##VIDEO ID:sl8vXNzeOrs## e good evening everyone the Zoning Board of adjustment meeting of August 28 20124 is now in session everyone please stand for a salute to the flag I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all notice of the meeting has been satisfied in accordance with chapter 231 pl1 1975 by advertising in the home News Tribune notifying The Sentinel Publishing Company The Star Ledger and also posting on the bulletin board and filing with the bur clerk roll call Mr here Mr here here here here the first case for tonight is 244 cnw Infinity of 980 iway 9 Mr Paige good evening Mr chairman board members um with regard to uh the applicant cnw Infinity LLC um at this time uh since we do not have a full board um we would request that the matter be uh carried and continued to next month's meeting and we certainly would been sent an extension for the board um for time to act on the application um as such you want to do it through the end of October that that's fine yeah absolutely okay motion do a motion Mr chairman I move that we uh carry this application over for one more month second roll call yes yes yes yes yes just uh just so I can announce it what's what's the date of the 25th so September 25th uh 2024 this matter will be heard here 7:30 pm no further notice is required thank you thank okay our next application is 246 Archer Capital LLC River Road Mr Paige if I can just swear on the professionals good evening again Mr chairman board members my name is Michael paig and I'm the attorney for the applicant Archer capital b c Michael if I can just swear in the professionals yes please raise your right hand swear tell the truth the hold truth and nothing but the truth so help you God good okay professionals are sworn go ahead board members this is an application for both both variants in uh major site plan approval to allow the applicant to to construct a single family residence on the property uh together with waivers and variances for site plan requirements lot area lot width um a small side uh setback and building coverage for the property located or known as vacant land uh block 16925 lot one on River Road for this application I'll be calling two witnesses uh initially to testify uh they are Mr Alex Patel who's a representative of the applicant and Mr Craig rahen Camp who's a professional planner and first I would like to call Mr Alex Patel you could raise your right hand you swear to tell the truth the whole truth of nothing but the truth so help you God I do sworn representative of the arch Capital yes and the applicant Archard capital LC owns the subject property yes Mr paig one second we're going to get you thank you sure first name is Alex A L E X last name is Patel P isn't Paul a t Mr Batel if you would please tell the board in your own words what are the that you're um requesting from the board sure so before we delve right into that I want to introduce myself to the board first and foremost thank you to Chairman green other board members that are here today I understand it is a long weekend it is the last weekend of a traditional summer so I do appreciate everyone that was able to come out tonight and um before we dive into what exactly the application is a little bit about myself so I'm looking I'm proposing a single family home on this property for myself this is for me to live there it's the traditional American Home three bedrooms it's uh 1,200 square ft relatively small 2 and a half stories and uh a garage my family story with middle sex County in this area dates back to 1968 when my grandfather immigrated here originally and he lived at London Terrace in parland New Jersey so that's how far back my family's history dates and now when I had to to seek a Township where I would start my family build a home live there I uh the opportunity for sville came up and it it's reminiscent of Our Roots to America so I said yes this is this is the place where I would like to to settle down and so ultimately I was fortunate enough to get this property and then we started the design development of the the single family home and I'm sure many of the board members recall uh we submitted the original plans about three four months ago and we received some feedback and rather than come here and have to go through the hearing process to obtain that feedback we understood that it was good and E economical in terms of expending town resources to process that go back to the design team and adjust accordingly so that when we do come here we can put forth our best foot as well as the best footprint for this site and so originally we had sidey variances we had lot coverage variances that neared close to 30% we heard from the board that they wished for us to eliminate the sidey variances which we did by restructuring the whole design of the home if you compare it to the original plants and then came time to reduce as much as we can the lot coverage for single family home we were like I said close to 30% we were able to reduce it down to 25% which still re IR Ires the port's blessing for 5% the reason for that is principally because of the garage certainly I'm sure that the to the burrow of sville wouldn't appreciate us just parking on the side street if we can design the home such a way