Planning Board Meeting Minutes 20170502

The following minutes are a summary of the Planning Board meeting of May 2, 2016. Interested parties may request an audio recording of the meeting from the Board Secretary for a fee.

Call to Order & Statement of Compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act: Mr. Joel called the meeting to order at 7:40 p.m. The following members were present: MAYOR KNUDSEN, COUNCILMAN VOIGT, Mr. Torielli, MS. ALTANO, Mr. Joel, MS. PATIRE, MR. SCHEIBNER, MS. McWILLIAMS, , and MS. BARTO. Also present were: Elizabeth McManus, Village Planner; Christopher Rutishauser, Village Engineer; Christopher Martin, Esq., and Board Secretary Michael Cafarelli. Ms. Giordano was not present.

Public Comments on Topics not Pending Before the Board – No one came forward.

Committee/Commission/Professional Updates for Non Agenda Topics; Correspondence
Received by the Board – There were none.

Two Forty Associates, Preliminary and Final Major Site Plan, 150-174 Chestnut Street, Block 2005, Lot 38: Adoption of Memorializing Resolution of Approval – Application was carried to May 16, 2017 without further notice and without prejudice to the Board.

Ridgewood/Dayton, Preliminary and Final Major Site Plan, 100/152 South Broad Street, Blocks 3707/3905, Lots 5.01/1.01- Pubic Hearing continued from April 4, 2017 – Following is the transcript of this portion of the meeting, prepared by Laura A. Carucci, C.C.R., R.P.R.: 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. The next item is Two Forty Associates, preliminary and final major site plan, 150 174 Chestnut Street, Block 2005 Lot 38. Adoption of memorializing resolution of approval. This is to be carried to May 16th, 2017 with the consent of the applicant. 
Mr. Wells, is that correct? 
MR. WELLS:  We consent.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wells. 
All right.  We'll move on to our next item, it will be Ridgewood Dayton, preliminary and final major site plan, 150 152 South Broad Street, Blocks 3707/3905; Lots 5.01/1.01. 
This was a public hearing continued from April 4, 2017. 
And, Mr. Wells? 
MR. WELLS: Yes, if we could just have one second to set up a little bit.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Yes, sure. 
MR. WELLS: That didn't help.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: It didn't sound good.
MR. WELLS: That wasn't so bad, I've done worse. My best story ever on messing up a file was leaving it on top of the car and then when you're driving away (Laughter). And then seeing papers behind you, isn't that odd? (Laughter.) For the record, my name is Thomas Wells from the law firm of Wells, Jaworski & Liebman and I'm back here in front of you on the Ridgewood Dayton project, which is at Block 3905, Lot 101 and Block 3707, Lot 5.01. In a way of reminder, we were    we began this process, the most recent process in    last June, June of 2016. And then we had our first hearing in September, on September 6th. Then we were back in front of you on September 20th. Back here on February 7th. And now we're here tonight on May 2nd. I'm going to ask my colleague, Mr. Kohut to give you an exhibit list, which you may recollect that I started keeping a while ago, and I have updated it to include four exhibits that we intend to introduce tonight and exhibits that we've introduced prior to this evening. 
I also took the liberty, as I have in the past, of numbering and listing board exhibits. It's possible the board may not want to use all those exhibits, but it seemed to me to keep us well organized. I went ahead and done that and added most recently, MS. McMANUS' report, which was received on March 30th or dated March 30th, received a few days after that. And then MR. JAHR's report dated April 19th. Both of which had been received by us, presumably by the board as well, and they are subsequent to our last hearing. So, I've giving you this exhibit list so you can see, to get us organized a little bit. As I did with the other application that was before you, which I am the counsel, I took advantage of the fact that we have ordered transcripts    Laura is back in the case, anybody noticed her sister has been doing good coverage while she was out with an injury, but through having transcripts, it was easier for us then listening to the CDs, not that it's not fun to listen to the CDs, but we went back through and wanted to present to the board kind of a little bit of a summary, not of the whole thing, we'll get to the point where I give you a little bit of closing, I can do that. But I did want to remind you, because as is always the case in these matters, especially when they have some complexity and some people who don't necessarily agree with what we're doing, matters get stipulated into the record. So I've summarized both the stipulations that I believe had been made primarily by me, in a couple of cases by witnesses through this evening, and then I have some more that I wanted to discuss this evening. So, the second exhibit is included in the package that Andy just gave you, which we're going to number if we could, A 19    I'm sorry    oh, A 18, which is stipulations previously agreed to. I'll just summarize that real quickly. (Whereupon, Stipulations Previously Agreed to by Applicant are received and marked as Exhibit A 18 for identification.) 
