The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
A Coney Island-based mobile accessories manufacturer won Zoning Board of Adjustment approval November 20 to expand its Howard Avenue warehousing space.
Bytech already has about 75,000 square feet of warehouse and office space in its township location, but the Board was told that the company is running out of space and being forced to house products in inefficient ways.
The company’s proposal was for a nearly 31,000-square-foot extension.
Bytech’s Eli Mizriehi told the Board that the extra space is needed to store its products.
“We have over 30 employees at this time in the building,” he said. The building is vibrant, and the good news is we’ve sort of grown out of the building itself.”
He said that prior strategies of dealing with the overflow – keeping product on-site in trailers and handing them over to a third-party fulfillment company – were not ideal.
Mizriehi told the Board that the company does not want to leave Somerset, where its warehouse has been located since 2017. The company’s main offices and showroom are in Brooklyn, he said.
“We don’t want to have a supplement warehouse anywhere else,” he said. “We don’t want to buy another building. So, to us, common sense for us would be just to expand the current space. We have a lot of land.”
“This is obviously the most cost-efficient way for us to expand because the land is ours, and we’ve just got to spend money on the structure,” he said. “And of course, as we expand this 30,000 square feet, we’re going to expand our employee base as well. We’re going to need more employees. I would say at least a dozen or 15 more employees. So, that’s going to be from the local community.”
The board also heard from the project’s engineer, planner and environmental expert.
One of the restrictions placed on the approval was a limit to tractor-trailer size of 55 feet long.
The Board unanimously approved the project.
