Jersey City forestry standard and uh the main residential entry is just to the north of that street tree we are proposing within our property boundary uh in front of what we are proposing a masonry uh privacy screen um we are proposing a 3ft wide planter that runs from the uh driveway apron uh to our building structure so again uh eight-story building stepping down to six and we have a 5-ft front yard setback that's compliant with the R3 Zone rotating the plan now Ogden Avenue being to the left side um all new uh Street improvements such as uh new curbing New sidewalk the planter I just previously mentioned the 10ft wide curb cut apron uh with the southern entry point for the vehicles uh again 14 uh parking spaces uh within uh with their own uh garage compartments uh up front here as you can see in the garage we have uh there's three cars which is actually a mechanical system which will be five cars in total uh we're proposing one Ada uh compliant parking space with Van loading uh one at grade level parking space and then again a tandem mechanical parking system with seven parking spaces so 14 in total going back to the entry point for the vehicles we are proposing a 6 foot high masonry wall with a slide gate um that opens and closes via key fob uh for the residents as they enter the driveway apron on our property on the ground adjacent to the property line will be a linear LED strip for pedestrian warning safety on that wall uh uh adjacent to that slide gate or the entry point uh will be a audio and a visual strobe uh at ey level so you'll get two different levels of pedestrian safety one on the ground should somebody be looking down at their phone and then one at eye level should they be walking not looking at their phone so we have a double level of safety here um we have a compliant uh drive a wi uh there will be individual garage doors that enter uh the individual garage base uh we are proposing a 10-ft wide uh landscaped buffer with three trees to the southern portion of the property we have a centrally located elevator system we have two means of erress and the secondary means of erress is set back an additional 41 and that's at the northern portion of the property the R3 does permit 100% lock coverage within the site boundary when it is compliant with the p pod we are proposing a 0ot northern setback which is compliant with the R3 that is set back then to 5 ft on the upper residential floors compliant uh with the zoning ordinance again we are proposing a 8.6% building coverage uh way less than uh what is compliant or what is required uh by the R3 Zone at 3,415 FT again we have a uh a small apron behind the actual building footprint for pedestrian sitting uh looking back down over the Palisades to the east this is a three-dimensional uh rendering prepared by my office uh in the foreground showing the permeable pavers directly to the right uh will be the 10 foot wide uh landscaped and uh tree planted uh buffer zone uh immediately to the right of that to the South a 6 foot high masonry wall which will be skinned in the Roman uh style brick uh which is complimentary to the building that we're proposing here as previously stated each one of those uh garage Bays will have its own garage door and the building has a series of can levers that hold the easement lines uh and there's a series of setbacks on every other floor and it's part of the building design um as you can see here in the foreground we have a buff colored uh Roman style brick which is a pier system with an ACM uh horizontal clanning at the uh building floor levels and we have an aluminum clad window system uh above Pros project uh within the building footprint does have uh car Pit locations as previously stated that we do have uh multiple locations where there will be uh mechanical parking uh these pits will be 7 feet deep uh there'll be a foundation below that 7ot uh carpit location we're proposing different utility spaces within the plan at a height of 7 ft and within the central location here we have 16 uh bicycle parking spaces as you work your way up the building um second floor again to the north pulls in 5 ft to be compliant uh with the R3 District regulations as you can see here in the upper portion of the plan there is a roof below that is a one-story section that is strictly used for ESS each one of these floors are very similar uh there's two units per floor um to the left side which is the red which is the Western portion of the building we have a two-bedroom at 1,321 and to the Eastern portion of the building uh we have a two-bedroom slightly larger at 1,6 19 second floor is the largest of the bunch because we do have a series of setbacks that are part of the building Design This is at 9% building coverage at 3550 taking you to the third floor again uh two bedrooms east and west 1,246 and 1,558 um standard two bedroom two bath the building itself other than the architecture and the site characteristics we're talking about is very straightforward with 14 units we have one outdoor space which is a which is a roof deck at 43 Square ft and as you can see that's in the Southeastern portion uh of the plan the overall uh building coverage here is 8.7% at 3,416 the Eastern portion of the building um as you can see here has a series of uh butterflied can levers as part of the building design uh that rise out of the podium which is the garage structure um every other floor uh you know alternates as far as a roof deck and outdoor space for the residents the top floor has one continuous uh outdoor uh roof deck and again as previously stated we are proposing an amenity at the roof and a common area roof deck at the roof line the materials here are a continuation uh of the previous uh rendering exhibit uh we have a series of horizontal uh ACM uh profiled panels we have an aluminum uh window clad system and we have a Roman uh style buff brick color uh which plays off of the existing conditions of both the beige building at 152 Ogden and at 140 uh Ogden Avenue also so there's a a similar color tone uh that's within the neighborhood um and we are uh you know trying to uh complement that I'm not saying uh to mimic I'm not saying to copy but it's complimentary in color and pallet to the pre-existing conditions going back up the building um fourth floor two two bedrooms at 1320 1618 9.0 uh building coverage and is an outdoor roof area of 135 Square ft Fifth Floor 2 two bedrooms at 1246 and 1558 8.7 building uh coverage with with a 43t roof deck sixth floor which is the top uh floor of the full building footprint at two bedrooms at 1,320 and 1618 at 9% coverage we have 135t roof deck at this area at the seventh floor now the building line changes right as as the building steps itself back 18' 6 uh from the front of the building 23' 6 from the property line this was voluntarily done by this owner um again to uh change the scale of the building um make the building a little bit more complimentary to the neighborhood we understand that this building has great Mass it has great impact on this neighborhood uh however we think that this uh implementation of the setback of the design certainly assists in the impact of the over scale of this building that changes the splits here um the Western unit uh at this floor is at 680 ft and the Eastern unit is at 1520 the overall building coverage is reduced to 7.1% and again there's a very small uh area of Terrace at uh 35 square ft last floor um eighth floor uh we have a roof below now at the front yard setb and 800 1 bedroom and a 1520t uh two bedroom 7.4% with one continuous uh roof deck uh Facing East the roof approach uh as previously stated we have a centrally located uh amenity space at 308 Square ft have a 1, 161 uh square foot uh roof deck as you can see here we have a series of green roof areas both to the north uh in the Eastern portion of the mechanical area the mechanical area will be screened uh with privacy screen uh at a 48 uh excuse me 48 in high privacy screen I don't think it'll be visible uh with the building at this height and centrally located behind the amenity it won't be uh visible from any direction here the overall uh Building green extensive roof area as previously stated in my introduction is 1,214 square ft uh this is uh volunteer feed uh by ownership to make this a better project for better storm order management and that covers 38% of the overall roof area going back to the exterior elevations now on Ogden Avenue we have a Roman style size brick again so it's a thinner uh wider brick uh in a buff color uh the windows facing Ogden Avenue um have a aluminum clad uh Square liner system uh with a uh medium uh aluminum gray uh window inset directly to the left side is a profiled rose-colored uh ACM panel uh for decorative element uh that returns back into the window we're proposing a floating canopy uh at the sixth floor the sixth floor uh setback is at 63 feet 4 in so again uh the building steps itself back 18 foot6 we have a medium Gray colored uh ACM floating cornice line the building itself with the top two floors will be majority of aluminum clad window system but again set back off of the front building line uh to change the scale of this building the northern portion of this project uh will be clad in um the Roman style uh brick masonry uh with a decorative uh rose-colored ACM profile once again that we understand that the visibility of the northern portion of this building um has impact on the neighborhood this could be there's no requirement for what this material could be this could be cement board this could be stucco this could be a series of different things this owner has chosen uh to provide a more quality or better material at this elevation because he understands the exposure of the northern elevation to the neighborhood and also to the east two dimensional elevations uh very similar to what I previously described the setback again is at the top of the six floor the seventh and eighth floors are setback 18 fo6 it varies there's some small Bay projections at that setback uh materials uh that I previously described are listed above um and again uh at the first floor you can see the individual garage Bays that the cars will pull into Northern elev ation rear elevation which the majority of the material at the Eastern elevation which is technically the rear uh will be aluminum clad window system with some small ACM or aluminum composite material accents daytime view of the Ogden Avenue facade um as you can see there is a 6 foot high uh front wall um with the slide gate for the vehicular entry point crosswalk is directly to the north uh in the foreground is the one street tree in compliance with the forestry standard and again uh the side elevation which is the southern um The Masonry begins and then it slowly dissipates and turns into the majority of glazing to the east the overall impact of the building um another requirement from your checklist items side impact plan as you can see the massing in scale uh in the upper sight line number one uh building is offset set to the northern portion of the property uh and again the 3 and 1 half story masonry building to the South um just going back to maybe some of the conversation and questions regarding um this site and as far as excavation um I have done quite a few sites here in Jersey City this site is unique in its way because you have a driveway uh directly to the South and then you have another parking lot directly to the north we do have approximately 30 ft of staging area within our property boundary that typically does not happen so you know construction staging and even all of the excavation itself can be dug uh from north to south it doesn't have to the the machines or the material doesn't have to be pulled to the Palisades or to the east everything can be worked within the site boundary uh not uh technically on the slope of the Palisades or above the crest line so again it's a it's a unique situation um and I think uh between the structural engineering team as he had previously stated that we have just recently put a 29 Story cast in place building right directly on top of the Bergen arches um with limited distance directly to that Railway line I think this is something that certainly could be achievable here on the site in closing um in the shadow study um Shadows to the March uh typically uh you know rises in the East sets to the West uh the building will have uh impact or cast a shadow in March uh midday uh to later on in the day directly to the north um in June uh typically in the summertime sun is directly overhead the shadows will cast pretty much straight down um and as you work both in September and then also in December again Shadow lines are slightly longer um and the majority of the impact or shadow of the structure will be uh both to the West which is the medical facility across a and then to 152 Ogden Avenue to the north later on in the day this concludes my presentation for tonight okay thank you Mr vanderark uh just a couple quick questions and uh council is that okay or do you have a a followup absolutely okay um two questions uh screening on any of the rooftop units yes agreed uh and um I testified to that everything will be centrally located we will have uh some condensers units which is located behind the uh amenity space and we'll probably have an rtu and a generator centrally located everything will be screened and out of view okay uh how are the parking spaces assigned uh one to one per unit um so uh again I I think um you know the Ada space would be obvious should in the event that any one of these uh 14 units uh I think potentially this would be a condominium project so any of the Ada uh uh uh required units would be to the Ada parking space and then the remainder would come on a first come first serve basis but again I I don't want to speak for ownership on on how they would be uh delegated or signed okay um the reason I ask with that mechanical system towards the west of the building I'll call it um so there's five cars that rotate through there correct so there's actually six spaces but five there's one movable there there there's always one empty space within the modular so there will be five trays and the empty space uh you know rotates and dictates you know where the the car is spit out of the garage uh parking space but I think uh you know in this case um we will have you know probably the ability um to even dedicate you know whatever garage stall will be opening for that particular tenant so I think they can probably even take it the next further it won't be a random thing it'll it'll it'll be something that kind of appears at that location for that Resident okay understood uh anybody else questions yeah going back to the uh five parking spaces are the uh mechanical device there that uh rly pecks one space open six of them how um how convenient how easy it is to operate anybody just or is there somebody special going to be operating it or oh no this this this will all be operational um by the residents by the residents obviously there'll be a maintenance contract uh you know on this or service contract that'll be done annually however it'll be done via key fob okay the garage door will open the system will rotate with your key fob the empty tray will land right in the garage Bay and the person will pull right in um so these residents um you know because you'll make it easy for a guy like me of course and and and you know just for the record we we have this system um at various locations in Jersey City I have one at 650 Montgomery that's approximately 15 years old and it works oh yeah it still works thank you very much okay anybody else any questions no okay thank you sir thank you you yeah I I have nothing further for Mr vanderark Miss AIS go ahead Mike are you okay um sure yeah right after this testimony okay good evening Mr vanderark good evening um I just had a few questions for you sure okay so you mentioned us that there's a swimming pool on an adjacent structure just from what I could uh see see via Google Earth image yes okay so what was it the blue color that gave you that idea color Okay um and then you had compared uh this proposed structure to 154 OG I did not compare them I said 154 Ogden is a three-story masonry structure that was actually constructed further east closer to the crest of the Palisades as opposed to what we're proposing here yes it's three stories it has a seller um which is similar to what our our our seller would be on this project so from an excavation standpoint that building has foundations that building was constructed further east and that building was constructed 100 years ago and I don't see that that building