New Construction Heights Limited In Parts Of Wayne After Council Vote

WAYNE, NJ — Wayne Township will limit the heights of new construction projects in a number of commercial areas as part of an effort to conserve the town's water supply, officials said.

Currently, the state Department of Environmental Protection will not allow new water main connections in Wayne because the township is at 90 percent of its water usage allocation. Mayor Chris Vergano said that at peak usage times, this has made it difficult to get enough water pressure up to the top floor of St. Joseph's Hospital.

At their last meeting, Township Council approved an ordinance that reduces the maximum height of new construction in certain zones, from either four or six stories down to to two and a half stories. Township Planner Chris Kok said that would limit where major developments could be built.

"If you think about (a hotel), if it's four, five, six stories — the amount of room, the amount of water that would take," he said.

"The idea is to limit these high-intensity uses so that water is more available for low-intensity uses throughout the town."

The change applies to the following zones: Highway Commercial (along Route 23 and Route 46); office buildings in Regional Retail (near Willowbrook Mall and Wayne Towne Center); Office Research (along the Valley Road extension); Industrial (around Old Wayne near the Totowa border, along Westbelt Parkway and Demarest, and up by the Sheriff's Office); and the Wayne Transit Zone.

Building heights will also be limited to 35 feet, except in the Industrial zone, where the limit will be 50 feet.

"If you think about modern warehouses that are coming in, they need a high floor-to-ceiling height to function," Kok explained. "We don't want to create an undue hardship for those sorts of projects."

No changes were made in the Business zone, where building heights are already limited at two and a half stories, or in Residential zones.

As far as the heights of new residential construction under the state's Fair Share Housing Act, where developers are often given special accommodations, Kok said that was a "wild card."

Meanwhile, a proposed project to build a senior housing complex around Hamburg Turnpike would require land use variance, as developers are looking to build five five-story buildings in a zone that is already limited at two and a half stores.

You can view the full ordinance here at the top of the linked document.