MANCHESTER – The Township Council changed some zoning that would block multifamily townhomes from being proposed there.
Town officials determine the zoning of property – in other words, what is allowed to be built there. Some land has an overlay zone, which means there are two different zones.
Mayor Robert Arace explained that ordinance 24-40 involved townhome overlays that had previously been placed. This had made townhomes a conditional use, meaning that it could be built.
“There is a lot of volume from residential development coming and coming rapidly,” he said, so they sought to prevent that.
“We are forming a Master Plan Committee to more carefully craft the future of the town and its development,” the mayor said. “We are taking those conditions away which would allow for various zones that townhomes could be built if actually submitted. We’d be taking away those conditional uses and overlays. There are other uses in those zones.”
“We are taking the town home unit component away,” the mayor further explained. He said the other uses included industrial business zones “where we could have more commercial type development which had residential overlays over them. This isn’t about a particular application. It is about how things can generally be done by zone in the town.”
He noted that it was 2017 when the overlays were added into the township code.
Township Attorney Lauren Staiger said “even though they are being removed, it was an oversight originally. It shouldn’t have been there to begin with. This is specific to what was originally drafted or recommended by the professionals. It is cleaning everything up.”
Normally, an ordinance has to be introduced, and then have a second reading before it goes into effect. Mayor Arace explained that this was actually the third reading. They let this ordinance have an extra public notice.
He explained that this ordinance won’t block all residential development, just high density development.
“It really is for the township to take a step back, look at it and to look at our long term strategy and to reduce the amount of residential development to keep the character of our town rural and suburban,” the mayor added.
Mayor Arace brought up concerns of “rapid expansion west (of the township) and a lot of interest has been taken in the western part of Ocean County. So what we are doing – rather than having a fight with every single potential thing that could happen – is that we are removing the ability of it happening in the first place.”
Resident Gail Apgar asked the mayor about single family homes within the township to which he replied, “we have a variety of different type of residential zones, R10 would be Pineland Park, R40 would be Roosevelt City.”
He added, “those are single family under one acre lots, 100 by 100 foot lots. What we are doing here is that there are zones within the 82 square miles of town where they were originally industrial. In 2017 there were conditional uses added on top with these layers that would allow for the building of townhomes. Single family homes in their proper zones can still be built.”
“So, Roosevelt City would stay as a single dwelling and there won’t be townhouses going in?” Apgar asked.
“The effort here is to take away the ability of building the townhomes,” Mayor Arace clarified.
Exchange Of Land Approved
Also approved was Ordinance 24-46 that concerned the exchange of properties between the township and Ocean County.
“Does this mean some of this land will be bought by Ocean County?” Apgar asked the Council.
“No, it is preserved for open space. The county did an open space land acquisition a couple years ago. There were land subdivisions and the town has some of those as well so we are exchanging those that are closer to the county. Those will be given to them and they are giving us land that is closer to us so we can consolidate them but it is open space for open space,” Business Administrator Carl Block responded.
Councilman Craig Wallis was the lone vote against Ordinance 24-44 which authorized the exchange of lands between the township and developer Jeffrey Jerman.
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