Burnt Tavern's a growing hub for COAH housing
BY JANE MEGGITT Staff Writer

MILLSTONE - A three-lot subdivision on Burnt Tavern Road, including one lot for possible affordable housing, has been approved.

The Planning Board voted unanimously at its June 11 meeting to approve the subdivision of the 7-acre property located in the Business Park zone.

Kenneth Pape, attorney for the applicant, Key Investments, said his client began the application as a two-lot subdivision but decided to go with an alternative plan when Township Planner Richard Coppola noted it would not be the best way to develop the tract.

Coppola told the applicant that the property could handle a third lot for a public purpose such as affordable housing. His clients carved 1 acre out for affordable housing, Pape said.

"The governing body will ultimately give a designation if it will be for affordable housing, but it is designed to handle it," he said.

The public lot would meet the applicant's Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) requirement for the two business parcels it's creating, according to Pape.

Burnt Tavern Road already has two affordable housing sites. The Millstone House, a group home, fulfills some of the township's COAH requirements. The township also recently subdivided the group home acreage to create more affordable housing in the area.

In order to develop the three new lots on the road, the applicant needed bulk variance relief from the board for the rear-yard setback, which would be reduced to 50 feet. Pape said the land behind the public lot is wetlands, so there is no encroachment.

The side-yard setback would also be reduced to 20 feet on both sides, but would only affect the other two lots created by the application, Pape said.

The development would have a common driveway on the property line, which Township Engineer Matt Shafai recommended as an optimum location to keep vehicle lights from shining into the houses across the street. The driveway location would also save the peninsula of trees across both lots, he said.

The applicant would develop a 15,000-square-foot steel fabrication building with a small office on one lot, and a building of similar size on the other lot, according to Pape.

The property had been in serious disrepair before his clients bought it, Pape said. An existing building was deteriorating, and there was waste material and debris on the site, he said.

Key Investments acquired the parcel when the property went into foreclosure and its previous owner went to jail, Pape said. He called it a win-win for the new property owner and the township, since the property is now clean and has land available for affordable housing.

The board's vice chairman, Christopher Pepe, who chaired the application because Chairman Mitchell Newman had a conflict of interest, agreed with Pape and said the trade-off is fair for the township.