A proposed renovation of a Prologis warehouse has received the stamp of approval from Cranbury’s Planning Board.
The planning board hearing for the application took place on Oct. 8, after facing some recent delays, which had forced the hearing to be pushed back from a rescheduled date of Sept. 10.
Chairman Peter Mavoides, Vice Chair Michael Kaiser, Mayor Matt Scott, Township Committeewoman Evelyn Spann, board member Judson Hamlin, and board member James Gallagher voted “yes” to approve the application with conditions.
Those conditions include: a post occupancy parking demand study at the point of six months after the certificate of occupancy is issued for the space to show that there is adequate parking; and extending the length of the center crosswalk through a parking space inside the driveway of the area where trucks operate in and out of for safety.
“We feel strongly that we will be able to show through the study that the remaining parking spaces will be more than adequate for the proposed use,” Project Engineer Michael Rodrigues said.
The existing building, part of an industrial park, is comprised of more than 180,000 square feet of warehouse space and 35,000 square feet of office space, according to documents.
The renovation proposes a reduction in office space, an additional 13 dock doors on the building, a reconfiguring of the truck court and parking lot to accommodate for the new doors. Eighty one parking spaces will also be eliminated from the 169 existing spaces to allow for the additional loading docks.
Representatives for Prologis’s application had to revise their application site plans and information due to previous concerns raised by planning board members and professionals, specifically about changes being represented clearly through the plans and also having appropriate plans presented detailing items such as landscaping and lighting from previous hearings.
Revisions were made according to application documents and included: a revised overall site plan with details on planting landscape locations on the property, parking spaces, and width of the crosswalks for pedestrians from the parking spaces; a revised stormwater management report that now includes a pre- and post-analysis of the area; a revised lighting plan was also added to the overall site plan, which provided the lighting contours and foot-candle data; and featured additional signage and examples of signage that will be on the property.
Representatives said the tenant for the space is a traditional warehouse use for furniture and will occupy 100% of the renovated warehouse.
“So a lease is signed for five years and scheduled to start depending on the completion of construction, November to mid-November, when the work is finished,” said Paul Rosen of Prologis. “We know they will have approximately 30 employees (office and warehouse), so we are pretty confident the parking issues for this user will not tax the revised parking that we are requesting.”
He added that he did not know at the time the volume of trucks that would be coming in an out of the warehouse.
The warehouse south of Half Acre Road sits on 27.7 acres and currently has 11 loading docks and 169 parking spaces for passenger vehicles, according to application documents.