where my family and I can occupy a garage then that would be helpful now when looking at placing a garage on the property traditionally in sville and in this neighborhood exactly the garages were placed in the rear why because the code says you can have 45% of building and accessory coverage and we're at 40% so we took that 5% and we applied it to the lot coverage which went from 20 to 25% because of that garage but that also gives it a modern look to what we're seeing in 2024 so that's the reason why we have that 5% uh lot coverage variance so that's what we're seeking from the board and and that's a brief overview of exactly how I uh chose sville and how we arrived to these plans that are now in front of you and the the details of those Flor plans for the proposed residents uh those are detailed um on the revised plans prepared by Tel civil engineering and boo Architects that is correct yes there by Tel civil engineering and bow architecture thank you Mr Patel I have no further questions for you thank you and if the board has any questions happy to answer anyone on the board have any questions where exactly is property on River Ro so it is in between a 91 River Road and 93 River Road what's your address going to be hopefully 90 uh or we're gonna have to flip a coin between 91 and a half or 92 and a half because uh we're right in the middle any other questions from the board okay thank you thank you thank you so much thank you Mr Patel next I would like to call Mr Cay rahen Camp professional planner right if you could raise your right hand Mr Fisher do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth nothing but the truth so help you God I do you are sworn thank you Mr rayan Camp would you please State your occupation for the board eight of these will hand out when you have the opportunity hand out might as well do that while I qualify um I'll keep it short unless you drag it out of the in the field for 43 years licensed in New Jersey for 29 license is currently valid qualified in over 100 hearings and trials in the state four other states three Federal districts spent eight years as the vice president of our chapter and I'll quit there we accept your credential thank you sir I was last time I was here was for kov nanian slope variances on some of their Lots this pre-co but I was before this once before thank you oh yeah I even had it here to remember to give to you and then forgot to give it to you Mr ran Camp have you had an opportunity to review all the application material submitted by the applicant I have and if you would please provide to the board the details of the application as they pertain to the planning aspects so I apologize I only had eight hand outs so couple will have to share my printer crapped out and I didn't have time to get new ink um yes um obviously the the starting point here is an undersized lot and the first thing I do as a planner is try and figure out why this undersized lot came into existence often it's because of a zoning change and it was subdivided when it was allowed and that's not the story here um so you'll see on the first sheet which is a 1940 aerial from a website called historic ariel.com this I'm sorry should probably mark this yes absolutely a packet of one two three four five six seven eight sheets that include a collection of Aerials and street view of the property s right interrupt all set did I pick the right letter A1 A1 is good okay um so referring to the first sheet of A1 um this is an aerial from 1940 um and you can see almost dead center is the intersection of Maine going left and right um and River going uh up and down north and south at that intersection there's an old historic settlement pre-war settlement that occurred at that corner um and you can see what is now the bar on the left hand side a single family home the narrower single family home that we'll be talking about that's our neighbor and then what looks like a small driveway roadway that is the the base of this lot and then what appears to have been a business back in the day don't know that for sure I wasn't here in 1940 but given the shape of the roof that's typically not a house that you would see the second sheet in A1 is simply your current GIS from the municipality so you can see how the lots have been carved out of this area to the current day um 361 the corner the uh the bar 89 is a single family home River Road is that narrow single family home the one that just says River Road with add a designation that's the lot that's before you this evening and then the 93 and 95 are newer lots and you'll see where they came from page three is a Google Earth aerial with the timeline squiggle back to April of 1995 um and what you see here is that pre-war Corner Village is still in place the business or whatever it was is now gone and you see the subdivision coming in from the left hand side um of larger single family houses being constructed the next one is December of 2002 same Source um now all of the homes have been built so sometime between 1995 and 2002 the single family homes the newer single family homes in this neighborhood got built um I can't tell you for sure that the two on River Road were built by the same Builder um they have a different Ro roof than the