slipping or any failure on that building today are you aware it has a retaining wall I was not privy to being on the backside of that property however that retain coning wall was constructed I don't know when it was constructed but it exists and it does have impact on the Palisades wait and and are you aware retaining walls are no longer permitted on the Palisades I we're not proposing one okay um could could you describe the paver system that you had shown in one of your renderings yeah I mean we could even stay on this slide this is a pay system that allows uh uh water seepage uh through this paver system that goes directly into the ground the pre-existing condition on this site is a 100% um on this portion of the site is 100% asphalt uh Paving system which is a parking lot so that Paving system sheet flows in every direction whichever the parking lot is pitched to so the current condition here is that the water is going to fall um and is going to dissipate uh downwards into the soil condition and eventually touch the rock okay and and um just going back to the size of the that that how many square feet is the existing parking lot it's it's approximately 70 by 100 so it's 7,000 square feet okay um I'm sorry 7,000 you said okay and um when you're talking about water I guess are the pavers themselves permeable or is it they're just spaces in spaces within the P the PA itself will be probably some form of concrete material and there's like a small Gap in between these pavers that allows the water to drain into as opposed to sheet flowing on the adjacent Properties or you know into the slope of the Palisades um and and but then the waters after the water filters down through the initial layers of sand and gravel it'll hit impermeable bedrock and that was previously stated by a geotechnical engineer yes okay is so are you're calling this a permeable P system I'm I'm calling this a permeable P system correct okay is is there a and is there a regulatory standard for that not in Jersey City no okay and are are you familiar with any state regulatory standards for those I I am not but you know this is a site approach that kind of goes further into kind of storm order management and Green Building technique um so again it you know this is only uh a plus for the project not a negative so so are the P Council if I could jump in real quick regul regulatory by who um the the the state D okay thank you I mean ultimately this project will be approved by njde uh as proposed by our civil engineer so if this is something that the state uh regulates against uh then this part of the application would be changed to a regular paver system non-permeable um but I certainly wouldn't be presenting asphalt here okay is this so this is part of a so the permeable Avers are part of a storm water management system it it's part of a green building technique okay um okay and I just wanted to go to your vendoring I think it was on uh slide number 24 yeah okay um and and and did you testify that the the height of of this building is 80 85 the proposed structure is 85 ft to the principal roof level correct and it's eight stories yes and the the building to the north at 154 Ogden how many stories is that three stories okay it's a toll or three stories with a Toller parit line but again I'm not testifying to that height as part of this graphic I'm testifying to strictly the building alone there is a massing um of similar scale to 154 Ogden but I'm not testifying that that you know there's a parit line on that building and it's a very tall uh three stories above grade do do you know how tall 154 Ogden is I did not take a measurement of it okay but just to to me this would you say this correctly this rendering reflect that proportional relationship of the eight-story building to the three-story building I think when you look at the pre-existing condition of that structure you have uh a tall three stories with a very high parit line in decorative cornice so this could aesthetically be three and a half to four stories in height it's of similar scale I'm not saying it's an exact scale and I didn't put that as part of the record right okay um and did when you you designed uh this structure at 152 Ogden did you take into consideration the design standards in Our Land Development ordinance I always do sure okay okay thanks that's it just one question sure mrar kind of to clear up the record uh the existing parking lot there is I believe it's a gravel parking lot is that correct uh well it is a uh it's a parking lot that is in uh disrepair um it's a little bit of both a little bit of both it's a little broken asphalt um and it is there is some portions of gravel just wanted to clear that up thank you okay thank you further okay thank you uh so the time is 7:26 we're going to take a 10-minute break everybody 7:27 I apologize be back at 7:37 just for the board's uh notice we are under an open application no conversations between us no conversations with any members of the public okay thank you guys we'll see you in a few Mr Harrington I'll offer you a closing statement if you'd like or after public comment yeah maybe I'll defer to after public comment I just know for the record I I have our traffic engineer here tonight in the event the board has any questions regarding that I and um I'm not presenting any planning testimony tonight as as I mentioned earlier with an as of right application the issue as to whether a variance was required or not was adjudicated by the zoning board and that's under appeal so there is no planning testimony understood okay thank you that with that said that completes our presentation thank you miss haanas anything else yes um please come on up to the mic and speak yeah um we have an engineering expert tonight and then um K weissman's going to be a fact witness on a on behalf of Riverview neighborhood association's development committee and then Roger heightman is going to stand up briefly and talk on behalf of the organization's board okay and that's going to be under direct testimony from you understood okay thank you okay so it's right there on the table I do sure uh my first name is Jeffrey it's g e o FF RI middle initial M last name g g o l l my can we pause the record for one sec I just left my uh iPad in the other room that's where take notes or paperless now so just let me know when you want to pull up here I don't know if you want to no in a little bit yeah okay yeah do you want to bring your board do you want to bring your board I don't know if that I think everybody else okay thank you everybody okay M Mr Mr Gul could you give the board your expert qualifications sure um I graduated from ruri University in 1990 with a bachelor in civil engineering I have a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin in Engineering Management uh that I graduated in 2013 um I'm licensed in uh New Jersey and nine other states as well as the um District of Columbia um as a professional engineer uh after graduating from ruter I worked for a uh Highway engineering firm which is called dubury now was good kind of no day back in the back in the day uh I worked for Mulia geotechnical engineering firm uh for several years we started Princeton Hydro our my my firm I'm the president of the firm um I've been the president for the last seven years but I'm a founding partner um we work in water resources and geotechnical Engineering um Water Resources Consulting and Science and both in science and engineering um um uh I've testified before a number of different planning boards I actually was uh qualified uh by the uh Jersey City Zoning uh Board of adjustment um I'm actually just I'm also one of the engineers of record on the Liberty State Park project we're working for the uh my company's working for the uh US Army Corps of Engineers we're doing all the geotechnical work that's fine sir you're qualified thank you okay Mr Gul you heard all the testimony from the applicants Engineers did you uh have any opinion about the site plan yes um one of the things that I'd like to start off with is some of the regulatory we heard a lot of really interesting things about approaches and uh to the the proposed development but I wanted to start out with what is under the purview of the planning board and what the applicant is required to follow in terms of the storm water ordinance um currently the applicant has testified that they are a considered to be considered a minor um development and um that was testified to I Believe by the engineer in the last meeting uh for this they talk about onsite um on-site disturbance and impervious cover and I want to discuss that a little bit so I have a two three actually different uh slides I'd like to show U and if I can present here I didn't see three yeah there's it's there's two is two and one so miss haanas were these provided to the board Andor to Mr Harrington prior to the meeting uh they they weren't but they're B they're based on the site plans that were already presented Mr Harrington I'll hear you for the record iate an objection to them because they were not provided well aren't chairman uh obviously Mr Harrington has not had the opportunity to can we show it to him right now and just we have a big board we can show you right now actually without putting it up on the screen can we just show it to M hajis just let me State what I'm going to State and then we will see how this plays out so chairman board uh obviously the objector has been known to both the board and to Mr Harrington for some time uh they have not provided these documents in advance I have not seen these documents I don't know that anybody on behalf of the board any of our professionals have seen the documents I have no idea what they are Mr Harrington has not seen them so obviously uh yeah if I could lay a foundation for what we're about to present and I I think then after it's been presented the board can make a decision about whether they'd like to admit it into evidence so I don't know that the board even wants to entertain it m hajian so that's what we're going to find out I don't think it's incumbent upon any objector to present exhibits in advance our exhibits are a response to the presentation given by the applicant which was only completed tonight and I don't know of any board in the state that requires an objector to submit exhibits in advance of the hearing okay Miss Hest but you were here in November this gentleman is here tonight with exhibits that he prepared in anticipation of testifying which is fine no problem with that but you now have a board that has not even had the opportunity to review them Mr Harrington hasn't had the opportunity to review them so Mr Harrington would you like to attempt to review these I would hate to carry the matter uh anday delay the proceeding because they have not been shared prior I I would like to to review them I know a lot of time has been been spent tonight in November you know my issue is we we we were here in November I mean we we received an engineering memo this afternoon that was uploaded to the website I mean you could say the same thing to the app not from the applicant M hajian the memo that was received is from the city engineering department so that is not anybody's doing other than City engineering which this board will take full control of so I I'd like to to review them U briefly just to see if they're just factual compilation of of data or is a report or analysis so with that Miss hajis can you lay somewhat of a foundation so we know what we're talking about yes of course um so the site plan is just taking the applicant's site plan from its civil engineer and coloring in some of the squares to illustrate uh the square footage of the building footprint the permeable uh portion of the site the impermeable portion of the site and the off-site uh disturbance uh which is uh our math is a little different than theirs and we show how we come up with different numbers based upon their site plan oh oh oh I mean our our measurements are the same but the way we inter let's keep the the conversation on the mic please yeah thank you so okay sorry about that so then um and then the second one is just shed are they edited site plan drawings edited by your expert it's not edited it's overlain with fair enough certain commentary Fair enough the that's one of the exhibits or two of the exhibits that's one exhibit and then the second the second exhibit is just showing our or what is required under our ordinance it's a it's a like a screenshot of our own storm water Control Ordinance our ordinance being the city's ordinance yes yes okay so Mr Harrington I have no issue with the city ordinance to be honest I don't think I have an issue with the comments added to the site plan if the gentleman was going to testify from those as having been his analysis of the site plan so yeah I I don't have an objection either it sounds that you know for the limited purposes of demonstrative uh presentation that's that's my understanding of what what is being done here uh that I have no objection just give us one second please okay so Council both of you um here's my concern I if there's some kind of mathematical work that's on this presentation it's on this exhibit obviously Mr Harrington's engineerings engineering experts should have access to it um so I'll I'll entertain that Mr Harrington I'll go back to you and see if you're comfortable with those numbers but I I don't want to make a a rash decision tonight just because you're in front of us tonight so if there's numbers on this I I certainly want your engineering team to look at these numbers and have some kind of qualified response I I don't think it's it's fair to you know the board is the board we'll we'll take expert testimony we've qualified your expert witness we've ified your expert Witnesses so there's expert testimony from both sides but I think your expert Witnesses should be able to review the data now Santo should that happen before we see it or after we say it so chairman if we're not comfortable proceeding because Mr Harrington has not had the full opportunity to review and analyze it uh then the board is absolutely within its purview if the board is uncomfortable with carrying the application to allow the uh applicant's attorney the time to review these and confirm or object to whatever that calculation is so uh that's that's absolutely within the board's discretion I don't think it's funny we just Eddie turn your please turn your mic on sorry this is commissioner charge I don't find this funny I just spent two hours my time and you're laughing there and and um what you call you should see the fil and it's the truth of the matter is we just announced that we going to have a 10-minute break and you had the mic in your hand and you didn't announce that there was something that we could look at that Jews could have looked at in those 10 minutes that we took a break so he could have rest um I don't find this funny at all uh we I've never said it was funny we have a commissioner speaking please in respect this board since I've been on this board if we walked in here today and they gave me an engineering report from the city of Jersey City we carry that meeting because we would not accept the report that was given to us when we walked in if it was posted on the data portal before we got here we would we had a chance to look at it but this board has always say I've been on it and I want to put this down for the record has turned down engineer orts from Jersey City because it was given to us when we sat down here before me just want to put that in for the record absolutely thank you I don't find it funny I I understand what you're saying commissioner you don't understand what I'm saying I said I understand what you're saying commissioner so Council th this is you've had and I don't mean this with any disrespect you've had Mr Harrington's exhibits for how long now well you've reviewed the applicants exhibits January 11th was the first date his new I mean we've we've been here repeatedly so that the applicant could be given the opportunity to uh Rectify a deficient application we were here I think first in October then in November after as chairman you pointed out they didn't have the right geotechnical report so this is not I I think it it does seem a bit imbalanced to me I just and I am going to stren strenuously object to this I do think that if you all take a look at the exhibit or if Mr Harrington's give it you'll see it's it's basically his exhibit it's nothing new and the Math's not new it's their numbers so it's just a visual I mean that's going to help illustrate our experts presentation it if