HILLSBOROUGH: Cell tower, sports dome, Muslim center cases challenge zoning board

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Neighbors don’t want to see a 120-foot cell phone tower arise in their residential area.
People fret about the traffic and sheer size of a sports and events venue with a “bubble” roof that would rise eight stories high.
Businesses want to build in the core area of the township, but not to the township’s long-range vision of a downtown center.
One religious group wants to sell its property, with zoning approvals, to another religious group. Can the second group meet the conditions that were imposed on the first?
Decisions in all of those matters are coming not to the township’s governing body, or even to the Planning Board, but before the members of the zoning Board of Adjustment.
Few large-scale projects are currently in front of the Planning Board, but several knotty applications fill the zoning board’s calendar for the next few months.
Planning Board applications generally are projects that meet zoning requirements — the intended uses in that part of the town and mostly meeting rules for setbacks, paving, buffering, etc.
Board of Adjustment cases fall between the cracks. They typically are proposals that want to tweak the zoning rules and thus ask for permission to be at variance with the zoning. Some of the reasons might be second uses on a lot, or have some sort of “bulk” problems — too close to roads or neighbors, too big for the lot, or pave over too much land, for instance.
Zoning cases generally must address two points: Can a project be allowed without substantially detriment to the public good, like impacting surrounding properties.
And can a project be done without substantially impairing the zoning plan and ordinance?
Should a cell tower be allowed in a residential area?
Verizon wants to build a 120-foot tower behind the Woods Road fire company building, and hang eight antennas. The tower would be in a residential neighborhood, not far from the local elementary school, and it would be a second principal use on the firehouse lot. The project also asks for a tower that is taller than rules envision.
Verizon opened its case March 16 by presenting telecommunications engineer David Stern, who testified that the tower and antennas would remedy what it called a long-standing coverage gap in that part of the township, and along the Millstone River, for 4G data service and emergency communications.
The hearing is scheduled to resume in June 15.
Woods Road neighbors came out in force for the March 16 meeting, filling the municipal meeting room with almost 100 people.
For residents, the situation is déjà vu. The fire company considered allowing a tower several years ago, but never ultimately filed an application. A flyer circulating at the March 16 meeting was entitled “No cell tower – here we go again. . .”
Neighbors fear the tower will have an adverse impact on the real estate value of their homes.
Christian Fulmino, the immediate past fire chief for Company 3, said in an email that the firehouse would be paid “the market rate” annually for putting the cell phone tower on the property.
“The fire company sees the opportunity to secure a steady income flow as an important step in securing the financial future of our company,” he wrote in an email. “As you know, we recently put an addition on our 40-year-old building to add much needed space and enable to offer increased services to the township.
“While fire trucks and turnout gear are paid for with tax revenue, maintaining and updating the building is completely the responsibility of the volunteer fire company and our fund-raising efforts.”
In addition to the cell phone service improvements that are desperately needed in this area of the township, Verizon has offered space on the tower for Somerset county communications to improve radio reception for emergency agencies in this area of the township.
Will one religious group use a property in the same way for which a different group has approval?
Neighbors of the proposed Muslim Center of Somerset County will be back on Wednesday, April 6, to object to the application they say will be a much busier use than proposed by the Chabad of Somerset County.
The Jewish group received approval in 2013 to locate a rabbi’s residence in a house at 22 New Amwell Road, and hold worship and religious activities in a larger house on a flag lot behind the residence.
The Chabad accepted conditions on number of people (maximum of 49), lighting and parking spaces (26 total). The Muslim Center has said it would comply with those restrictions, particularly on the number of people and cars.
Neighbors say they are opposed to a resolution that would expand hours of exterior lighting, increase the number of worship services and perhaps have more people on site than the Chabad approval would have allowed.
“Simply put, too many people with too many cars trying to utilize too small a space for too many hours a day,” reads a letter from neighbors to the Board of Adjustment.
Attorneys for the applicant and the board may have met and sketched out a proposed resolution for approval, with critical conditions being the sticking point.
Can an events center arise along farmland and the bypass?
Apex Sports and Events wants an 181,395-square-foot facility with two air-inflated domes — one reaching about eight stories high — on Hillsborough Road, next to the Route 206 bypass.
The facility would attract year-round sports leagues, team training, children’s parties and events, tournaments, banquets, trade shows and graduation ceremonies.
Apex is due to begin its testimony on June 1. The zoning board is first being asked to decide if such a facility can be located in the area zoned agricultural residential. The board must also decide if the heights of the buildings are acceptable.
If those two considerations are approved, then the owner would have to return with detailed architectural and site plans.
Apex will have to address questions raised by the Somerset County Planning Board. The property would lie next to preserved farmland, and in a zone that might qualify for preservation. That’s what a county plan would see for the site.
The events center wants to connect to the sewer utility. That would be an expansion of the wastewater management plan for the area, and would need state environmental approval.
And the board raised questions about the center expanding intense economic activities outside of a core area. County planners would prefer not to encourage sprawl, but to concentrate business in some areas, preservation and residential in others.
When to start assembling a dense downtown center?
Some day, in some way, Hillsborough aims to have a dense downtown in the core area of Amwell Road and Route 206. The idea is to have taller buildings only a sidewalk away from a downtown thoroughfare, where walking is encouraged, people live in apartments above stores, traffic travels a lot more slowly and parking is allowed on the street.
It may not happen soon, but think long range.
Two cases bring the subject to the fore now.
One is a rehearing of the application of Shoppes at Woods Road, the collection of buildings at the corner of Route 206 and Amwell Road.
The center has stores in buildings set back from the street, with parking in front. Two of the requirements of the town center zone is to have residential units above stores, and to encourage more stores than offices in new buildings.
Shoppes wants to build in the area behind the shops that front on Route 206, and wants to put a majority of the required apartments in the new buildings. It also wants more offices than stores.
Shoppes was denied its plan in 2011. The zoning board said the proposal continued the existing development pattern with parking in front of the buildings, while using the Town Center incentives for additional development.
Shoppes sued and a judge ordered the Board of Adjustment to rehear the case. The next session is set for May 4.
To a lesser extent, Starbucks must address the town center zone issue, too. Starbucks made the first part of a presentation March 2 to justify building a one-story business with a drive-thru off the Hillsborough Centre’s southerly access road off Route 206 near the free-standing Wells Fargo bank.
The Starbucks building would fall in the Town Center zone, which calls for buildings of at least two floors, with offices or apartments on the upper floors.
A planner and traffic expert are expected to testify when Starbacks returns at the May 18 meeting.
Starbucks is scheduled to resume its application on May 18. 