ones on the culdesac but they do match some of the of the build of the homes over on I forget the name of the street o over on Major Drive um so it may have been the same Builder but if not it came at that same era and then the last one is a Google Earth of today's date um with everything in place swimming pools and all um so you see the historic pattern coming from the intersection the three homes that we've seen on all the aals the the gap and the smile on our particular lot and then the two modern homes between us and the far corner on sville Boulevard so that's the street as it exists nothing on the opposite side directly from this lot that's currently vacant um I then included some street views the next sheet is a is a 95 and 93 River Road the two modern uh single family houses um two story or two and a half story um um structure of the modern variety the half story doesn't do anything uh in this particular era but you see two car garages in each of them um with off street parking the next sheet is 91 River Road this is the pre-war skinny house if you will that we're emulating in terms of um house width and and being comparable to uh but pre-war it didn't have a driveway I'm sorry it didn't have a garage um they're relying on a driveway in the front of the house and the last one is 89 River Road this is between the skinny house and the bar um this is an older home it steps back you see on the left hand side a window with shutters that sets back from the facade of the of of the main house uh so it's an L-shaped kind of house and what you see here is the driveway going back to the rear garage that was more common in the older buildings so what I hope to demonstrate by that series is that this lot wasn't created by the current landowner or any landowner in in its cycle it was the old roadway whatever that informal way that we saw in the 1940 areial and then subdivisions happened around it leaving this as an orphan it got cut off from being a road there's now a single family home at the end of what this road would have been um so it's basically orphaned by events that happened around it not something that somebody did to this particular lot um so that that addresses the lot area a lot withth um um variances it it exists we need to put it to a reasonable use and now the question is finding an appropriate scale of use to put on this individual lot we have a 25% building coverage uh uh proposal where 20% is uh permitted um and I would suggest to you that we already have a relatively small home home it's a 1200t home um including a onecar garage um if you were to reduce that by a fifth to go down to 20% you're taking off roughly 250 square feet you have a 950 foot home that's an extremely small single family house in as a modern home um I'm sure you can find some older homes of that size but it's certainly not the size of a single family home that people are building today um that's smaller than most of the tow houses that you would find um on the market today so I would suggest to you that that what's being proposed to you in terms of house size is about as small as you'd want to go from a from a house perspective um and that we're able to comply with the sidey setbacks essentially means that what we're doing is making the house a little bit deeper to pick up enough square footage to have that home um I would also point out that the the homeowner stole my thunder on this um in your code you could do a driveway to an accessory Garage in the rear that wouldn't count towards your building cover that would be an accessory structure it would count towards your your total impervious but it doesn't count in your building coverage we're basically taking that um exterior building from a historic building pattern and moving it into the building so it looks like the more modern houses to our right um by having a a garage and a and a driveway um and I would say to you on this street I think that's particularly important um I don't live here I've only been out there a couple of times but every time I've been out there that part that street is jammed with on street parking uh because of the bar on the corner that doesn't have a parking lot so I think it's appropriate for the homeowner to have the ability to park two cars in the garage and driveway um that would be their own and not have to fight all the time with the bar patrons for parking along the street so I think it serves an appropriate purpose for this house to be the size that it is include the garage within the building um and have the driveway um and lastly I would point out that the facade complies the with the sidey yard setbacks being moved to the point that they comply the height OB viously that the front of that building is the same if you were to hold this to 20% instead of 25% the only thing that happens is the building gets shorter something that nobody's going to perceive from the street so whether or not you grant that variance or not is completely irrelevant to the streetscape the way that the the street lives it's simply in how much of the rear yard gets AB is is able to be used as part of the home to get up to 1,200 square feet of living space which I think is an appropriate Target um so for those reasons I think the 25% uh variance