Division Of Fairfield Road Lot Approved By Howell Zoning Board

HOWELL, NJ — The Howell Zoning Board of Adjustment approved the subdivision of a 100-acre property on Fairfield Road during a meeting last week. The application was submitted by Rock Solid Realty (NJ) Corp.

"It's really for a very simple technical reason," said Kenneth Pape, the attorney representing the owner of the property. "It's for financing purposes. Not for any way to change the development approvals."

According to the application, the property will be divided into a 36.487-acre lot in the front by Fairfield Road, which will contain a 368,050 square feet warehouse with associated office space and a 65.075-acre lot with an existing solar field.

The board had already approved the construction of the warehouse during a meeting last November. At the time, the applicant made a commitment to return to the board with a subdivision line between the front and rear parcels, Pape said.

The solar field has been up now for about eight years, having gotten approval from the board about a year before it was put up, Pape added. The attorney maintained that there were no changes to the building plans.

"That plan remains exactly as it was. This is the land that was associated with it when it was presented to the board. We're asking that the rear parcel, the solar, be separated from it," he said.

Pape also reaffirmed the property owner's commitment "to make certain improvements, to be environmentally sensitive, to bring the sanitary sewer to the area and to pursue all of the outside agency approvals."

In the same meeting, officials also reviewed a variance request from a homeowner on Bass Place and Woodside Drive.

The issue in question was a six-foot-high solid white fence, which deviates from the norm that states that a fence in this location should be up to four feet high and 50 percent open.

The board approved the variance allowing the fence to remain, with a few contingencies. The homeowner will have to get after-the-fact permits for the fence and also for a shed inside the yard and will have to provide an as-built survey verifying that the fence is not in the public right of way or anyone's property.

Members of the board mentioned that the place where the fence is built leads to a dead-end wooded area and that it is located so far from the intersection of Bass Place and Woodside Drive that it does not impact the sight triangle.

"If this was the corner lot on a very busy street with a lot of traffic, then maybe this would be a different discussion," engineer Charles Cunliffe said.

The next Howell Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting is on July 26. The board begin to meet in-person starting in September.

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