The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Representatives of a township temple were once again unsuccessful January 3 in getting Planning Board approvals for a decorative archway planned for the temple’s driveway on Cedar Grove Lane.
The difficulty arose when some Planning Board members asserted that years’-old approvals for the Jain Center included a stipulation that they must align their driveway with one of the Cedar Grove Center’s driveways across the street.
Temple representatives and their attorney insisted that while there was discussion about aligning the driveway, there was no Board dictate that it be done.
The application was heard in June, July and September 2023. The driveway issue was raised in September, and Jain officials decided to suspend their application until it could be looked into.
The planned archway would be 28 feet high and 56 feet wide, and positioned about 50 feet from the curb along Cedar Grove Lane.
The archway would display six signs, one at the top and one on each base, on both sides of the structure.
As he did in September, Board Member Robert Thomas led the charge into getting the driveway aligned.
Thomas told Jain attorney John DeLuca that his law firm colleague, Peter Lanfrit, agreed to moving the driveway during a hearing years ago on an unrelated application.
“Mr. Lanfrit only appeared at that first hearing (in June) where this application was carried because there was no quorum,” DeLuca said. “I was the only attorney that’s appeared before this board on this application and presented testimony.”
“Getting to the crux of this matter, it was discussed before this Board, but it was never a condition of any prior approval,” DeLuca said.
DeLuca said that he has provided the Board with reports from the Franklin Township Police Department showing that there have been no accidents in front of the driveway.
The Center received Planning Board approval in 2013 to install a solar array on its property. That project included a realignment of the driveway, but through an administrative approval, not a Board decision, said Mihir Shah, the Center’s president.
“But the vendor backed out and we lost money, so we had to pull out,” Shah said.
“It would cost $250,000 to move the driveway,” Shah said. “We need to raise the funds to do this.”
Board vice-chairman Charles Brown was skeptical that something as involved and expensive as moving a driveway would be done without Board approval.
“Given your history of presenting before Boards, have you ever seen such a recommendation come with the costs associated with it that didn’t result from a Board asking for that?” he asked DeLuca.
“I have,” DeLuca said. “I’ve seen that where … perhaps it is more aesthetic to move a driveway.”
“It wasn’t until we dug into the weeds and discovered that this was not a condition of approval,” DeLuca said. “It may have been mentioned, but it was not a condition of approval imposed on this applicant in connection with any prior approval. From a legal standpoint, I do not believe the relief from condition is a required relief we seek.”
“This wasn’t something imposed on the applicant … it was something that funding fell through; the project wasn’t completed,” he said. “All of the testimony that was before this Board in 2012 and 2013 related to that driveway was for approvals, they were not able to follow through on. It was simply a reality of the financial condition they were in.”
Mark Healy, the Township’s principal planner, had a different recollection.
“My recollection was at that time (2013) it was asked of the applicant why haven’t you realigned the driveway, which suggests to me that it was previously discussed at the Board level and not just something the applicant wanted to do,” he said.
“It was never enshrined as a condition of approval from a legal standpoint,” DeLuca said.
“Your driveway will work as it is now at 10 o’clock on any day in the morning,” Thomas said. “It will not work when you have your special affairs. That’s an imposition on everybody in the general public as well as your congregation.”
“I don’t understand the resistance to this simple thing,” he said. “You don’t have to change the whole driveway. You can change the entrance and curl it around to meet the driveway; you don’t have to put a whole entirely new driveway in there.”
“It may have been bungled in terms of the paperwork, but (Lanfrit) agreed to it,” Thomas said. “If you ask him, he’ll tell you he agreed to it, he’s an honorable person.”
“If you don’t want to do it, we probably can’t force you to do it,” Thomas said. “But what’s happening is wrong. That driveway should have been done properly in the first place, it should be done properly now, but if it can’t be, it can’t be.”
Reacting to DeLuca’s assertion about the lack of accidents in front of the Center’s driveway, Thomas said the stationing of a police officer at that spot for special events shows that the FTPD “recognizes that there is some problems with the driveway when it’s busy.”
Brown then objected to the hearing continuing, saying the Board was not informed about the evidence that the Center was going to present at the hearing.
“We don’t want the level of surprise we’re having tonight, where we look like we’re having a session of ‘he said-she said’,” Brown said. “Both parties should be privy to the information. We should have had it in advance so that we as a Board could see what’s factual and what is not.”
“For that reason, I think we should carry this meeting to give us time to prepare with the facts that you have, as opposed to arguing what is truth and what is not truth,” he said.
Other Board members said they wanted to continue with the hearing to hear the Center’s traffic expert, Elizabeth Dolan, talk about safety issues associated with the driveway.
“There are so many unknowns, but one thing that is known is that in the last few meetings here, we’ve stated that we want the driveway moved,” he said. “That is a fact. What I feel is that we’ve been done an injustice because we were not prepared … and that puts us on the defense because we are arguing something that we don’t have the records for.”
“There has been unfairness in both directions,” DeLuca countered. “The applicants also deserve to know what relief they need to seek before they appear before this Board.”
“We were blindsided by a Board member … who recalled back when, accurately, that there was discussion of the driveway movement,” he said. “Ever since then, this applicant … has been on defense, feeling like they’re trying to save this application.”
After giving her report, Dolan said that the driveway, as it is currently aligned, “does not pose a safety problem.”
“Operationally, the only problem anyone has is probably waiting to get out of the Jain Center when it’s busiest,” she said. “That’s something that … any house of worship, any office that’s letting out at the end of the day, you’re going to have a queue of cars on the property as they wait to leave.”
“During those busy peak hours, we’re looking at a maximum of 10 left turns out of the Jain Center, and that’s not worthy of … never mind a reconfiguration of the driveway, but it doesn’t even warrant a two-lane approach from the exit (onto Cedar Grove Lane),” she said.
“There’s not a problem with this configuration,” Dolan said. “Based on the way the offset is configured., there’s no lockup on Cedar Grove Lane, and that’s the biggest issue.”
Responding to a question from Board member Sami Shaban, Dolan said, “If we were here with a blank slate and this site plan for Jain Center were before you, I would absolutely say, let’s align them,” she said. “We can’t simply allege that there’s a safety problem because there’s not an alignment. If there were several accidents … then I would say, you know what, we need to fix this, but that hasn’t been the case.”
The hearing was originally continued to January 17, but that meeting was cancelled, so the matter was carried to the Board’s February 21 meeting.