I could because I'd like to move forward um I I have no objection with them proceeding and I could maybe reserve the right to rebuttal or to reserve the objection if I believe that my experts need more time my gut is telling me that it's it's a presentation for demonstrative purposes and he just has a different opinion as to whether it's a major development or a minor development yeah that that's exactly right yes yeah I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here I don't want to you know throw this into chaos I just want to make sure that all parties have access to yeah exhibits that are presented and have them beforehand if Mr Harrington is waving that I'm comfortable with that what what it just to clarify what is the policy because commissioner Torres referred to is there a a a time is there a formal policy how far in advance exhibits have everything has to be submitted and posted to the portal 10 days before the hearing that's for the the yeah M hjis please don't interrupt me I let you talk you let me talk that's how this works so the answer is 10 days in advance for you to come in the night of a hearing with exhibits that you want to present in opposition to an application and not share them with your adversary before the hearing is upsetting It's upsetting so it should have been produced beforehand you could have sent a letter two days ago saying we've just prepared this in response to what we got 10 days ago but none of that took place and to the commissioner's point for the past 10 minutes while everybody was in recess you didn't even say to Mr Harrington we have these exhibits that we're going to move so that is the point chairman Mr Harrington wants to reserve he wants to move forward I don't know that the board is comfortable moving forward and Mr Harrington reserving but he is the applicant and it's always in the discretion of the board how to proceed anybody have an opinion if mrend is if Mr herited is okay with moving forward and we have a they have a right to rebuttal then I'm okay with that process I think that that would be fair Mr chairman I agree um yeah if you're okay with that Council I'm I'm okay with that too I mean if anything it's just professional courtesy to have been provided before I'm okay same with me I'm okay if Mr Harrington is so weaving that and a rebuttal will be happening if he so wishes to okay David out voted it sounds [Laughter] like all right thank you missis continue please okay here we go okay you you're going to have to blow that up big for us yeah our screens are much smaller than these screens I will do that right now thank you thank you perfect welcome okay so one thing I wanted to to to Really first cover on my testimony is the definition of major development and versus the minor development um and he is correct in Miss hajis let's lay the foundation the chapter and verse for this exhibit and where is this coming from this is an excerpt from um our storm water Jersey City storm water Control Ordinance that's the witness Please Mr go could you explain what yes what's just being displayed on the screen please these are this is the language in the definition of of uh subsection 345-7460 sorry um no it is just simply the definition and then I have uh on the next slide I have further definitions of impervious and motor vehicle surfaces so it is the definitions of specific terms that you've taken out of 3457 forers city ordinance and created this document using the specific terms that you want to discuss here this evening is that fair correct the only difference is I um uh bolded certain terms and underlined other terms no no it's it's edited it's an edited document now I I don't know what that means you don't know what edited means no no I don't know how it impacts this is it is there a conern because there's certain Defence given to certain words that isn't shown in the Jersey city ordinance this what you're showing me right now and and we shouldn't even be looking at this now what you're showing me isn't the exact ordinance there's there's words emboldened there's things underlined yeah are there quotes added no okay so those quotes are in the ordinance correct I I'm not comfortable with reading an alter document as evidence it's fair chairman I can I explain why I did it or is it okay I don't know it's it's altered it's not the ordinance I understand why you did it I don't I mean I assume the reason you did it was to obviously highlight certain things I think we all understand that I think that uh the concern is valid as to whether or not the emphasizing of certain words in a document is is fair or not fair as opposed to just showing 345746077 testimony will be in transcript on the on the video is it I apologize I had no idea I yeah I'm not I understand I I understand the reason for it and I um believe me if I was in your shoes I would probably do the exact same thing it's just it it's as far as the board is concerned it's not the exact ordinance anymore it's altered and believe me this board is more than familiar with reading ordinances um so I would have no problem if you gave us the actual ordinance but with anything highlighted with anything emboldened underlined now it's you're creating opinion out of it rather than fact in my eyes but isn't it my opinion that matters here you're a fact witness correct or or you're an expert witness my professional opinion matters sir you're going to give an opinion but again I think it's going to have to come in verbal testimony based on what you've and what you intend to highlight and bring to the board's attention within the ordinance uh but if we're going to look at the ordinance we want to see the sentence before and after and make sure obviously that the way you're interpreting that ordinance is the same as we want to interpret it in terms of whether the sentence before or after a sentence matters to the interpretation of that sentence so uh I think that's the actual concern for the board but with that obviously if you have the ordinance in its full text you can share that and or if you'd rather read and and articulate it that's acceptable too I I'll read it and articulate it okay may I proceed sure go ahead thank you very much I appreciate it and I appr appreciate the consideration so under the definition under under Section subsection uh 345 um uh the on the storm water development um uh uh regulations in the definitions this is weely where the applicant has has has purported that the their application meets the definition of minor development um if I don't know if you recall but in the last hearing the applicants engineer uh qualified disturbance is on-site disturbance and on-site impervious cover um and obviously I think you're aware that there's a major difference between not to be throw a pun out there there's a big difference between the major and the minor development applications in terms of what's required a minor development application requires I'm sorry I love oh okay well you don't want to get me into that um but the um obviously the minor uh the minor development or the minor development application really requires sort of like an approach to Green infrastructure doing what you can green roof uh looking at permeable pavement and that kind of thing but there's not really a lot of Standards associated with when you get kicked into the major development then you have to actually follow the rest of the ordinance which is the model ordinance for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection ordinance uh groundwater recharge water quality quantity you know um um um reducing Peak flows um and doing all the things that are required under that it's a it's a much more heavy LIF so to speak under this so it is an important distinction to understand um and I did read you know when I read the the um the purpose under the sto the Jersey city stormwood ordinance this the the city said they it well at Le in the ordinance say it recognizes that the city has a a combined sewer overflow a CSO and therefore and a lot of the development that occurs is well under the threshold of D's minimum standards for putting you into a major development um according to D regulations a major development would be considered um one acre of disturbance or a quarter acre of new impervious uh or replacing impervious cover or regulated uh motor vehicle surfaces um and so I'm going to talk a little bit about the difference between those two as well in Jersey City's case because of their concern about the smaller developments and the cumulative effect you took the model ordinance and adopted it and lowered the standards so instead of an acre of disturbance it's 10,000 square feet of disturbance instead of a quarter acre of impervious cover or um regulated motor vehicle service uh surface it's now 5,000 square feet so the applicant has uh proposed and and the reason I um had talked about that there's you really need to understand that difference because there's really going to make a difference the one thing I want to clarify there's nothing in the Jersey city ordinance that states you are to separate on-site versus offsite disturbance talks about development disturbance any disturbance you go off site to con connect utilities you need to you that's counted as distur you pull up the pavement to replace it you know you dig a trench that's disturbance um so that's important to understand same thing with um the per the impervious surfaces Andor the regulated motor vehicle services and I'll explain what those two are in in a minute um and so those are as well it doesn't the ordinance doesn't distinguish between the two if you're going to be replacing or uh putting in new impervious surfaces or or regulated motor vehicle services surfaces it counts now um the one thing I wanted I I wanted to show on is is can I pull up theug it so would look at the bit yeah I'm y that right having problems s just for your uh knowledge I'm the one that controls it I need to wait for you to put it in and then I see it so just I see it on the HDMI you just can't pull it out and in because I can't see it until it shows up okay all right okay sorry about that yeah I'll do it when I see it do you see anything yes I do hold on don't pull it out I'm having trouble enlarging the image though okay um this is this is microscopic here I don't know why it's doing that um I I'm not sure yeah we I don't know um I don't know why this is doing this I I I can try putting it into to my computer if you wish I I'll see if it works the first three are called L the first three letters of the document sorry that no problem okay I think it's up there now oh my gosh what's happening why isn't it up this is amazing all right stream measures here take your take that thank you off the Record mic Matt is that our laptop yes it's his um how do I I can see up here let's wait for Matt yes correct that is our uh staff laptop I just need to is there a way to zoom out uh um the next to the number in the center the one of one you should see a full extent icon at the top right underneath the right here to nope see to the center of the screen of the box with 10,000 ah thank you all right we got some it down here thank you very much appreciate it um okay so uh what this drawing shows is um the applicants most recent it's actually the soil erosion and siment control plan um and it's a little bit more difficult to see but all the other elements of the project are still located on this um the reason I use this sheet is because it provides the limit of disturbance for all the work so if you'll see the red line that outlines the entire limit of disturbance so to speak around the plan um so if you look here um this is the LOD line which matches this disturbance boundary and it goes around and then into the street where they're proposing their utilities so did you create that line yes I did so what you have now deemed the level of disturbance line you then placed onto their drawing is that accurate which just traced over their own limit of disturbance I have not changed it okay so so the can I can I ask my own witness can I ask since I haven't seen the drawing and I need to understand the drawing you highlighted their limit of disturbance line that is correct with the red obviously that is correct okay the other thing that was added was the table the large table yes well it while we're on the highlighting um you'll see the I guess it's purple or blue um highlight I added that that was traced on all their impervious Services um that are not what we call regulated motor vehicle service surface and the red or or pink um light pink would be the regulated motor vehicle services I added that to the plan as well but not the actual lines uh I'm not sure what you mean I'm sorry so the limit of disturbance line it appears to me that it was a dashed line that you then for lack of a better term colored with a red marker that I follow correct the blue shading regulated impervious surface did you color in the existing box or shape whatever you want to say yes I I I colored for example in the blue it includes the building and any other impervious surface such as sidewalks um walkways uh that are not driven over by a vehicle but did you create the box or was the box or the shape already in existance like the limited of disturbance line of limit of disturbance line that I added that you added add and the same thing with the regulated motor vehicle surface that is correct okay uh can I ask a question too Council absolutely uh you said you reviewed the storm water ordinance and its definitions correct did you review the definition of disturbance uh I did as well I had the I had it up on my other I can give you the I can yeah did did you testify that uh Milling and Paving and repaving is part of disturbance no Milling the milling and Paving is actually being done beyond the limit of that limit of disturbance shown if you go to the one I forgot what sheet it is U but it shows uh the Milling that's going to be done for the entire you know for a larger area of road that I know is not considered you know disturbance okay so everything that I've at least everything in my professional opinion and and what's been proposed on the plan for engineering that requires excavation everything that's the regulated motor vehicle service like the road and the parking lot for example um that is they're going to rip up that pavement and completely replace them because they have to you know put in the utilities you got to pull up the pavement and then put the dig the trench and then and then do all that so all that is an um considered um disturbance per the definition of the ordinance all right I just wanted to get the general understanding of what existed and what was altered because I know that council's going to question you regarding the drawing so yep understood thank you and Santa we haven't marked any of these yet this has not yet been marked uh if you would like we can mark it for identification purposes since it is up on the screen so we can mark it only for identification purposes as o one okay thank you may I proceed sure thank you so the what I did is I added up all those those are basically reflective of the definitions within the uh Jersey city ordinance for disturbance uh regulated impervious surface and regulated motor vehicle surface one thing to keep in mind if you'll note it says regulated motor vehicle surface it doesn't say uh regulated uh impervious surface it doesn't say anything like like that when you uh look at the definitions of regulated motor vehicle services could be anything so anything that Vehicles will drive over that potential pollutants can drop out onto the onto the driving surface would be considered regulated motor vehicle services so if you had a dirt road that would be considered a regulated motor vehicle surface um so even like as as the the architect had uh testified about the prvious pavement um while you can say that it's perious pavement maybe um it's still a regulated motor vehicle surface and the reason that's important is because when you add it all up they meet the definition of of major development triggers major development for the total disturbance and the total of uh and what you do in the ordinance It also says you add up the two different types of surfaces regulated impervious and regulated motor vehicle surface um and when you so by themselves they don't um trigger the the major development but in combination as per the ordinance they do uh my calculations were based on my measurement off of their plan scaled off of the plan 7,680 square feet for regulated impervious plus regulated motor vehicle surface now with that said um