CRANBURY: Planning Board accepts findings of study on redevlopement

By Amy Batista, Special Writer
CRANBURY – The Township Planning Board voted to accepted the findings from its planner and will officially recommend a resolution to the Township Committee to designate a non-condemnation area in need of redevelopment for “Paul’s Auto Site” during its meeting on March 17.
Deputy Mayor Glenn Johnson said that the subcommittee that looked for subsidized housing sites looked at every available piece of property in Cranbury and is recommending the best site for redevelopment.
“We’ve always tried to put our subsidized housing continuous in the Village, preferably near a park in a situation where people can walk to downtown and this will provide all of those,” said Mr. Johnson.
Township Planner Elizabeth Leheny, filling in for Richard Preiss, presented the findings of non-condemnation area in need of redevelopment study for “Paul’s Auto Site” (Block 33, Lot 13.04) situated at 2687 New Jersey State Highway Route 130.
“We did our due diligence and we are going to examine the Master Plan, the task upon us, the ownership of the property, environmental considerations, environmental reports, and zoning ordinances,” she said.
She said that committee members inspected the site through photographs from Township Board Engineer David Hoder of Hoder Associates.
“We looked at this area and recognized that there were not a lot of vacant sites in Cranbury that were not already kind of accounted for that were not already considered part of their farmland or parks,” said Ms. Leheny.
Mr. Hoder then presented testimony regarding the site conditions.
“I worked with the planners on this project and did a site visit actually twice,” he said. He said there are two buildings on the site.
“The original building was built as a cinder block building with a light frame steel roof and it looks like there was an addition put on it on the northern side,” he said. He said that it has been used for truck repair and car repair.
“What I found was that the building is not in the best repair,” he said. “It doesn’t work with today’s codes. If you want to do another use like retail or offices, there is not enough space between Route 130, two little grass strips, some parking then the aisle and then maybe another grass strip and sidewalk,” he said, adding that’s how things were done back then.
He said they would never site this building where it is today that close to the highway.
“The use of cinder block in the building is something that you really can’t do architecturally today in today’s codes,” said Mr. Hoder. “So most of those types of buildings would be taken down in any reuse of the site such as residential or even commercial for that matter.”
He said that building holds two tenants that both use it as storage, one is some kind of material demolition business and the other one is a solar contractor.
“Both of them don’t station people there it appears,” he said. “So we have two buildings that are being used for tenants today that are subpar in terms of how they can be built now.
Mr. Hoder said in the main building a lot of the walls are covered with black dust or grease from continual use over the years as an auto repair business.
“All that lends itself to no real possible use of the property the way it is and that there would have to be enough money put into it that it would probably not make the buildings not worthwhile to reuse,” he said. “You would be better off demolishing them and starting new.”
Ms. Lehney said with regards to the statutory of criteria they think it very clearly meets two of the criteria. “Sub-standard, unsanitary, dilapidated, defaulty arrangement of design, lack of lights and sanitary facilities, and over detrimental to the health and safety of all (in the community),” she said.
She said that in order for the board to qualify the area it all has to be one area.
Planning Board Chairman Allan Kehrt added that the site meets at least two of the criteria now.
“Right, and you only need to meet one,” Ms. Lehney said.