Wantage rejects Lower Unionville Road development

Wantage - Last week, the Wantage Land Use Board unanimously rejected the CJS Investments, Inc. of Farmingdale to build a 188-unit development on 52.8 acres of land just off Lower Unionville Road, 230 feet from the border of the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge. The veto came nine months after CJS filed what’s known as a “builder’s remedy lawsuit” in an attempt to force Wantage to approve its application to enable the township to meet state requirements to build its fair share of affordable housing. After filing the lawsuit, the court ordered CJS to submit a project application to the land use board to review before it would allow legal proceedings to go forward. Township attorney Mike Garofalo, of Laddey, Clark & Ryan, said the legal case now depends on the developer’s next move. “Everything is in their court, so to speak,” Garofalo said. “Wantage Township did what the court asked it to do.” “We all came together and we voted for what we thought was right for our community,” said Mayor Jeffrey Parrott. “This project wasn’t right environmentally, nor was it right from the point of view of safety.” In a presentation that residents Ann Smulewicz and Sandra Babcock described as “eloquent,” Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge manager Edward Henry told the land use board that although the refuge took no position on the merits of the proposed CJS development, he wished to express concerns about how the project could affect the refuge, its habitats and its wildlife, as well as the visitors’ experience. “The applicant has failed to present sufficient information to allow the refuge to gauge its impact on its surrounding lands . . . and [the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge] expresses its reservations over moving forward with such a project absent a more reliable and extensive examination of the potential impact,” said Henry, who also cited the presence of habitat suitable for the bog turtle, which is on the federal list of endangered species. Township administrator Jim Doherty said that to the best of his knowledge it had always been the township’s understanding that the 1988 agreement with AMF Developers, from whom CJS is now under contract to buy the Lower Unionville Road property, would have allowed AMF to build low- and moderate-income housing on a different tract of land within the township. But CJS Investments has testified that in 1988, the township had consented to allow a 188-unit project at the Lower Unionville Road site, and the zoning of the property was altered to permit the building to proceed. “When the State of New Jersey came out with the Highlands Bill and COAH round-three obligations, development pressure marched into Wantage,” Doherty said, adding that if the township had moved more rapidly to change the zoning for the land, the lawsuit most likely wouldn’t have occurred. CJS co-owner John Caruso said that it was his company’s policy not to comment on litigation that’s in progress. But Chris Donnelly, of the N.J. Council on Affordable Housing, said that Wantage had exposed itself to the CJS lawsuit after its first-round approval of 1989 expired in January 1995 without any affordable housing units being built. The council doesn’t enforce the law: It is an administrative and regulatory organization that established standards that municipalities must use to estimate their fair share of housing for families with low or moderate incomes. The fair share is founded on the size, growth and distribution of a town’s population and on estimates of how much the population is likely to grow in the next 10 years. New Jersey State law requires municipalities to submit reports to COAH at specified intervals to inform the council what they have done and plan to do to satisfy their obligation. If a municipality fails to submit the reports, or to build its “fair share” housing units, developers who want to build these units have the right to take the municipality to court. The court has the right to compel the municipality to allow the building of more COAH units than its obligation requires. This is called a “builder’s remedy” lawsuit. “Wantage did not file documents for the second or third rounds,” Donnelly said. “Therefore, Wantage no longer has the ability to voluntarily petition COAH for substantive certification and is now under the Court’s jurisdiction.” Township administrator Jim Doherty said that Wantage has now submitted a detailed report that he believes will meet the required standards.