let's say we go with the definition of onsite which I still don't I I'm just on the record I don't agree it's total disturbance but even if you go by just the on-site when you add up the onsite I didn't provide that information I scaled it off the plans you're still dealing with just a a little bit under 6,000 square ft of total um regulated motor vehicle surface plus regulated impervious surface so any way you slice it it's in my professional opinion it triggers a major development what that means is I'm sorry go ahead and and could you just I know You' just explained the the trigger fing on the bottom row of the chart total regulated impervious plus regulated motor vehicle could you explain the first row where you how are we coming up with 10,500 19 Square F feet of disturbed surface 10,519 you can't it's hard to read on the plan it's small uh but 10,519 square fet of disturbance uh is actually their own limit of disturbance line now that was placed on there for soil erosion and set control it's required but it's still disturbance um if you look at the definition of disturbance and so I I measured it off I confirmed I agree that the 10,519 is consider is the a measurement and therefore we are over the 10,000 foot limit uh that triggers the major development that's really all I wanted to cover on the regulatory side and I wanted to just well that's not entirely true um what I'm trying to do is um that sets the basis for some of the other um questions that um that we have um on the project so um yes is this their most recent C 801 sheet I just can't see the date on yes it is okay so this was the one that was the transferred to an image didn't yeah it's a little blurry yeah it is the it is the well let me explain it is the current plan not including the recent modification they made for the driveway but by moving the driveway um I think they did add a little bit more green space um on it but essentially doesn't change the necessarily the overall magnitude of triggering the major development so this is the latest signed and sealed plan of the entire set that was submitted to the to the planning board I don't know that that's accurate chairman if this doesn't include when there was the move to the driveway I have no idea how it impacts the calculations I have no idea if it changes the calculations it doesn't change it materially at all well but you use words like it doesn't change it materially but you're telling me that the disturbance is a exact figure of 10,519 so oh no uh the overall disturbance doesn't change that's the same I don't I am allowed to rely on my professional opinion am I not of course you are but I've got a drawing that isn't the most recent drawing that's been used that's then the applicant should be required to submit an entirely new set of plans because this is the only uh sheet within their entire set of plans or these are the that's the only thing they have on the record other than that recent modification to that one sheet so if I can't use this they can't use this are we using it for the same purpose it's the official submitted civil engineering set that's before this planning board I understand that but is this particular sheet being used for the same purpose was the question and I don't know the answer suest the purpose in terms of the impervious cover the purpose for which the sheet was created by the applicant vers the manner in which you're using the sheet no there this was a soil erosion and sediment control plan but it has all the elements for me to Overlay all the impervious uh motor vehicle services and limits of disturbance in my professional expertise and experience Mr Harrington do your experts have any objection to this do you have any objection to this if Mr Harton it would be if Mr Arington has an objection well it's I'm sorry again I think it's for demonstrative purposes now you know for it is what it is I I don't want to delay this because I'm I I think you know my expert you know can counter you know testify to this and and make it very clear to the board what the issues are so I I don't want to go down you know a rabbit hole with with something that that I don't think is to my my opinion whether it's dated you know the the prior plan or not um we disagree with his numbers we'll tell you you know right now we disagree with his analysis so whatever he has up there and whatever he's testifying to we disagree to his opinion and we're going to have that obviously we'll get to that um I I just want to make sure that you know everybody has seen and and qualified the documents that are in front of us that's all that's all I'm not biasing one way or the other obviously I just want to make sure everybody has seen these and has had a chance to review that's all okay okay so um with that said you know again it's my opinion that conforming to the major development is required without question they have 10,519 square fet of disturbance associated with this development um they have the required uh they have the uh uh they exceed the minimum impervious covers for Combined for total regulated impervious and regulated motor vehicle service vehicle uh excuse me regulated motor vehicle surface um so I think it's pretty uh pretty clear that this is uh this is how it's ha this is how it's calculated I've worked with d on and municipalities on many different applications and the total disturbance is the total disturbance is the total disturbance same thing with the impervious and the motor vehicle services associated with uh one complete project uh the applicant again they don't include um they talk about perious pavers on this project um except the if on the details on the engineering plans have no there is no provision for prvious pavement pavers on the engineering plans none there is no there's a detail for papers with concrete below it with some wheat poles and dense graded aurate which is highly compacted and imperviable so none of that information has been provided uh the first testimony I've heard about it well was that the um applicants engineer has mentioned it and has stated it it's in his report that they're doing it but on plan it's not there um in order to provide If This Were to conform it as a major development um they would have to comply if they wanted to use that parking lot as a uh uh as the architect called it a permeable pavement system a that entire term is an engineered system it's not just the pavers when you look at the D the ninj D best management practice manual a pervious pavement s system consists of the pores asphalt choker Stone underneath it and then a layer of at least 12 inches of gravel under the under the road to store it you also have to have an outfall for that because they talk about like water that might you know go into the ground but if it exceeds that it now has to have a place to go and so or to convey uh to another location and so um that is something that needs to be considered by the board the other thing is they're proposing uh uh these perious pavers over a pscg easement um and there is a pipeline under it and so if they're promoting and proposing a storm water structure with regardless of whether you're just saying it's a pervious pavement system uh or perious pavement or a perious pavement system whether minor or major it's still a storm water management structure and as I understand you're not a lot of structures on top of the on top of uh that PSG easement in addition you're now promoting water on into the into the easement over the you know you're actually taking more volume and putting it underground into the storm water system that sits over this pipeline so they need to provide those details they haven't provided any other details about how they're going to do it and the pavement detail the the paver detail on the plan completely contradicts um the testimony and the report the storm water report that they've provided um in addition it is absolutely important to find seasonal High groundwater the geotechnical engineer testified before that he didn't see any groundwater and therefore there is no seasonal High groundwater or any water for that matter in this area the the is the actuality is in the absence of evidence of the modeling that he discussed you know the iron depletions and things like that um and he's very accurate in terms of his description of that in the absent of that any of that evidence in accordance with the D manual and rules and regulations the BMP manual excuse me chapter 12 under oops well we don't need to see that anymore anyway um under that rule um under that that chapter of the BMP manual um you have to be at least 2 feet above seasonal high water and you can only determine uh that seasonal high water table is by doing investigations or test pits from the months of January through April they did it at the end of December um from a regulatory or a BMP manual standpoint you can't do that you can't say that's where there's no seasonal high if you haven't seen it the other issue is seasonal High doesn't necessarily be is not necessarily depicted by an actual water table that you know a regional water table the Bedrock underneath the site can actually promote um a seasonal high water table the water goes down as they explained it hits the rock it rises up to a certain elevation it does flow laterally as well as as was stated uh which was a little disconcerting about putting that storm water and then sending it over to the slope but that you know that'll I'll just I'll talk about that in a little bit um so that's one of the big issues associated with this storm water system they don't know where seasonal High groundwater is and they don't have any details on the storm water management system and how they're going to manage excess storm water going off the site I know in the engineers report he stated or uh it was stated in the engineering uh letter today that was submitted that they need to connect the drainage from the P the pavers to the storm M system I I don't I wasn't sure if that meant an inlet or a uh under from you know the port the uh uh the gravel system that's supposed to be under the site I don't know just if this uh project I is considered a major development under our storm water Control Ordinance what would have been required to comply with the ordinance you would go down the ordinance and you would have to follow basically the rest of the what's been the model ordinance from the D you have to look at um at Peak flow so the 210 and 100e storm events you have to look at groundwater recharge uh the architect stated that he agreed that there was gravel on the site on the parking lot as well so that there is some kind of recharge going on here so they'd have to work on on um uh engineering the system to make up for that depleted recharge um and they'd also have to do water quality treatment um on the site as well and that could include recharge it could be a recharge system but if you're going to go to groundwater um uh well perious pavement actually is its own water quality treatment but you have to prove that you can actually recharge that groundw to the subsurface so they'd have to go in and do more testing more excavations and and to uh prove that they could get that recharge on the site um again it's a structure on top also part of it is on top of the pscg easement um and so that would be concerning to me um trying to go to some of the other sorry my notes here so that was really it on the sto on the on the um the compliance with the major versus minor development I apologize it took this long to get to that point but here we are um so the next thing that I wanted to talk about is some other things missing from the application um is uh under the pood ordinance um they talk about uh description physical description of the site which shall include a technical summary of the site characteristics such as soils load bearing capacity erosion potential depth to bedrocks Etc um so so far only you know the soil load be the soil the load bearing capacity and dep to bedrock has been provided there isn't any uh discussion about erodability of soils um um I can expect that the um response to that would be well we're complying with the Soil Conservation District in terms of of impacts um but that's not discussing soil erodability um associated with it so um the other thing is the the um applicants engineer provided that cut fill if just to be clear it's not an exact cut fill it's ranges so when all those different colors are two you know 2 feet they're basically ranges of 2 feet um he he said it's unfair to ask him how much volume would be excavated I think you I think it would be fair to do that Engineers have the ability to calculate estimated uh volumes that would need to be excavated um I don't know is it 50 yards is it 100 yards is a thousand yards uh cubic yards of material that's going to have to be excavated where is it going to go how many trucks have to drive through the neighborhood uh to do that I haven't calculated that but that's not my position um on this application but I think the applicant should provide that information um uh triaxle dump trucks hold 15 cubic yards so if it's I don't know you could throw out a number there I'm not going to you know on the record I'm not going to throw out an exact number because I haven't calculated it but yes sir so we shouldn't give a number we shouldn't guess at a number I'm not going to guess at a number I think the applicant should provide that number okay thank you um and they can caveat it by saying well you know there things could change you know material may not be adequate they might have to they may need it for other areas of the site they you know they they can caveat that but I have been asked and provided a number of times and seen applications that do provide the cut fill and the exact volume that they expect to be removed from the site they do talk about you know uh in the P pod the extent and phasing of construction um it is a relatively small site I wouldn't expect that there would be a significant amount of phasing uh but they do have a stockpile there is that stockpile going to be adequate to hold all of the excavation material how are they going to e how are they going to export it how often I think that's information that um is request that is uh uh should be provided to the planning board because as in the pepot ordinance with the information that you're getting it does provide it helps the planning board understand not just compliance with the specific items in the ordinance but your job is also to uh and I don't want to presume your job so I'm just you know as I understand if you look at the ordinance I I realized I said that and I should have so I apologize um but the issue is um you're also looking at Public Safety and so making sure that this application uh doesn't provide any impact to the to the neighborhood and things like that and I think the truck uh traffic and excavation of that material is something definitely to be considered okay so moving to the geotechnical um investigation I read the J the jzn report um I don't have any NE I don't have a uh um I don't have a difference of opinion of whether or not this the rock can vertically hold this structure in place that's not that's not what it's at odd I do have some concerns about some of the the modeling and some of the U the the way it was modeled uh he said he didn't provide any U input of groundwater CU he said there is no groundwater um but he also at the same time another later on in his testimony tonight said well if the water does go down it's going to hit the Bedrock and go sideways and when you know toward the slope and then go down the slope and disappear into nothing but the reality is water is a great lubricator uh uh and it provides if there's an interface between either Bedrock fractures or soil and more importantly the soil the overburden material and the Bedrock that could create what's called a slip plane which is where things would fail the model that he generated generally looks looked basically assumed a mass of Bedrock so there wasn't really a lot of information on the fractures and how this thing might you know what could possibly there were no surfaces provided um more importantly to me there wasn't I didn't see any information he had these lines that separated the Bedrock from the overburden material um I don't disagree with them you open up an excavation you put in you know you take the material away but we also didn't he didn't mention that you're putting the building back and you're putting all that load back on the soil so you're putting an eight story structure an 80 foot5 85 foot high structure back on the