The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
A modified plan to raze an empty office building on Atrium Drive and construct two small warehouses in its place was approved October 15 by the Planning Board.
This was the second appearance for the developer, 500 Atrium, which originally went before the Board in July.
Back then, Board members were overall supportive of the project, but wanted a few modifications, including modifying the buildings to allow for a lower percentage of impervious surfaces.
So, what was originally a 74,460-square-foot warehouse and a 72,213-square-foot warehouse was reduced to approximately two 69,000-square-foot warehouses.
There was also some landscaping in the form of shrubbery and trees added along the Atrium Drive frontage so as to shield it from a Township-owned parcel across the street that has been targeted for affordable housing.
Craig Stires, the project’s engineer, told the Board that as many trees as possible along Atrium Drive were saved.
“And then supplemented the landscaping in the front of the building along Atrium and also along the Atrium Drive cul-de-sac,” he said.
Stires also said the number of parking stalls was reduced to 60 from the original 71.
The warehouses will have nine loading docks each.
John Taikina, the project’s planner, said the Atrium Drive location “is exactly where you want those types of things.”
“Redeveloping an existing developed site that has gone through its evolution as an office into a modern warehouse facility is a more efficient use of this land than it would be out on a greenfield parcel out in the hinterlands, if you will, of the township,” he said. “As Obi-Wan would say, these are not the warehouses that you’re concerned about.”
The project’s attorney, Matt Flynn, agreed.
“I can say from doing these developments all over the state, these are sort of your small business goes in and ships locally, sort of what we’re hoping an end user to be here,” he said. “It’s not a fulfillment center, it’s not 800,000 square feet where you have the pack and pick vans that arrive in a line at one time.”
“So what we would hope is that you see that although warehousing is no longer permitted, we did get in when it was a permitted conditional use, that you see that this is the kind of development that makes sense for this location in the township,” he said.
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