By Peter Elacqua
Staff Writer
MARLBORO – The Marlboro Planning Board has approved an application that proposed the construction of a Mavis Discount Tire store on Route 9 south.
The lot is 700 feet south of the intersection of Route 9 and Route 520 and is less than 1 acre in size.
Attorney Salvatore Alfieri presented the Mavis application during a recent meeting at Town Hall.
The applicant proposed the construction of a 6,762-square-foot, one-story building with eight service bays, a tire storage area, a showroom, a waiting room, restrooms and a reception area. The application proposed 25 on-site parking spaces.
The applicant was represented by Matt Sheffield, senior development director with Mavis Discount Tire.
Board members indicated that eight service bays might be too many for the building.
“The real estate department does calculations based on population and how many people would come in for service,” Sheffield said. “Eight bays is our standard prototype and it is our preference. If we renovate an existing building that had six bays, we would leave it as is, but when building a new store, eight bays is the standard.”
Board members expressed concern about what might be an insufficient number of parking spaces and cited a section in the municipal code which states that automotive shops must have five parking spaces per service bay.
“I don’t know where the five spaces per bay came from in the code,” Sheffield said. “I can only imagine it has to do with a service station where you would do engine work or transmission (work) and you would have to have vehicles stored there for a number of days. Those places perform the same services we do, on top of engine work, but our work takes about an hour at most and then the customers are on their way. To me that is an extreme amount of parking.”
Sheffield said deliveries to Mavis Discount Tire would occur during regular business hours.
Board Chairman Mark Barenburg touched on the issue of safety, saying, “There are vehicles in the building and to me, not being a fireman, it seems like a fire could happen. Obviously it meets code, but it seems to me like it would be a nice thing to have sprinklers.”
Sheffield agreed to have an approved sprinkler system and smoke alarms installed, saying, “Obviously, the safety of our employees and customers is what is most important.”
Another condition of approval for the application includes conforming to Marlboro’s tree replacement plan by planting trees or paying to have trees replaced on the site.
On a motion to approve the application, Barenburg and board members Neil Betoff, Christopher Cherbini, David Gagliano, Andrew Pargament and Michael Slotopolsky voted yes on the Mavis Discount Tire plan.