site that is going to impart more load um he said he's not providing um uh uh because it's going below the overburden material and sitting on Bedrock that it's not going to have an effect on the overburden well if you notice in that one uh on that one cross-section he provided there was a little wedge of overburden on the Bedrock at the slope two things um that width I believe is about 35 ft the the building I I'm just I think it's around 35 ft of width um and it's now going to cut off that slope and that overburden and so could that potentially now have the propensity to slide if it if it um because now it's not soil is you know it's it can pull apart but now there's nothing there there's a surface that could potentially slip and fail um the other issue associated with that is if we can just give me one second can you refer to a a a drawing number or something so we can follow it's in it's in the yes it's in the geotechnical engineering report which I will ah here it is ah it got cut off uh when I printed it it's um it's well if you recall it was in the geotechnical report I don't know what page it was on in the geotechnical report but they provided the building is over here if you can imagine um and this is that soil overburden that I was talking about that wedge of soil um yeah that's also in at the end of his report excuse me sorry at the end of the report he also shows uh his output this is the output from his his model I I don't know how good your glasses are my the output from the model does show that it's it's um uh that he does go below the overburden but it still has a slip plane there yes so the report was submitted can we not show it on the the screen um I don't have a digital copy of it I do I just I want to know the page that we're on that's all I I can follow along with the page I didn't I didn't down I just I'm sorry I don't think you I downloaded our exhibits but not the applicant's exhibits but um I don't know if you have a package or anything you rece I do but I don't know where to look uh you know this we do so if you tell us the page number in if you can pull up if you can pull up the report it's 46 pages long now I'd like something specific which one it's page 32 but it's not really pagein oh it's page 32 probably of the PDF okay so it's not it doesn't have a page number but that's fine that works okay so just so we're on the Matt's going to pull it up for everybody who's better than Matt is that not what you were doing [Laughter] Matt yeah thank you this is the sheet analysis crosssection figure four page two of two possible I'm sure analysis the sheet analysis what do you mean oh this is it it just says cross-section a it's titled and it's on sheet I guess it's 32 of the PDF what's it's a drawing are you looking at a drawing yeah it's a cross-sectional drawing so it's okay so the problem is you can't see the title block because of the size of yours but it's dra it's from it's uh analysis cross-section is what it's called okay I think we're looking at the same thing I just I think so that's all thank you that's it right there thank you very much that's it right there thank you so what I was pointing at was the of concern is this wedge of soil here now he took basically the existing conditions of the site and then they put the building in if you look at the um the cut fill analysis sheet they're actually going to be putting placing some fill over there as well and so um I didn't see that analiz for putting a fill or putting up to I think a few feet of fill um in that location and so what impact does that have on the side on the slope um stability as well you look at the um uh the cross-section that they uh developed here you'll notice that he assumes his Bedrock outcrop uh the surface uh uh Pro was from uh where is it extent of exposed rock per survey um so I'm not sure that the applicant's geotechnical engineer actually went down and saw the Bedrock um or the ex the the exposed bedrock in that location um but nonetheless it looks like they just used that and then they interpolated by the way that slope is interpolated up to the top where their first boring was there or by the slope or their boring B3 I guess is what it's called here and this boring here um I agree with he found some he found top a rock and that's where it is down here it's per the survey uh is this actually still accurate I I remember in the uh the the zoning board testimony uh I don't know if is that they talked about well they they didn't know they didn't really find it so they just picked a location um and so is there really the outcrop there is this steeper is that Cliff face which is you know the contention is that the definition in the zoning ordinance is that it's an exposed Cliff face that's part of the I may get quieted down here but yeah uh but regardless we're not going to talk about Cliff faces well what I'm going to say is though that slope is pro that Rock slope could very well precipitate off uh Qui more quickly um than what is shown on that and that building could potentially be closer this area was um the part of that elevated rail that came up so there was a lot of fill and retaining walls and so the area was highly modified so I'm not making the argument about whether there's a cliff face or not tonight so I'm not doing that what I'm saying is though we have no idea where that potential if there is a buried Cliff face somewhere um or a a more prec excuse me instead of saying a cliff face a more precipitous drop off of Bedrock I can tell you I've been on that slope I've walked around I have not been on the site but I've walked uh down the side of um um the the building to the north um and it's a pretty darn steep uh steep embankment there it's you could get killed walking down that if you walk any further so um so that that is another concern that this building could be closer to the um uh 2 a potential um impact associated with having a cliff face the applicant geotechnical engineer talked about fractured Rock um if you can only look to last December uh where uh up in North Bergen where a section of the the Palisades failed and uh it was due to rainfall that rain got in the ground um so if you wanted you know talking about obviously I'm trying to make the equivalency between that and putting uh storm water into the ground and then promoting uh water running over the surfaces and through the Fishers in this rock um you can't say that there'll never be a landslide uh there are there have been documented landslides here so it is really best to be on the side of of conservative in terms of of uh ensuring Public Safety so there have been documed landslides on this property no no in the area in the area they're mapped by D no I did not say that sorry um okay and I believe I'm almost done do you have any more questions for me based on your review and your analysis of the application do you have a conclusion yeah based on my review the application must qualifi does qualify um without question is a major development it must follow the uh you know the more detailed requ requirements that a major development application would require it will help uh the city um meet you know meet it the water quality uh and and um ms4 or not ms4 the the CSO requirements that the ordinance was developed for to protect that CSO and reduce storm water from going to those locations um and while they do provide a green roof by the way a green roof is not um an accepted BMP right now for D um uh you'd have to it's an alternative you'd have to prove I'm not saying it doesn't reduce Peak flows but that's it's not an approved uh means uh pervious pavement systems are approved but they have to be designed in a specific manner uh in accordance with the New Jersey uh be BMP manual um I'm also concerned about some of the modeling associated with this and whether the overburden u a landslide could be triggered by that overburden um as well and um and as well as the um method of excavation and number of trucks and how that's going to impact a neighborhood so thank you give me okay Miss hajis that's all anything else for this witness obviously yeah I would like to move 01 into evidence was marked for identification yeah I think that's all1 it is MH I have no objection for The Limited purposes of it's it's an overlay on my experts Council if you could right into the microphone I have no objection for The Limited purposes in that it's an overlay of my experts plan with their own calculations and nothing more than that there's what as to accuracy remain objecting to it Mr Harrington well those are his numbers yes can can't you let him cross-examine the you're trying to move it into evidence he hasn't asked him a question yet I know okay so do you want to wait to try to move it into evidence until Mr Harrington cross-examines him that's a great idea that's what we're I'd rather have Mr Harrington cross-examined him than have you cross-examined him I'll that ACC compliment so but we've already we've already heard testimony on the exhibit we have to answer it we have to answer it yes that's that's right yeah I it is what it is I I have no objection to to having that's opinion but that there you go Mr Harrington wants it in evidence so great it's moved into evidence 01 is in evidence and accepted by the board for its value okay Mr Harrington do you want to cross-examine yes I just have a few questions uh Mr G I guess to start off you referenc the North Bergen uh landslide do you know what kind of rock formation that was uh it was part of the Palisades the basal are you sure it wasn't Sandstone I I didn't see that details of the report okay um and let me uh how many developments have you worked on in Jersey City uh only the currently the largest one in Liberty State Park okay we don't have any Palisade Cliff issues over at Liberty State Park correct no okay and uh so your testimony on the interpretation of the well I guess your opinion on the Jersey City storm order ordinance and the peepot are based exclusively on your interpretation of the ordinance correct well the plain language of the ordinance it's pretty clear and my actually the the language in the ordinance while the numbers have been reduced in terms of uh like uh area of disturbance and the impervious and motorized surfaces um and the addition of like a provision for minor U development um everything else is the same I I've worked on numbers dozens of those types of projects okay but it's based upon just your interpretation and we understand you haven't done any other projects in Jersey City corre the plain language of the ordinance that has been used and is was basically taken right from D's own model ordinance which I've worked on before okay and you you had a lot of comments on uh you know the Geotech report um and I just want to ask you have you done well I think the answer is is is obvious but you haven't done any independent analysis or Report with regard to that report or or the proper correct well I couldn't do any independent analysis the report I don't have any of the the the the input data or the data or the output information that the applicant provided he basically in the appendices just provided you know pretty pictures but you didn't you you had that report you you didn't do any any rebuttal report correct that's correct okay I have no further questions for for Mr G but I would like to bring up um my civil engineer to to rebut uh the testimony uh regarding 01 I think it would be appropriate now while it's still fresh in everybody's head so chairman my only concern is Miss haanas has other Witnesses I don't know and I don't want to get into uh back and forth so obviously Miss haanas just had her expert qualify and provide their testimony it is only fair that uh Mr Harrington provided the opportunity for a rebuttal witness he is the applicant but then miss hajian is going to come back with her next witness uh it has to be in a different field or discipline do you have any further experts or this is your only expert witness Miss haanes we don't have any more experts we just have fact Witnesses who should be pretty quick so e either way is fine with me okay okay let's bring Mr Harrington let's bring up your witness then I can be excused okay don't leave the building though no but thank you and before we start Mike if you need a break just yell after that okay Count Council okay okay so sir I'm going to remind you that you remain under oath I just asked for purposes a record you repeat your name Brian liskin l i e b s k i n d okay uh Brian you were here for the testimony Mr Gul correct I was and uh you had a chance to uh review uh what was marked as uh exhibit 01 I did okay and uh you testified on in November on November 28th that this is a minor uh development per the storm water organs is that correct correct okay and and has you know the testimony of Mr Gul or his interpretation changed your mind at all it has not okay and I think you said it you know back in November but is your interpretation of this ordinance based upon your experience with projects that you've worked on in Jersey City and working with the MUA it is okay and if um let me ask if if this were uh or who would who would tell you uh that this is not a minor and a major uh develop and and instead it's a major development the city professionals um mostly the uh jcmua and and part of the process of getting permitting is to go through the jcmua uh for for the permitting with with their their uh um their office correct correct okay and what what would happen if if if they determine that this was a major and not a minor after their further reveal um so the the main difference um is that it would introduce a underground detention system um below the building um so coupled with the the green roof um on top of the building it would take that clean run off and detain it underground and then pipe it um to the um combined sewer uh in the street right and and could that be done at this uh property it could okay and if there was a determination uh by the planning board that it was minor or or major would that uh bind the jco MUA no okay so so in in essence the the ultimate determination is whether it's a minor or major development will be made by by the the JC muua notwithstanding your opinion or or Mr Go's opinion correct correct okay that's that's all I have Miss AIS do you want to cross- examine yes I do thank thank you I have a couple of follow-up questions um so was the storm water management plan that was part of your report was it submitted to the jcmua yes all all of the the documents um The Sign Sealed engineering drawings and Report were provided to the city and and the professionals and did you receive any written findings from the jcmua we have not yet received a a a review memo uh I've stated for the record that we would comply with um with any comments that we get from them okay and I um actually like to um ask ask you if you're familiar with this part of the storm water Control Ordinance which I'm going to read into the record um it's [Music] 347 section [Music] authorized body or official of the city of Jersey City has issued re written findings based on a technical review by a legally authorized and qualified employee agent or official of the city of Jersey City that such development complies with the requirements of this ordinance are you familiar with that language in the ordinance I am and are you aware that storm water uh compliance is considered a checklist item on the on the application checklist yes okay and so so nobody's issued written findings we have an an engineering Memo from Lewan Wang that covers the site improvements um grading um and storm water typically the jcmua comment letter um goes into more depth on the what they would like to see for Connect actions in the street um I will note that there are some discrepancies between the ldo um that you cited and the rules and procedures um for JC the plans is submitted comply with the ordinance um however we expect um you certain changes um as part of the coordination with the MUA including um removing um any recharge as part of the parking lot which is um from our our vast experience in Georgia city the JC is adamantly opposed to any kind of um infiltration into the ground so it is is written into the um the storware Control Ordinance we we include it for the project um know we we note uh that it satisfies the the volume requirement as a minor development um however again in our experience we expect that the J samua will request that it be removed this as part of the design okay so the so the design we change you're saying we are we are complying with the with the ordinance that that is written I