The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
A revised plan to build a 91,000-square-foot warehouse on a tract of land between New Brunswick and Old New Brunswick roads received a chilly reception January 15 from the Planning Board.
The new plan represents an attempt by the developer, Onyx 789, to address critiques of the original plan, last heard by the Board in April, 2024.
The major change in the application was a reduction in the warehouse’s size, from 102,733 square feet to 91,000 square feet. The building includes 1,995 square feet of office space.
That change, according to the project’s engineer, Keith Cahill, obviated the need for any zoning waivers save for one, a setback from a natural gas pipeline that runs under the property.
The developer would have to first raze an abandoned home and a 55,000-square-foot shell of a retail building that was originally planned for the roughly 6-acre site.
“This development is a permitted use for a warehouse in this zone and we’re complying with all of the bulk standards,” Cahill said. “We are requesting one variance, which your ordinance has a setback from the pipeline that requires a 100-foot setback. I mentioned before, the building that sits there today is 12.65 feet. This is 43 feet feet away.”
The project calls for 47 parking spots and 10 loading docks, Cahill said.
Old New Brunswick Road is private, but a portion near New Brunswick Road is public. It’s there that the developer proposed to put two driveways for trucks and autos.
Outgoing trucks would be forced to run left onto New Brunswick Road.
Onyx plans to plant more than 546 different plants, trees and shrubs on the property, Cahill said.
As he did at the April 2024 hearing, Board member Robert Thomas led the project’s criticism.
“A lot of the constraints that you’re working to overcome are kind of a red flag now that maybe this property is not suitable for this site,” he said. “Warehouses were not contemplated, and probably if they were contemplated, would have been eliminated from this particular spot.”
“This is a particular site with specific kinds of restraints.” he said. “To me you have given absolutely no justification to grant a variance on the pipeline. You’re introducing a much different use than what the retail was. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s non-starter for me.”
“The size of the building also presents another problem in that all of the activity is facing the residential zone,” Thomas said. The project is across New Brunswick Road from the Somerset Run development.
“If you reduce the size of the building … you have an opportunity to address the other kinds of issues like all the trucking activity faces the residential properties,” he said. “It should be the opposite, right? And I don’t care what those constraints do to the size of your building. That’s the way it should be, all right?”
Thomas also took issue with the proposed routes trucks would take to get to the warehouse.
“It’s the most inappropriate route for trucks that you can find,” he said. “No one anticipated a warehouse.”
Board member Ted Chase praised the developer for fixing “the many things that were very, very wrong with the plans that we saw last April,” but, because of several factors dealing with truck traffic, said that “this is not a place for the warehouse.”
Board member Meher Rafiq said that the plan “is beautiful, everything is beautiful, it’s just this is not the spot for you.”
Saying he was opposed to the warehouse, Board vice chairman Charles Brown asked if access to the site could be had through the rear of of the adjacent shopping center.
“So behind the Panera (Bread), you could expand the width of the access easement there to connect to the back of your site,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ve looked at that to see whether it works,” Cahill said, adding that it was something they could study.
Ram Anbarasan, the Council liaison to the Board, said he had problems imagining how teh truck traffic would not cause traffic backups on New Brunswick Road.
“The number of trucks that are going to come in and go out are going to considerably delay the traffic, the pedestrian as well as the car traffic, traveling on New Brunswick Road,” he said.
“The trucks that are going to make a left turn into the facility from New Brunswick Road are going to be backed up, so people are not going to be able to get to this shopping mall,” he said. “And similarly, trucks making a left turn from Old New Brunswick Road into New Brunswick Road as well will back up, waiting for the cars to clear in the morning and in the evening. That would terribly inconvenience the cars, the car traffic that is normally there, people like me going shopping, and don’t know how much impact that’s going to have in accidents, which is another major concern for me.”
The next hearing on the application is set for 7:30 p.m. March 19 at the Board of Education Administration Building’s community room on Route 27.
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