The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
An application for a 14-unit housing development on Cedar Grove Lane was approved March 4 by the Planning Board, but there was a hitch.
The applicant, Odin Duhn, wanted to make the development a gated community, but the Board did not approve the gates.
The applicant had better luck with another concern of the Board’s, namely tree preservation through clustering the homes, rather than setting them on smaller lots.
The plan was revised during the applicant’s two earlier appearances before the Board, mainly in creating 40-foot buffers on the north and south sides of the 16.5-acre tract that borders Como Drive.
The project’s engineer, Greg Oman, told the Board that they’d be able to better preserve “higher value” trees under their plan than under a clustering approach.
Oman said they worked with an arborist to study the trees on the land and come up with a preservation plan.
“The arborist actually found a few additional 16-inch trees on site that weren’t picked up on the original survey,” he said. “The first thing our office did was reanalyze how many existing trees are on site today.
“Based on utilizing the arborist’s updated numbers, we have a total of 2,649 trees on site,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of those trees are 4-inch to 15-inch in caliper, with the remaining 140, or about 5%, being 16-inch or larger. Now that we knew how many existing trees that were located on site, we then looked within the limit of disturbance of how many of those trees were going to be removed.”
“Our calculation shows, based off of the trees within that red limit of disturbance, we were removing 1,597 trees, approximately 60% of the existing trees on site.” Oman said. “The previous submission plans showed an 82.4% removal rate, showed almost 2,200 trees being removed. So we reduced that by approximately 600, almost 600 trees we produced to be shelved, to be removed.”
Oman said they would be required under Township ordinance to plant an additional 1,230 replacement trees on the site.
“We’re showing that we’re proposing a total of 895 trees on the site,” he said. “Thirty of those are required based on the Township Ordinance, two per lot. So if you remove the 30 from that, we are proposing 865 of those trees to be counted towards our replacement requirement.”
Oman said that the buffer and preservation plan they proposed would have the same effect as clustering homes, but would result in better-quality trees being saved.
“You have told us, that what you’re doing in terms of extending the buffers essentially accomplishes what a cluster would in terms of preservation of trees, etc., in accordance with Chapter 222 of the Development Ordinance, Trees,” Board Chairman Michael Orsini said. “What still is lacking for me is the evidence necessary to prove to the Board that, guys, you know, we’re accomplishing essentially what a cluster will.”
“And I know you’ve given us that testimony verbally,” he said. “Is there anything else you can give us in terms of evidence, actual evidence, that shows that this is really equivalent to the kind of preservation that you would see if you did cluster homes?”
The ailing trees, Oman said, “are not going to get better unless you try to help them.”
He also said that other developments that utilized cluster building were built before the state Department of Environmental Protection issued stringent stormwater management regulations.
“None of those sites, as constructed, would be even close to coming in conformance with the stormwater management,” he said.
“That was, I think, a very fair explanation of how things go versus regulations,” Orsini said. “How the regulations have changed. And, you know, your argument is value, right? You’re picking out a value on the site where, if you were to just preserve, like you said, the rear part, maybe that wouldn’t be as of high as value. It would be preserved, but it would not necessarily be preserving the highest value trees. So thank you for that.”
Orsini and other Board members were less flexible when it came to the gated entrance.
Vijay Raju, one of the developer’s representatives at the March 4 meeting, said one of the reasons they wanted to use the gates was for security.
“I myself, unfortunately, have had the experience of being a victim of a carjacking incident in Somerset here,” Raju said. “So these things definitely help because, you know, when you’ve got these kind of homes, you know, large size homes, this is going to have value to have that kind of level of security, which would make it more, you know, palatable to the homeowner.”
Raju said they’d be willing to accept a requirement that the gates be open between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
“And if the township believes after some small period of time that they don’t believe it does work, that they will have that mechanism to be able to say, we want to keep it unlocked and open all the time, that we would abide by that,” he said.
Akshay Joshi, the other develop representative at the meeting, said that the gate would be an “essential part” of the development.
“We think this is going to be one of the signature products, 40,000-square-foot lot, big homes, about 5,000-, 4,500- to 5,500-square-foot homes that we all can look back and be proud of that we built it,” he said.
“So with this kind of signature product, we feel that the gate is going to be an essential part of this product,” he said. “It’s going to provide a sense of safety, security to the residents.”
“I’m not typically in favor of gates, I don’t think they’re necessary there,” Board member Robert Thomas said. “I’ve lived on that street for 50 years. I don’t remember anybody getting a car hijacked or virtually much of anything else.”
“I just think that that’s kind of presenting a bad image,” he said. “Historically, we have discouraged gated communities. It’s like you’re separating people from other people, and it’s not community.”
“I certainly empathize and sympathize also with any sort of crime against persons and property<” Board Vice Chairman Charles Brown said. “I understand that. I think it’s a contradiction, though, to have a four-car garage, a huge driveway, and then park your car outside and expect it to be safe from those activities.”
“If you’re going to have so many garages on these homes, you should at a minimum, especially with these expensive cars, park them inside the garage,” he said. “Also, the attorney stated that you don’t have evidence to prove or evidence from this area to show that crime is a problem. It’s all anecdotal.”
“Had you said you’ve seen break-ins to homes in that area and provide evidence of that, it would make sense,” he said. “Otherwise, protecting a car, and cars get stolen every day, I’m not in favor of it. I think it’s a bad look.”
Board member Jennifer Rangnow said that while she acknowledged that the gate would be a benefit to the homeowners, it wouldn’t provide any value to the overall community.
At the end of the hearing, Orsini moved the project’s approval, minus the gated entrance.
“I have to say that until tonight, I was a no, and really it stuck on me, the resistance to cluster,” he said.
“But you convinced me tonight that perhaps you did something better than that, given the value of the trees and the differential value that they had,” he said. “And so that swayed me more than anything and at least gave me the confidence to say that I’m convinced based on the fact that you did do more than I’ve ever seen in terms of what an arborist would do on a given development to actually go out and find those trees.”
“And the guardhouse, I agree with what everybody said,” he said. “I also think that any machinations in terms of hours and things are just unenforceable.”
“That’s where I stand when it comes to enforceability, if it can’t be done through planning, then it might not be able to get done,” he said.
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