another night we can get into uh ironing out some of the language in the the ordinance um I I will tell you that you know that the jcmua has um different um engineering opinions on uh what's required and so we are complying with the rules um but I would the uh they they will determine um you know whether this is minor development or major development again in my experience um this meets the the criteria for minor development and uh the you know the comments that we would get from them um will be will be limited nature so so you're saying that the jcmua doesn't the they're not trying to force applicants to comply with this ordinance the way it's written to go back to a comments that Mr Gold made there are uh departures from the storware control ORS that you read and what the state requirements are um Jersey the vast majority of Jersey City is exempt from any requirements for groundwater recharge because it is in the uh Metropolitan planning region uh that um is sort of the the view of the JC way as well that um for reasons cited by your professional that uh introducing water to the ground is unwise in in most areas of the city right so so you had said there's a possibility a detention system could be constructed underneath the building the the hypothetical is that in the unlikely event that uh the J way says no you we do not agree this is not a a minor development the the really only impact to the project would be that uh introducing a u detention Basin under the the building okay so we don't know yet whether um the jcmua considers this to be a minor or a major development under the storm water Control Ordinance we we cannot say definitively um but again our our vast experience in Jersey City and projects of the size that this qualifies as enir development if if we received the written findings that are required under our storm water Control Ordinance would we then know whether the jcmua considers this to be minor or major development again I I think this is really just a different difference of interpretation of that one uh section of uh the code for regulated impervious coverage uh I have my interpretation that the building itself does not qualify that the the work in the public right of way does not um count towards that that threshold your professional has a difference of opinion you we can um you what what council said is that if uh it it J Sam W uh disagrees with us that we will simply you know revise the design to incorporate a uh an underground detention okay and then would that alter I mean would would you then have to excavate more bedrock at at at that point if you were building an underwater an underground detention Basin potentially okay so that would alter the cut and fill plan that was submitted to this board again that if that unlikely event uh played out okay okay thank you okay I have nothing further of uh Brian okay uh we're gonna take a break for Mike everybody he's been typing away for a long time now we appreciate you Mike all right um it could be can I question is are you represented by Miss aana are you a member of RNA um I am a member of RNA but I also live down the block and I have standing and I'm a taxpayer sure obviously um no actually you could give your question question to miss hajian she's speaking on behalf of RNA and we're going to take that break though but you can come back up the question all right lateness of the hour and the stopping at 10 o'clock so good evening everybody uh the petitioner consents to this case being carried to the next planning board meeting okay thank you councel thank you sir so we're carry that to a date certain we don't need a motion right no no we don't need a motion uh date certain February 6th Mr asadorian and Mr Pino this is the Liberty Harbor North Redevelopment plan review and discussion of the amendment uh obviously you just heard my little speech Mr asadorian your appearance please good evening Gregory asadorian from The Dakotas Law Firm on behalf of Liberty Harbor North Partners LLC Mr Paulino of janova burns on behalf of lhn owners urban renewal and lhn 2 and gentlemen you both consent to the matter being carried to the February 6 date yes yes sure thank you gentlemen thank you thank you we appreciate it have a good evening you too case p23 d99 17-23 parine Mr lean good evening Commissioners Tom lean of Connell Foley here on behalf of the applicant uh we also consent to uh carrying the application with preservation of notice until February 6 thank you Mr thank you case p23 075 319 to 321 4th Street Mr Higgins yes uh good evening the good evening the applicant consents to carrying this uh we just request preservation of notice thank you Council very good February 6 Council thej on I've got a paper [Laughter] copy I'm sorry the case it was item it was item 17 23- 39 ah p 23-3 9 746 Grand Street good evening Kelly Cary from pman wer Hayden for the applicant we agree to uh journ to the February 6th date if that's acceptable absolutely and that's with preservation of notice thank you thank you Council thank you Council covered so the only matter uh 23 didn't carry right do we still have Mr lean did he run out the door no Mr no 23 uh Mr lean did run out the door ready to go find them I don't know we we didn't get to we didn't talk about 23 that wasn't Carri let me let me go see if he's in okay if we could which one is uh which one is Mr yeah I received communication from Veronica chimel um several days ago mentioning uh their intent to carry 239 259 Co Street oh okay oh great okay so case p2023 d74 uh site plan Amendment for 239 to 259 Cole Street is carried to a date certain February 6 with preservation of notice and Mr oconnell you're going to try to stick around a little bit to see if we can get to you at 319 5th Street okay thank you Council Miss hajis floor is yours thank you um Mr leusin we just had a couple of more questions for you thank you um so um do you know when our storm water control or when Jersey City storm water Control Ordinance was adopted the you're talking about the last revised date uh initially I would say uh there's a version from like 2020 around that era um which is what you know most of our applications are following okay and and when was the last revised dat no I'm saying that's uh it was last like you about 3 four years ago okay all righty and then and when you prepared the engineer report on this application when did you first prepare it I mean there's a a date on the the report so is it is it July 2022 yes okay so so you prepared this report after Jersey City storm water Control Ordinance was adopted correct it reflects the um the current Wars okay and did your report contain any analysis of compliance with the storm water Control Ordinance yes it it uh describes uh how we've classified it that is not subject to njd um definitions for major development um it's not qualify as a major development for the Jersey City Storer Control Ordinance however um did meet the um 5,000 ft threshold to be considered a minor development and then walks through the calculations for recharge based on the city's requirement okay but um did you break out site disturbance um into the the categories that we are expert discuss imperious coverage motor vehicle coverage total total disturbance the the area that was used to compute the volume of storage is based on the Sor Control Ordinance that the city has um and it's strictly um you know the that regulated area the total site disturbance is a separate matter again I provide testimony explaining why I feel that it's um appropriate to call as some iron development okay okay I don't I don't have anything further for for you Mr Harrington anything no okay thank you okay I'd like to call our our um fact witness K Weissman okay um oh we yeah truth I do please sure it's k r n last name Weissman we I SS M thanks uh just for the board's edification uh Mr wisman is testifying as a fact witness he's not we're not qualifying you as an expert tonight definitely not always good to see you though about computers maybe okay um Mr Weissman did have a he had a couple of exhibits I showed them to Mr Harrington on the break they were also emailed to uh theie do planner before the last hearing November 28th um and no Chuck tuck did you want to confirm Mr Harrington did you want to confirm that you don't have a problem with these I reviewed them so we have we have paper copies um I can also pull them up on the screen if the board uh talk about what they are first before we see them sure um so the first exhibit is basically like a slideshow that just captures the observations of the Riverview neighborhood association development committee as they've reviewed the plans um you know and the various iterations of the plans of you know over the past year or so um but obviously you know what plan is in front of this board tonight yes yeah okay we're speaking so we're not we're not rehashing old plans or this is strictly no no no not at all and then I just I don't want to muddy the board's view with any you know plan from three years ago five years ago okay no it's it's a believe me it's just like a few I just I have to ask these questions before we see anything I understand yes it's a few quick observations and then um this and the the it's a kind of a little slideshow and then the second one is a it's a it's a map showing an old historic map showing Ogden and um some photographs of the back one of the backyards on Ogden that experienced a landslide and and um Mr I think Mr Harrington's already even heard heard exactly what Kern's gonna say at another hearings but just just so we're not we're we're obviously not re litigating that's right what happened at the zoning board already that's not this board's purview we're not allowed to do that no we are we we are not it's it's just a PL it's a plan review and the sort of discussion of this Landslide um as it as it pertains to the safety of construction on uh close you know within the Palisade protection overlay District okay and obviously Mr Weissman any pictures if you could identify the address they were taken from their proximity to the site everything is and I personally took them okay everything is helpful y absolutely so sorry Matt but I'm gonna plug my computer in again let's let Matt do it yeah it doesn't it doesn't like me it doesn't want to show my my exhibits yeah I'll be brief no problem why start now right same damn problems screen I have I'm did you plug in the HDMI cable no problem the system is not reading your computer as being logged in or in the middle of something it's a hard stop excuse me the HDMI isn't being read is it plugged in nope it is not good call tou I think I should announce I think I should announce it now and then it's not a surprise we now see what you are [Music] sharing okay yep and um Kar before you start I I do need to miss hajis Mr Harrington I do need to advise everyone in the room we don't open new applications after 10 o'cl we're putting a hard stop at 10:30 tonight okay there's what time is it now it's 10:00 it's 9:48 okay okay so if we're in the middle of public comment 10:30 hits I apologize we need to move on we have other items at the end you know in-house items that need to get done before close a business tonight understood so it's I can't believe I'm saying this but the we're a hard stop on this one at 10:30 okay so and it's fascinating I love it I love it all right I'm I'll move through um okay so so I won't spend a lot of time on this just just shows all the different plans that were submitted that the the committee so the Riverview neighbors Association has um you know development committee I'm the chair of that committee uh we have a group you know that that is on that committee that's been reviewing these plans from the beginning um just showing that you know it's there's been a lot of revisions um I'm going to focus on the current what's before you in your current set so that's what I'm going to focus on these slides um so uh failures to address uh Department infrastructure site plan review comments going to go through those real quick um so the dangerous crosswalk obviously there was a new thing loaded today uh that took away this comment but the point is that crosswalk and you know the original uh request for that to be moved 30 feet away for safety uh we have seen that on other projects um I have probably reviewed with the committee probably over a hundred different projects in the neighborhood I have seen that as a very common thing they also don't like um things near stop signs stop signs pedestrian traffic keep it away from the driveways makes sense um this doesn't appreciably change that this is only four 4 feet away and they're actually combining it with another uh driveway so I would say still still dangerous I'm not going to cover this don't worry about it it's just showing that there's two different uh plans there's one in a architectural diagram but the actual engineering plan set still has the old design um failure to address inadequate Ming P Paving the uh limits of the so this is direct comment from um from the engineering says the U the millon paving should be extended 20 fet Southwest of the sewer manhole being connected to if you look on the right the revised Set uh show shows that not happening yet so that hasn't been addressed uh the Silt Fence location um they also uh wanted that extended to the or you relocated actually along the property line uh and the latest set of plans that was not addressed uh traffic traffic study everyone loves traffic right um the uh the study actually contradicts itself um it basically said p on page four which I highlighted uh it basically says that the U there's TW you know indicates both 12 units and 14 units in different places um and it appears that the uh the actual traffic uh analysis in terms of uh trip generation was based on 12 units and and this is where I'm talking about that so um you're you know it does it does it just does matter accuracy matters right we want to be we want to make sure we're not having errors and omissions in our in our and the plans that are submitted by applicants so basically not correcting that I'm not sure why that wasn't corrected um it was pointed out this was submitted again you know uh with the first hearing that we did a month ago um so you know it's based on 12 years is not 14 highlighting that uh just a historic image what it used to look like there just speaks to some of the disturbance that happened on that site if we could if we could can we get an exact location on that picture oh sure within reason obviously oh absolutely so so this is actually leading right up to the 152 site yeah yeah no no I appreciate you saying that actually so what happened was there was the the rail the elevated on the left that you're saying and then there was a v that would carry up horses and Buggies and stuff like that and this actually leads right into that site so when we talk about some disturbance on the site and why you know especially potentially you know could have issues there or something is it's because the site's been Disturbed so we want the policy of protection overlay which RNA was one of the driving forces behind it was trying to protect the entire palate especially sites that have been you know disturb you know from any further uh damage R so as I'm looking at that the the structure that the tracks lead up to yeah that's on the east side of Ogden or the west side of Ogden that that's on the uh that's on the west side of Ogden that supro building you know supr so that's where it would go in and then it would go B um okay yeah this was just some good historical context I thought it was interesting um not uh that is just a that was a photo of the um there's a new utility pole that's right where the the the uh driveway entrances U proposed and and for obviously I know where that is the rest of the board can you just describe the location for everybody absolutely so so that that's where Ferry Street uh uh comes in and it basically lands right there so that's if you can see Wood Street Ferry and Ogden no that's wood right there I'm sorry I'm sorry sorry about that yeah wood wood and and Ogden so what happens is you basically have uh that crosswalk that was what was represented on the plan this is right south of that so this so that pole is basically right where the uh plan would I did see a comment in the in you know that that was that have to be relocated okay so we can pull up the other one how do I do that here record okay M ha gianis we're going to Mark the slides as 02 I have it as 11 slides okay thank you you said that that had been submitted prior to prior to November 28th and