for for building coverage is appropriate given the size of this lot and the ability to get to a dexon sized home and the issues that I just spoke to lastly there's a small sidey guard variance it's not along the entire sidey that's been remedied but there's a small bump out at the back end of a fireplace um it's it's a reasonable amenity to provide for a home um it doesn't have any kind of negative consequence to anyone uh there's still enough room for people to get by uh to get from the front front yard to the rear yard it's not an obstruction um so I think that's a reasonable uh variance for that very limited area of sidey yard Interruption and for those reasons I would urge you to approve the variances any questions from the board sorry what is a lot coverages on the other homes on that street I did not do that analysis let's see if we can figure it out from the aial well I would I don't have the math it's not something I anticipated but if you look at the Aerials the the first home behind the bar I'm looking at the Google Earth current aerial um is a very large home um it is a larger lot in terms of width um yeah I'm not going to guess at math just looking at the aial but I would suggest to you that this is going to be comparable it it's not going to be out of character with the overall pattern but I'm not going to guess it at number standing here I'd have to come back with that for you I I do have a question I I don't know whether you're going to answer it or whether the owner is going to answer it can you tell me when he when the owner purchased this lot you've anticipated my answer I don't know well I have to ask the owner this was about a year and come to the mic if you're going to talk so it was about a little over a year and I would say four or five months ago when that lot was acquired and then if I can answer the chairwoman's question as well regarding the size of the homes go ahead okay so um the the adjacent Lots one is 50 by 100 which is larger than ours and the other one is 75 by 100 which is still larger than hours so perhaps from an aerial view it would appear that the homes are of uh smaller footprint in that lot because of the size of the lot but our lot is 45 by 100 where we were proposing a 1200 square foot total between all the stories home but you anticipated building a home of this size knowing that you were buying a small Lodge I I was anticipating uh a larger size actually when we submitted it but um we wanted to get the feedback from the town to see what is burough willing to see and so when we Reed that feedback we adjusted it to to a smaller size so I was hoping for relief from the board with that regard because again simply when you look at it it comes down to that garage as the key component if we were to eliminate the garage and park on the street then you wouldn't have that lot coverage but again the building coverage but then at that point it you would be fighting like uh CRA said for parking because you wouldn't have any designated parking you purchase this about 16 months months ago correct yeah around that time frame any other questions from the board it complies yes the engineer can give you Dimensions you how big the yards be well he'll be up in a minute the the engineer the real civil the guy with the license will come up and answer that question okay thank you thank you thank you Mr rank c y the board you to have any questions we also have Mr Harry tuell who's the uh professional engineer um who D drew the plans so um is there anyone from the board that wants to ask any questions of the engineer yeah let's get on the record run off and things like that please raise your right hand sure you swear and tell the truth the whole truth is nothing but the truth so help you God I do you can just give your name Harry TL TUV L this your background to qualify you I am a professional engineer and uh licensed in the state of New Jersey as as well as a professional planner but I'm not uh in that capacity this evening how long have you been a professional engineer in New Jersey uh for over 40 years I have bachelor's and master's degrees from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and I've been practicing um as a site engineer for U over 40 years you're licensed in the state of New Jersey yes I just recently renewed it as a matter of fact all right we accept your credentials thank you I have a question I let you going to testify first uh did you do a runoff calculation for water rain that type of thing we have that has not been done as of yet no okay you anticipate any issues with that uh don't it's it's a small lot I I think that a seage pit would U you know one seage pit for the roof runoff would would suffice one or two perhaps would suffice for you know usually fif for 50 by 100 foot lot so it's not slop towards the street is that the issue uh we we do do not the uh the toppo on the street is as you can see we have a elevation of of 17 17 in in the in in the rear and the u tree in up front um is around it's it's around a three foot drop it's a mile slope running from uh from front to back it's mildly sloped towards the rear so that's why you need to C pit yeah that would probably be located in the rear that'll be on the plans later yes and we