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New Master Plan approved
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - April 05, 2008)
It may have been April Fool’s Day, but there was no joking around at Tuesday’s meeting of the Montvale Planning Board. After years of work and two lengthy public hearings, the board approved the first comprehensive Master Plan in more than a decade on Tuesday, April 1.
“This Master Plan has been a long time coming,” said Borough Planner Richard Preiss at the April 1 hearing, “and you can’t delay it.”
This Master Plan follows on the heels of a reexamination of the 1997 Master Plan revision, which was completed in 2005, and sets in place zoning recommendations to revitalize the borough’s downtown, residential and remaining open space areas while retaining the corporations that have set up shop in Montvale in recent years.
With the plan’s adoption, it is now the responsibility of the governing body to write ordinances making Preiss’ recommendations law.
Recommendations
The hearing commenced with a PowerPoint presentation by Preiss outlining the Master Plan and its recommendations for the benefit of the public and the mayor and council. Last month, members of the governing body had expressed concern that they had been left out of the Master Plan process and surprise that they would not get to approve the document, which Preiss explained falls solely under the jurisdiction of the planning board. The mayor and council does, however, get a final say in how the plan’s recommendations are implemented, as it is the body that passes legislation based on them.
Ranking high on the list of recommendations is the transformation of the borough’s downtown, namely into a pedestrian-friendly “main street” environment. To accomplish this, Preiss suggested incorporating continuous pedestrian-friendly ground floor retail while prohibiting gap-inducing uses such as gas stations, drive-through banks and parking lots fronting the property line. Outdoor dining and design improvements for consumers, a reduction in parking requirements for businesses, and fencing, landscaping and buffering standards for neighboring residences would create a win-win-win situation, according to the plan.
Not to leave out other retail areas, the proposed plan calls for the redevelopment of the
Appletree
Shopping Center , which currently boasts set back store fronts, by incorporating above-ground residential or office uses. At the Chestnut Ridge corridor, the plan recommends that the borough find ways to attract higher quality tenants comparable to those at the Tice Mall in
Woodcliff
Lake .
To complement these improvements and the recommendation to continue renovation and expansion of the office sector, Preiss recommended roadway and transportation improvements, among them the pursuit of a ramp to northbound Garden State Parkway as well as alterations to the following intersections:
Spring Valley Road and Grand Avenue: This intersection improvement, currently under design, would widen Grand Avenue to five lanes across the
Pascack
Hills
High School frontage and widen
Spring Valley to three lanes southbound and two lanes northbound. The traffic signal would also be replaced.
Spring Valley and Summit Avenue: Also currently under design, this improvement would widen Summit to four lanes westbound and add a left-turn bay eastbound, widen the southbound approach to three lanes with an exclusive right-turn lane and re-stripe northbound approach to allow for four lanes. The traffic signal would be replaced and head-on parking on
Spring Valley would be eliminated.
Grand Avenue at Mill Street: This improvement had been under design, but work on the plan was suspended in 2000. Changes would include realigning the Grand Avenue curve and widening the roadway to 40 feet to permit an eastbound left-turn lane onto Memorial Drive. To move forward with this improvement, the acquisition of the home at the inside of the curve at 47 West Grand Ave.would be necessary.
Smith and Grand avenues: Preiss Shapiro recommends that the borough consider installing a traffic signal at this intersection.
Chestnut Ridge Road and Grand Avenue: The county is considering replacing the existing traffic signal and providing for better phasing and turning lanes.
Besides improving traffic flow in the borough, the plan encourages the use of alternate modes of transportation – walking and biking. The plan recognizes that this is a problem considering the borough’s “fragmented, unconnected and underdeveloped” walkways and complete lack of a bikeway system, but recommends the implementation of both sidewalk improvements and the long-term installation of bike paths to connect residents to businesses, schools, and recreational and community facilities that the borough has or will invest in.
Following the environmentally friendly path, the plan recommends the continued preservation of green areas, the implementation of new stormwater management regulations, the adoption of a tree removal ordinance and continuation of the borough’s Open Space and Recreation Plan. Additional recommendations include “green” building and design requirements with incentives for low-impact development (solar paneled roofs, porous pavement, recycled materials, low-water fixtures) as well as replacing current police, fire and DPW fleets with energy-efficient, alternative fuel and hybrid vehicles.
The plan also proposes preserving the borough’s agricultural past by creating protective zoning for DePiero’s Country Farm Store (currently non-conforming to the underlying zone) and possibly purchasing the development rights of farmland so it can remain agriculturally productive. The borough recently met with Farouk Ahmad from the Bergen County Planning Board to discuss how to finance this venture using grant money, but Preiss said that the plan is still in the conceptual stage.
Various zoning changes, either to make long-term non-conforming uses conforming or to make stagnant land parcels usable, and utilities improvements, such as eliminating the Middletown Road Sanitary Sewer Pump Station by paying River Vale to accept the borough’s sewer flow, round out the proposed Master Plan’s recommendations.
Criticism and rebuttal
“I’m 25 years in this community and I’m very skeptical of anything happening here,” said Alan Wallenstein, one of a handful of residents who attended the hearing. “Why hasn’t anything been done [in the downtown] in 25 years?”
Preiss said that there has been redevelopment in the downtown since the 2005 reexamination, naming CVS and the PNC bank as recent examples and the property at 22 Railroad Avenue as a future example, but warned that residents should not expect to see a complete overhaul of the downtown. Preiss said that a realistic goal is to create zoning that will encourage existing owners to spruce up their properties as well as to encourage pedestrian friendly retail spaces like restaurants, banks and convenience stores to replace existing businesses.