we will need a uh digital copy of 01 as well can you pull that back and Matt um in the event we don't reach a decision tonight and we end up carrying this can we get all these exhibits up on the portal can you minimize I will request them and try to get them up thank you sorry having a little technical I don't know why I do here here just make that full size yeah there perfect sorry guys we can see you good yes okay great um so this is a historical um there was a report uh called Washington Village um this was pulled um basically Historical Society Hudson Hudson City Historical Society uh they basically showed these Maps Maps can you try to speak to that like oh I'm sorry my my apologies so this this is they they do some historical Maps this is one of their uh studies that they did about the history of the neighborhood Hudson City so all I'm doing here is just showing you that Mountain Road used to go all the way through behind Ogden so if uh obviously people in the Heights kind of know this but what happened was Mountain Road as I've highlighted used to go all the way um down and you used to actually be able to drive all the way through and then connect to the Mountain Road to go down um so that's that's how that was historically it was always designed like that that's obviously right on that you know edge of the cliff there and what are those cross streets I'm sorry M was that's Griffith okay yep and then that goes down to Franklin okay let's just uh mark this as 03 it's a four is this what how many pages is this 154 what am I looking out here I have I have four pages oh screen 15 okay yes four pages side of screen Griffith is is as I'm looking at it's on the right and then Franklin's on the left Franklin's on the left yeah yeah as I'm looking at it yeah so Mr wisman where did this map come from and do we have a so so I Circ date so I included the uh you know the link to it in the URL so is the Washington Village uh uh you know report and that was basically by the Hudson Hudson City historical society and this was published on the internet in 2014 and do you have any idea when this map is from any 1910 1920 1860 any idea so so I mean no I I don't know the exact date of this this map but I I I know that road was uh driven even in the 80s people used to drive down that road based can think was that that went into the 90s didn't it uh yeah I'm not sure the exact date it was it was it was definitely I I know people on Ogden used to drive down that in the 80s so but yeah I'm sorry I can't give you exact data of what this the map's from are we good to move on or yes sure go ahead so this shows uh behind 242 Ogden um you asked me to give a specific so that's between Griffith and Franklin so this actually represents where that road used to be you see a car it's actually nice to car park there for me um so I can show you that they were driving uh they used to be able to just drive right through right so what happened was um um apparently sometime in the 80s there was a uh or early 90s there was a collapse there took about um so I went out there I took this picture I also kind of measured um from the existing Road and and all this in this indented fening fencing that was put in by Jersey City uh it's about 35 ft of roadway that was washed away uh with that collapse um you know that's all you know if you look at it and you look over and you see you see Rock there on either side this whole portion just collapsed out um so just showing you this another image of that uh before we move on that's looking what North yeah that's looking North sir Y and that's from so so I'm behind 242 Ogden and I'm looking North uh so I'm looking toward Griffith okay yeah that makes sense so so yeah so I'm basically running the edge there and but you're not you're not that doesn't go all the way through to Franklin correct well good Segway I want to show you yeah yeah yeah so so what happens is you can see I backed up a little bit just to just to show you that there's it then where the collapse happened and then it widens back out again right so that that collapse kind of took that road with it um and then I'll show you what happens when you look South now you get a block right because they can't obviously allow anyone to go through there anymore um so then it was just blocked off so so basically that historic you know that that that be in in this site is is you know about a th000 feet away from uh the you know proposed site I'm only only representing this to show that collapses like this can happen they can happen without warning and they can happen on previously constructed you know like this this was a Jersey City Road you know this was you know this was an official Road Jersey City that then coll suffered a catastrophic collapse um it is important to understand that part of when the peep pod was um put in place by you know by on the advocacy of the RNA we did ask for a buffer right because we wanted to make sure that development new development wasn't put right up against the cliff it's very important so from a public safety standpoint it's really important that um you know so I'm not even talking zone I'm just saying Public Safety really want to keep this back from the cliff because we've seen catastrophic collapses like this and I think that'll conclude my testimony Mr Harrington do you want to cross-examine anything just point that there's been changes oh sorry uh you referenced about the changes to the plans uh over the years um and we can agree right it's common that that changes are made after meeting with your group uh what you know good better and different uh that that's common I would say that this CH this has gone to a significantly more changes than I've seen in some other plans but yes after meeting with our group it is common for for plans to change okay and are you referenced the milling and Paving uh are are you aware that those are review agent comments that are typically not typically but that that would be addressed after after uh any approval and during construction I'll have to take your word for it okay and the traffic study uh there are a few typos there but uh I don't know if you have the the traffic study with you but I can represent to you that uh in the introduction it refers to 14 dwelling units and 14 cars and in the the traffic uh table analysis trip generation summary that also refers to 14 units and 14 cars or do you recollect that uh I do but in the summary they also reference 12 cars and and I know you're saying it's a typo but yeah that's what it says okay and then uh 240 Ogden Avenue again you said that's that's about a th square feet away from the subject property that's correct okay um that's all okay thank you thanks thank you Mr wisman thank you okay that a th000 square feet 1,00 milon got turn the mic on commissioner Yeah Eddie could you say that into the mic th000 feet away go that yeah it was agreeing that it was a th000 feet away from the site the proposed site where the application is that's a good clarification I'm sorry I didn't ask the board does anybody have anything for Kar no no I I jumped in it's okay I'm sorry it's all right let it out all right thank you appreciate it okay then we have one more quick witness Roger Heyman who's on the board of Riverview neighborhood association as distinct from its development committee any testimony give tonight is going to be the truth the whole truth wel to the truth I do can you spell your name please uh heightman is he T M Ann and uh just for the board once again Mr Heyman is uh testifying as a fact witness we're not qualifying him as an expert I apologize that's just a legal term we use but uh just this go ahead Miss Jones yeah um yeah Mr hman what what what would you like to say to the board well I have a brief statement I'd like to read on behalf of RNA um good evening I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the Riverview neighborhood association I'm the treasurer and since I pay the bills I know the substantial cost of continuing this fight against the proposed 152 Ogden project our members and residents thankfully have spoken because they've donated their own personal funds to continue to finance this opposition I'm also in Ogden Avenue Cliffside resident for the past 35 years personally I can testify that I live about 50 feet away from the location which is about th000 ft North that washed away back in the 1980s it's worth noting that the city never attempted to repair or restore the wash out and erected a guard rail instead around that Cliff section which is to this day remains dangerous and unstable this is why we oppose the construction at the edge of the Palisades which we feel is contrary to the Palisades protection overlay ordinance and potentially a risky construction the proposed building is out of character and scale with other buildings in the neighborhood at over 85 ft Pullman's Hall currently the tallest Residential Building is only 50 ft the proposed building will block light air and view corridors to neighboring buildings finally we're concerned about the safety of the driveway um and the um Ogden Avenue crosswalk which I understand has been partially mitigated here but we're concerned that will trucks and emergency vehicles be able to turn onto wood place we don't know we also don't know the purpose of narrowing Ogden Avenue we hope that the planning board will understand how opposed most residents are to the project for these good reasons and they uphold the palisad protection ordinance and preserve the character of our neighborhood by voting no on this application thank you thank you okay I think that concludes and Mr Harrington do you have any cross examination uh no I do not okay thank you okay that that concludes our presentation thank you okay for and we'll allow you a closing statement after Mr Harrington's of course sure Mr Harington she would go first she would go first Miss haanas I apologize we'll offer you a closing statement first are there any other public just procedurally well so we do have to open it to the public Miss Anis is going to give a closing before Mr Harrington so chairman if you would like to open to the public then let Miss haanas give her closing and then we'll hear from Mr Harrington uh that's the proper order to do it in okay I think that we need to caution everybody obviously M haanes represents the association we just heard from uh your representative who voiced his concerns on behalf of the association so I see a large number of people in the public I suspect that they are members of uh your organization Miss haana so they do not all get the opportunity to come up and repeat uh their position which I suspect is the position that you and your representative have put forth here tonight I don't have a membership roster so I'm not sure who's I don't know from RNA and who's not well obviously will the ask that question on oath we have the uh chairman and the treasurer here they don't know who's on their committee or no I I don't want to put the onus on we'll ask we'll ask comes up from the public under oath and okay we brought this up with other groups before and uh to be consistent when we pick it up with other groups before and the way we handled it back then was I asked everybody that came up to the microphone or it was online I asked everybody online remember online when we were online remember way back okay so at this point let's open it up for public comment if anybody's here from the public that wants to comment yes my name is veto bernetti I live in we do sorry we need to swear you in and we're going to give you three minutes and if you could speak slowly so Mike can get everything you say on record truth truth yes I do us your add veto bernetti Cedar Avenue hackin saac New Jersey I'm so Mr bernetti obviously you're not I am you don't live in the Heights or you live in the Heights are you previously I lived on Ogden Avenue probably about a th000 feet from the sink Cole that Roger discussed I'm a one of the founders of RNA from 1983 I was instrumental in the uh development with uh RNA for the peep pod worked with Robert CER who I'm sure you all aware of to make sure that that was passed and put into the ordinance okay so so I have history I would like to make my statement sure are you a current member of the RNA or not I am a what do they what do they call Nancy Pelosi a member Meritus okay perfect go ahead then okay I have Rewritten my statement but I wanted to make some quick comments as to the architect um what his testimony was he never really said whether they adhered to 34562 of the residential uh design standard and I'm not going to read it I don't have the time but it does include the word sh shall it's not a well I think we will apply that standard it's a shall apply that standard the only thing he said was that he patronizingly stated that he tried to match the color tone of the two surrounding buildings on either side of the project he mentioned multiple times that this is a great Mass development it's going to have an important and a great impact and it's Unique in the neighborhood yes it's an R3 Zone but it's a spot Zone if the rest of the neighborhood is looked at it's mainly R1 I think now meaning one and two family housing so this is definitely going to be out of uh design and it's inappropriate pursuing to 34562 um the closest is pull Hall which was built in the 1800s and that's literally only 45 uh about well it's it's double a size this new project uh the rebuttable the rebuttal by the engineer when it was asked by the uh developers attorney he did not contest any of the facts of our engineer uh and our expert witness all he admitted was that there is no decision they're waiting for a decision from the Jersey City mua so for anyone to be able to say it's a major and minor is really irrelevant because there hasn't been a decision by the city and therefore I think with all due respect a decision by the planning board at this point is premature because we don't know whether there is a decision that you can base your interpretation of the testimony and the plans on also so I'm an attorney while I recently retired but I I want to say something before it may be mentioned by the developers attorney the expert did not give a net opinion a net opinion is based purely on opinion with no basis and no fact this expert rna's expert reviewed the reports looked at the drawings based his interpretation of the Jersey City Zoning specifically the groundwater the PE pod which is an official part of the statute and also brought into the de into this uh discussion that there is a state NJ uh D standards that we have to look at the court is aware of I'm not going to bring into the mess of it but there's a perogative RIT appeal in the superior court of the board of adjustment thank you sir that is your time that's I apologize that's your time anybody else from public if you'd like to comment please come on up if not I'll wait till someone gives me back my time go ahead I'm sorry you have three minutes sry you can only testify once shoved it over to me and I would but my name truth truth truth yes Caroline cats mount my home address is 7 4 Sherman Place Jersey city good evening we have three minutes for you yes I'll be even quicker I um I've lived in Jersey City since the early 90s and one of the the great Joys that I've had here is working with different neighborhood associations I'm with the Persian field neighborhood association association and we work closely with with Riverview and a few of us are here tonight because we share the concerns that have been presented to you by Riverview we share their their dedication to to keep our community safe from from whether you know from all kinds of of changes that have come here whether it's from developers or or even now with with something much more serious the the what might happen with another you know um excuse me with another fall or you know with another um destruction of part of the community by by having houses that are not appropriate and we've seen developers come in when we've had meetings where they've wanted to destroy group they've wanted to destroy homes that have been in this city for a long time and homes that are livable for people who are not wealthy who are not going to buy Condominiums but who add a great deal to our city and to our communities and I'm just here because I've wanted to support the great work that Riverview is doing and to hope that you'll recognize the importance of the reasons that they've come to you to support to to support their work and and to deny the application from the organization over here thank you thank you we appreciate it okay anybody