would provide a drainage calculation as well for the for the board Engineers review Mr chairman typically for a bulk variance application that's de with at the time of building permit so there would be a plot plan submitted to the zoning officer that would show proposed grading that would be approved before the building permits are issu who asked the question about the backyard ask the question how much space be in backyard versus well I I shown I've shown the plan from from the rear deck there there's at one corner because this is this slot is a parallelogram you know the house is not is not exactly perpendicular to the street it's sort of at a at a little bit of an angle so at one point there's uh from from the uh from the from the rear deck there will be 20 feet and on the other side there'll be 25 ft the rear yard total is is 30t any other questions any questions from the professionals and referen we not trees or shrubs there's an existing Maple shown uh in the front that we will that will remain and uh certainly the type the usual type of residential you know shrubs uh will be will be put there we could show that on a on a future future plan for house J or not typically for bulk bar like this you do not I we could require Street trees every 50 feet and they've already got one that appears to meet that requirement that's fine by me okay okay thank you any other questions from the engineer okay thank you very much thank you thank you Mr toell Mr chairman before the board deliberates um can we confirm all the variances and what they are uh after changes made second submission so Mr ramp probably be the yeah I mean I I can put the testimony on on behalf of the board and then disagrees we can have it out now um so we have an undersized lot uh 7500 Square feets required in the r s Zone where there's a 4,993 foot property that we're dealing with here we have also insufficient lot width 75 ft of lot width required where the the property has 50 ft of width there's a side yard setback variance related to the chimney that's on the south side of the uh dwelling that encroaches into the sidey setb by 2 feet so um in that instance 10 feet is being proposed on that side with 8 feet on the opposite side so the combined yard Set Side yard setback is 18 where 20 is required um and that's just for the chimney not for the remainder of the property and then we have um exceeding the maximum lot coverage by um building yeah building coverage uh 20% is permitted where 25% is proposed thank you you're welcome Mr Paige you concur with that I do Bo have any other questions all right at this time Mr paig I'm going to open it to the public yes thank you Mr Borman we have we have no further Witnesses at this time okay gonna open this to the public does anyone wish to speak from the public in regards to this application on River Road Hearing no one from the public I'm going to close the public portion public portion is closed Mr P H uh Mr chairman board members I wish to thank you for uh your consideration of this application and rather than taking up the board's precious time with a summary of the already uh detailed testimony uh I would just say that we respectfully submit the application for the board's consideration at this time thank you what is the board's pleasure in regards to this application Mr chairman I move to uh accept this application approve approve second motion I have a motion to accept this application and I have a second roll call Vote Yes Mr kazinski yes Mr yes yes yes and Mr Paige the application has been approved we will have a resolution and moralization next month so you're all set to go thank you very much thank you thank you all and we'll see you next month on the other application yes thank you thank you just if I can close off yeah so Sherman green other board members thank you so much again for uh coming out tonight I know like I said it's a long weekend so I appreciate that enjoy the Labor Day weekend and I'm looking forward to being part of the cville family so thank you luck thank you I'm going to open the the meeting to public comments on any issues not relating to pending or present applications is there anyone from the public who wishes to speak hearing none I close the public portion in reference issues not pertaining to this we have one resolution tonight resolution moralization at uh n Joanne Court application 248 has the board had the opportunity to review the moralization and resolution concerning this application with defense yes hearing it everyone from the board has reviewed this what is the pleasure of the board concerning this resolution to approve the resolution I have a motion in a second to approve this resolution at N9 Joan Court roll call yes Mr kazinski yes Mr yes yes yes okay the next on the docket is has everyone had the opportunity to review the minutes of July 24th 20124 meeting Yes means that the board had the opportunity to review the minutes of the last meeting what is the pleasure of the board concerning this that the minutes be approved I have a motion a second to approve the minutes of the July 24th 2024 meeting roll call yes yes yes yes is there anything else that the board wants to bring out hearing nothing make a motion to adjourn Mo readings adjourned