Planning Board Chairman John DePinto agreed with Preiss. “I think it has been done over the years,” said DePinto, adding Pascack Dental Arts, which he said was once a dilapidated storefront, and Davey’s Locker, which has made aesthetic improvements and recently merged parking with the bank next door, adding a dining element and more landscaping, to Preiss’ list.
“Short of condemnation and eminent domain, those really dirty words that nobody wants to hear, the governing body can encourage this through zoning,” said DePinto. “Improvements have been made, but it’s far from perfect.”
Apart from overall skepticism that the recommendations would be effective in achieving the borough’s goals, the Master Plan was criticized as allowing “more development and more traffic” in the borough, “two things the public abhors,” said Art Lavis, a former councilman.
Regarding traffic, DePinto said that in light of the 2006 Tri-Borough Traffic Study, it became clear to him that all the municipalities in the region “are in this together” when it comes to traffic problems. “There are outside forces” apart from land use that affects traffic in Montvale.
One outside force, said DePinto, is the inability to make a right turn at exit 171 on the Garden State Parkway. Permitting the turn was one of the recommendations in the traffic study, but DePinto said Mayor Joseph LaPaglia of Woodcliff has expressed reluctance to move ahead with it. Woodcliff Lake Councilman John Glaser, who attended the hearing, promised to arrange a meeting between Montvale and
Woodcliff
Lake to further discuss this prospect.
Preiss responded to Lavis’ concerns about overdevelopment, stating that the Master Plan talks about “balanced growth,” encouraging revitalization instead of brand new development.
“When I look at this Master Plan,” Preiss said, “I don’t see significant new development.”
Still, Lavis said that by encouraging “excessive overdevelopment,” the Master Plan would increase the borough’s growth share obligation for affordable housing. The Master Plan recommends zoning changes to permit office use; currently, the majority of office development is done by variance.
Lavis’ statement stemmed from concerns about stricter obligations proposed by the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), concerns that were also voiced by James Kimball, also a former councilman, and previously expressed by Martin Kent, a current councilman who also sits on the planning board.
The office sector is a cause for concern, said Preiss, since there is more potential for growth there than in the residential or downtown sectors. The Master Plan’s recommendations pertaining to non-residential development could amount to as much as 70,000 additional square feet if parking garages are not made a permitted use, or 250,000 additional square feet if garages are permitted.
The proposed Round Three obligations would require one affordable unit among five units and one affordable unit for every 16 jobs, and would increase the cost of Regional Contribution Agreements from $35,000 per unit to $67,000 to $80,000 per unit, varying according to the COAH region.
Preiss said that the borough should be cognizant of the proposed COAH regulations, but advised that changing the zoning regulations in accordance with COAH could pose a risk of corporations leaving Montvale altogether.
DePinto said that retention is a major concern when it comes to commercial properties. “These corporations are courted by
New York
State and other municipalities and counties in the state,” he said, stating that Montvale needs to take “affirmative steps” to keep them.
“When we talk about growth,” said DePinto, “growth also occurs with reinvestment into facilities. Growth is retention.”
Preiss said that he does not believe it is necessary to alter the Master Plan or to hold off on its adoption.
“To the extent that it’s necessary, you have to come back and amend the Master Plan. You can’t not adopt it. Adopt it and when COAH comes along, we’ll amend it at that point.”
After hearing from the public, Vice Chairman Frank Stefanelli had just one thing to say: “I’m frustrated,” said Stefanelli, who has been a member of the planning board for eight years. “I hear the same stuff: traffic and overdeveloment. In order to get things done, we need to put our foot down and start moving. That’s what the Master Plan is for.”
Stefanelli said that one of the most important aspects of the Master Plan, for him, is the recommendation to protect DePiero’s, and he suggested putting the possibility of the borough purchasing development rights to referendum.
“We can spend $30, 40, 50 million on our school and open space we don’t think is more valuable?” he asked. “We don’t put our money where our mouths are. [DePiero’s] is not going to be there much longer. I want to preserve that little piece of land that we’ve got.”
Stefanelli added that concerns about overdevelopment should be balanced by the prospect of what would happen if corporations were to start leaving as they once did.
“For a period of time, we were losing companies,” he said, naming Mercedes Benz, Toys R’ Us, BMW, IBM and Sony as examples. Stefanelli said he works in a
New York school district where residents pay about $10,000 in school taxes alone, close to three times what the average Montvale taxpayer can expect to pay for the 2008-2009 school year. “If we lose our companies that’s what we’ll have,” said Stefanelli. “I recommend approval.”
Approval and implementation
The Master Plan was approved by a vote of 7-0, with Donald Boman absent and Councilman Martin Kent abstaining because he was not a board member when the plan was created. is one of four new board members this year.
Preiss explained that the mayor and council could take all of the recommendations, some of the recommendations or none of the recommendations into consideration when creating ordinances. The borough would run into possible legal problems only if the governing body passes an ordinance that is directly in conflict with the Master Plan without following legal procedure, which involves stating the reason for deviation on the record and obtaining a supermajority vote of the council.
“The planning board’s work is really done,” said Preiss to the council. “You as a governing body can say OK and make a list of zoning changes you’d like to see. The planning board could initiate that and put some kind of list together. Or maybe put together a sub-committee with members of both bodies.”
Preiss added that a sub-committee could also include members of the zoning board because “when you screw up, it goes to the zoning board.”
Mayor Roger Fyfe said that the first order of post-Master Plan approval business would be to tackle permitted uses in the borough’s downtown. He said that while most of the existing uses would be “grandfathered in,” creating a comprehensive list of permitted, restricted and prohibited uses would control what goes up in the future. He said residents can expect the mayor and council to begin work within the next couple of months.
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com.
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