else please come on up uh Kate Donnelly 206 Ogden Avenue truth yes I I I am on RNA she's also a citizen of Jersey City exactly and so I would if you're not going to let me enter something into the record then I would like to object to that okay Miss Donnelly obviously you are a member of the RNA yes just for the record we have to say it you're also a member of the zoning board that I was and I resigned but you did vote on this case earlier yes I did I just I just want to get it out in the open I'm not absolutely deciding anything right now I just want to get it out in the open that's all yep absolutely for the member on the zoning board and that that uh application was before sotimy iapo aity Z and having voted on the matter and having voted on the matter and then resigned did she give but miss did you give your question to the lawyer earlier when we requested that you yes I did you did so now you're going to get back up and repeat again but we don't allow we don't allow nobody to talk twice you know what I'm not helping the matter so um but I do object thank you thank you m Tomley any testimon tonight me the truth the whole truth nothing TR I do sure my name is Dan blidner d b l d NE R my address is 140 Ogden AV uh Jersey City New Jersey right in the Heights right next door to this planned construction and Mr glider before you start we have three minutes for you but are you a member of the RNA I am not a member of the RNA okay go ahead sir um I'm big fans of their work and the community uh I'm not a member I want to thank the board for your uh tireless efforts and all your hard work this is not easy it's my first uh meeting like this so come back anytime we'll see uh but I have something to read I I've lived there for 12 years I lived there with my girlfriend who's lived there for eight years we've seen the community Thrive and grow around us and we don't feel that this is development is in keeping with our community and with the neighborhood uh so with that I want to Echo the concerns and challenges that have been raised thus far by my uh neighbors and community members I want to reiterate what many others have mentioned the number one concern here really is around safety uh this project does not seem to be a safe one it seems to be unprecedented and uh based on the planning that I've seen uh fairly incomplete in terms of its threshold for the safety concerns of the neighborhood uh I think that we need to be concerned about this instability and any unforeseen challenges that could arise that could cause grave injury to myself my neighbors my community uh this is a great Community we have number of members out today I don't know if the board were calls but upon the uh online version of these meetings we had well over a 100 people in attendance for this this matter is something that the community does take very seriously and we uh would ask the board to please deny this application as we do not think it is in keeping with the aesthetic the feel and the community that we have worked so hard over the past decade to create that's that's all I have thank you appreciate your time thank you guys okay anybody else please come on up M SC this up it's nice to actually see people speaking in front of us again this is great love good evening yeah I do Jeffrey with the J budney bu Ney 140 Ogden Avenue I'm across the hallway from Dan and Mr budney are you a member of RNA I am not okay thank you sir so again thank you for the time uh I'm here tonight on behalf of myself uh my wife my 5-year-old son and my one-year-old daughter uh who live at the address at 140 Ogden um I I'll say first uh from reviewing all the information that's been presented over a number of meetings I don't find that this development is compatible with the neighborhood uh based on planning rules uh the site may be zoned R three uh but the Residential Properties directly adjacent to where the actual building will be constructed are not R3 zoned uh the property zoning seems to be more compatible with a commercial site down the cliff to the east which is an industrial recycling facility uh which certainly wouldn't be appropriate if that was placed on Ogden Avenue um so why should this one property be the only eight store building on Ogden Avenue it just does not seem compatible with the neighborhood um I'll also Echo uh all the safety concerns that have been brought up uh through the meetings um so I don't need to repeat all that but I will add just you know an observation of being someone who lives right there who lives right adjacent to the property uh my parking space is right on the property line at the very edge of the uh uh of the cliff looking down into Hoboken there's a very large tree that's on the edge of that property it's not rec you know it's not represented on any of the diagrams that focus more on the ground right but there's a very large tree that's right at the edge of where they want to build that I can't imagine that that tree is still going to be there after the development and what does that do to the concerns of uh you know the stability of the ground whether or not that soil is going to give way and then what that's going to do uh you know to where I live directly opposite where that uh where all that construction and all that disturbance uh of the ground is going to happen thank you thank you we appreciate it tonight the whole truth nothing but the truth Monique Herrera yeah it like I'm trying to okay all right there we go uh Monique Herrera h r r e r a and I live at 118 Ogden Avenue Mr Herrera good evening are you member of RNA no I'm not okay thank you I appreciate it okay go ahead we have three minutes for you okay um I live on Ogden Avenue now for 20 years years and I live there with my husband and two children um my oldest is visually impaired and my concern is of safety um he is uh 15 and you know is learning to cross the streets uh to be an independent and productive member of of the community um he's learning how to get to the light rail um and we would have to pass this property on our weight there so my concern is that you're talking about two uh driveway next to each other that he has to navigate in order to you know let's say get to the light rail um and the way that I'm visualizing it is basically um you you know you're you're having he's going to have to cross uh sidewalks uh with no traffic control as if it as he's Crossing uh a two-way street that's how I'm visualizing it you know you have two parking lots Side by side that he has to you know cross where he isn't really um able to even see you know uh let's say the car that's closest to his right but now he also has to figure out the car that's coming on the other side of the driveway so that's my concern in terms of safety um let's see what else um I I don't I don't even I don't feel that that building belongs in that area it it just it's going to stand out it's not you know it it's not going to complement it um so it it doesn't be it doesn't belong there and also I'm concerned about my property um I know in the years that we've been living there I've SE plus some dirt in the back um you know whether it's rain or snow or whatever is you know washing away some of that uh you know I know that I've seen it and I know that you know it's it's been happening throughout the year so not sure what you know the impact of having this type of construction um is going to have on my property also thank you okay thank you we appreciate your time yes I do oh perfect um yep my name is Courtney Walker c r t NE y last name Walker um I'm a resident of 310 palis daav Jersey City um it's right around the corner from 152 Ogden so at the intersection of Ravine and palis have and wood place as well okay so before you start your testimony are you a member of RNA no okay thank you you have three minutes m i um just want to say I agree with prior statements made by members of the public regarding safety concerns in neighborhood fit um I'd also like to add some additional concerns around Traffic Safety um my building being right by the traffic light on Palisade a would place and Ravine there um that particular intersection is rather busy um and I've seen many drivers run a red light there almost on a daily basis um the intersection is also of a rather tricky nature um due to the fact that Ravine and Wood Place intersect palis AV at slightly different points and it doesn't create your traditional four corner crosswalk walk um I have concerns with the proposed project on Ogden since Ogden is a rather narrow road and a one-way Street nature Woodway place is oneway Street and Ferry is also oneway going into Ogden um so the Narrow Street the large project this is going to push a lot of traffic onto Palisade potentially creating confusion for drivers um and with the proximity to the rather tricky intersection of palis avenwood place I would like the council to uh deny the application as is as I don't believe that it's conforming to Traffic Safety um as well as the other testimony people have provided thank you okay thank you we appreciate it truuth yes address pleas uh Jennifer seagull s e g and your address Miss seagull 310 pal da okay and are you a member of RNA no I'm not okay okay thank you we have three minutes for Youk you uh so as I said I live at 310 Palisade AV it's right around the corner from 1502 Ogden uh I agree with the prior statements made by members uh of the public regarding safety concerns and neighborhood fit the proposed building is wildly out of character with the current neighborhood as is it creates a dangerous precedent for our neighborhood both in terms of the large build the eight um floor um building and being so close to the cliff without that retaining also ask Council to please deny this application as his thank you okay thank you yes Alicia a l i c i a Rogers r o d g RS I love at 11 Jefferson a and Miss Rogers before you start you are a member of RNA or not no okay and uh just for every everyone's noticed it's 10:28 currently we do have a hard stop at 10:30 tonight we still have closing statements from both attorneys so I don't see a decision being made tonight but I just want to put it out there okay you have three minutes ma'am well I don't live in Ogden I walk past this property daily I live a quarter mile away just off Palisades where there's a proposal for a 10-story building I know that a building of this height will set a precedent for future builds in our neighborhood slide number one of the architect's deck for this property on Ogden does not reflect what the actual Street and the buildings on the adjacent Lots look like it is being proposed as if it's in a well spaced industrial area in reality this neighborhood has small one to three story homes the buildings on either side while anomalies for the neighborhood in Mass there are still only about half the sight of the half the height of the proposed build this building will Tower over and disrupt community life in this neighborhood as we know it in regards to construction sunlight traffic and parking I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the construction phas phase where are the trucks and flat beds going to park already the weekly Coca-Cola truck delivering delivering to the assisting assisted living bilding down the street creates a giant morning traffic jam as a resident of the heights I ask the board and the city to really consider the impact of this project to the larger Heights Community thank youu yes I do my name is Sophia 1 W and I live at 25 Christopher Columbus Avenue dang Jersey City I'm testifying I'm not the member of the RNA I don't live in the area okay so I think there is a can I can I speak now okay so thank you the board and it's really an honor here to be here at the planning board meeting and I really want to point out one perspective which I think hasn't been brought up yet which is the future residents of this proposed building so my partner and I have moved into downtown JY City and we're looking to move um as our leads are coming up in six months for Renewal and the heist is a place that we're really considering to live and right now here in today about the proposed project especially seeing the architecture plan we're really worrying about if I hadn't been here hadn't been politically connected and engag with zoning board meeting that leading to this planning War meeting I would not have known the safety concerns that been posed today that is not shown in the architecture plan and probably will not even be shown in the future advertisements going out for renters or condominiums for potential home buyers so as a potential future resident for the area and a current resident of the Jersey City I really ask the board to consider whether or not this is a really good safy safe place for future residents to leave I haven't seen this perspective brought up and I think like it's very common that like future resident that haven't been in the area they probably don't know about it but I happen to be here and I want to bring this persp perspective out I'm really concerned of the safety and if for to be frank I probably would have chosen to live there if I have not heard of the meeting but given what had been discussed today I would never leave it this building if it's uh after it proposed construction because of the safety concerns thank you okay thank you we appreciate your time uh so obviously we're going to continue on with public comment at the next meeting Miss haanas you'll have a closing statement Mr Harrington you'll have a closing statement and uh we'll hear from planning staff so uh I'll entertain a motion to carry to a date s in February 6th Please Mr chair I'd like to excuse me Mr chair I'd like to make a motion to carry case p2023 d00 uh 40 to a date certain of February 6th second okay we have a motion made and seconded to carry can we have a roll call please Vice chair Dr Gonzalez hi commissioner gangan hi commissioner Torres I commissioner Cruz I chairman Lon I motion carries on a motion to carry to the next meeting okay um Council give me five minutes sir give me five minutes we'll talk outside other Council I'm sorry you're out other Council you're not the only one in the room still I thought he called you too okay so Council um where is it I I don't even know everybody could exit the room quietly the board does have other business to conduct thank you um where am I where am I SB I I called the wrong number by the way that's fine okay Council we're talking about case p2023 d004 is a site plan Amendment for 319 fth Street uh we can offer you a date certain February 6th um yes if we can't hear it tonight I'll be back on February 6th okay but thanks for the opportunity thank you Council and will preserve notice with that okay okay um I'll entertain memorialization of resolutions Please Mr chair I'd like to make a motion to memorialize the following resolutions I have three first resolution of the planning board of the city of Jersey City applicant is 650 Grove LLC for extension of final major s plan approval at 650 Grove Street Jersey City New Jersey block 6101 Lot number two case number p2023 d65 second resolution of the city of Jersey City planning board in the matter of can XA Group LLC for a conditional use class 5 cannabis micro retail establishment at 638 communa Avenue block 1 17905 lot 7 case number is p23 D 071 decided on uh November 14 2023 application for conditional use and the last resolution is the resolution of city of the planning board of City the C if Jersey City applicant G Grove Street Partners LLC for extension of final major site plan approval at 659 Grove Street Jersey City New Jersey block 62 Lot 8 case rep 2023 d66 second okay we have a motion and a second for memorialization could I have a roll call please by chair Dr Gonzalez I wow commissioner gangen I commissioner Cruz I commissioner Torres and chairman motion carries all in favor okay um I don't need to do this in executive session guys I just want to thank you yeah um but once again this is an open application if anyone anyone anyone anyone top down anybody approaches you to speak about anything on this application to no right to me all right I'm not asking you to sell them out but give them my number or coun my number or council's number and we'll stop that immediately anybody politically neighborhood whatever sir should shouldn't we have cops here we have security out do we Okay but yeah police off yeah motion to adjourn please motion to adjourn second okay good okay thank you guys what don't you want to go I got to go to the bathroom I go to the bathroom okay yeah true we say something no I'm just letting everybody know uh what's the C