ABERDEEN After a year long negotiation battle, the Township Council passed an ordinance amending the township code to create a R-65 single family residential zone district, despite some resident opposition.
On Jan. 4, 2016, a property owner looking to build a Yeshiva on Meizner Street approached the township’s Zoning Board to apply for a use variances, according to Township Manager Holly Reycraft.
Once learning about the property owner’s intentions the council sought legal counsel to intervene in the owner’s attempt to build a Yeshiva on Meizner Street. After a year of negotiations with the property owner, he has agreed to drop the zoning board application to build the Yeshiva and try to sell the land to a developer, according to Mayor Fred Tagliarini.
“If the use variance application had proceeded at the Zoning Board, RLUIPA, a federal statute, may have caused the township to incur both potential liability and its fee shifting provisions may have led a court to require the township to pay the applicant’s legal fees,” Reycraft said.
RLUIPA deals with religious land uses and zoning.
More than 20 residents attended the council’s monthly meeting and the majority of them expressed disapproval toward the council decision to create the R-65 zone, on Aug. 16, at the Matawan Aberdeen Middle school, located at 469 Matawan Ave in Cliffwood.
To demonstrate to residents who attended the meeting that the property had agreed to sell his property, the council showed on a slide the letter from the owner’s attorney agreeing to drop the zoning board application, according to Tagliarini.
A R-65 zone is a single family residential zone that requires a minimum lot size of 6,500 square feet with minimum lot frontage and width of 65 feet and minimum lot depth of 100 feet, according to Reycraft.
“The zoning change is a must to ensure the results the we all want and that is no Yeshiva on Meizner Street. The current landowner will sell this property and the deputy mayor and I as members of the planning board will make sure that this property will stay R-65 for single family homes to be built..this action makes us come back full circle to the original concept,” Mayor Fred Tagliarini said. “This zoning change is a step needed for the applicant to withdraw his application, sell the property, and concentrate on making improvements where he has been for 11 years. The main goal is no Yeshiva on Meizner Street.”
The property is about six acres of land-locked property with acreage, a lot of wetlands and not all of it is developable. The new R-65 zone will have 11 single family homes, according to Tagliarini.
The new zone is located along Cliffwood Avenue from West Prospect Street to slightly over Maxwell Street going northeast. The zone is also located on Meizner Street from West Prospect Street to slightly over Van Cleaf Lane going northeast, according to the council agenda.
“The zoning change from R-100 to R-65 was not a property size we out pulled out of the air, it is a conforming size lot to this neighborhood, it is also a lot size we know will be appealing to a new property owner,” Tagliarini said.
During the meeting many residents who spoke in opposition to the new R-65 zoning plan expressed concerns about traffic and safety due to Cliffwood Elementary School being located near the new zone where many of the residents’ children go to school.
Resident Susan Saksinski voiced her concerns about the new houses that are going to be in the new R-65 zone and explained how traffic on Cliffwood Avenue is already crowded and that she has trouble getting out of her driveway to go to work due to the heavy traffic on Cliffwood Avenue.
“Where are all of these people going to go if [there] is one accident?” Saksinski said.
Members of the citizen created group “Cliffwood Matters” also attended the meeting and before the meeting passed out information packages to residents showing their opposition to the council’s rezoning plan to allowing 11 more houses to be built on Meinzer Street.
Resident Roseland Carr said that she was concerned about the property owner buying up more property around town.
According to Tagliarini, the property owner also has owned a nursing home on the other side of Rt. 35 on Center Street for 11 years in the township.
“Personally I understand why [the property owner] wanted to move, yes he’s a business man, yes he’s teacher, [and] he wanted a campus..but not in my back yard,” Mayor Tagliarini.
For more information about the R-65 zone visit www.aberdeennj.org/content/151/714/default.aspx or call 732-583-4200.
Contact Vashti Harris at vharris@newspapermediagroup.com.