MR. WELLS: You will recollect that when    you may not recollect, but when we first presented this application, we actually had two variances. I've described them as de minimus. One is the variance that is still existing and is still de minimus. It had to do with the steep slope disturbance. The other one was that the back of the retaining wall facing the railroad tracks, as we originally proposed it, was unfinished, since it was block. And Mr. Brancheau who was the planner at that time called that out as a variance. The applicant simply stipulated that we'll put stucco on it. So, the trains going by will see stucco. So, that variance disappeared, but that was the very first stipulation on September 6th, that we will put stucco on that wall. Number two, there's stacked parking or tandem parking, it is sometimes referred to, and we made clear that in all cases when tandem parking spaces were used, it would be assigned to people with a single unit. Actually, there will be a little bit more testimony on that this evening, but we stipulated that on September 6th. Also that the units dedicated for affordable housing would not be clustered. You've heard some discussion from time to time about why it's not necessarily a good idea to put all the affordable units in one place and we've indicated that we certainly would be doing that. So, that was a stipulation as well. Number four, we stipulated that we would certainly meet all state noise level requirements with regard to the rooftop equipment. Number five, the applicant will meet the screening requirements for the rooftop equipment. Again, that was stipulated on September 6th. On September 20th, there had been some concern expressed, I believe by MAYOR KNUDSEN, with respect to the elevator and the client at that point indicated through me, stipulated, that we would add a third elevator to the project. So that was a stipulation that went into the record. Number seven, there was some questions about the standpipes. So, we provided that additional standpipes near the building, if required by the Ridgewood Fire Department, would be added. And that's something we'll probably work out with your engineer as we go forward, but we so stipulated. Number eight was the applicant will truck    will truck snow from the property in the event of large snowstorms. So we explain that's what would happen, because this site, like so many sites, don't really have areas in which large amounts of snow can be collected, so it has to go off site when that happens. Number nine, the applicant will provide adequate shielding for streetlights, that was in response to a concern raised by    I don't remember by who. I believe it was a concern raised be your engineer with respect to Title 39, which has to do with parking enforcement. And we stipulated we would not request Title 39 enforcement. Number 11, the applicant will provide additional "do not enter" signs as recommended by the village professionals, whatever they require, we'll certainly do. Number 12, there was an issue with respect to the water main. We're not exactly clear on where that stands and we'll certainly work with your engineer and the water department, but we've agreed to, if needed, to replace the water main in front of the property. 
So, those are the things that were covered in the three hearings that we've had so far. At the very last hearing, you will recollect that we    well, maybe you'll recollect, it has been a little while, Mr. Disario was testifying as our traffic engineer. He had completed most of his testimony, but had not started on parking, which is the smaller part of his testimony as the traffic engineer. And then MR. JAHR, on behalf of the village, started to ask him some questions and it deteriorated a little bit. And at that point we called it a night. Since that time   and actually it was suggested by the board and certainly agreed by us that we would encourage Mr. Disario and MR. JAHR to meet, you know, not necessarily with us all present while they're meeting, and to talk about any concerns they had. 
MR. JAHR produced a report that I marked. Let me get it right.
MR. MARTIN: BD 6? 
MR. WELLS: Yes, exactly right, BD 6. And made specific recommendations with respect to various traffic and pedestrian improvements that he believes should be made. I'll spare the arguments as to why we don't exactly have to make them, but we would like to make them. So, as a result of MR. JAHR's report, I'm going to stipulate that the applicant will, indeed, construct a sidewalk along the frontage of their project. Number two, we'll stripe and/or restripe crosswalks in the front, on the project frontage, but that we'll also stripe and provide appropriate ADA facilities at all intersections along South Broad Street from Hudson Street to Brainard Place. Third, the applicant will, if requested, mill and pave the full width of South Broad Street along the entire frontage. In other words, just replace the whole street. Number four, the applicant will provide decorative lighting directly adjacent to its development, which is consistent with the lighting found along South Broad Street and elsewhere in the Village. And last, we agreed to cooperate with the village professionals, should they later on decide to assess the effects of pedestrian connectivity on traffic impacts after our development is completed. So those are all new stipulations that I'll put into the record this evening directly responding to the various requests that MR. JAHR made and I believe we've, quite frankly, agreed to everything that he asked for. As I said, Mr. Disario would be back this evening in just a minute. So if you have more specific questions about that, those can certainly be asked. =Last, MS. McMANUS has come on board as your planner since we began the application, obviously Mr. Brancheau began the process. She produced a new report, which was dated January    I'm sorry, March 30th. Unlike the other report that I spoke to the board on, it was not nearly as ladened with comments that    that we found difficult to deal with so late in the process. However, there were some comments made, and in most cases, here as well I'm going to refer the board and MS. McMANUS to previous testimony, which obviously she wasn't able to attend to hear, but with respect to the architectural screening for the parking, Mr. Appel did testify on that, that we believe we've appropriately screened it. And I've given the reference to where he testified, and where that can be found in the transcript. The amenity deck is shown on the architectural plans. It is not terribly clear, so we    I'm stating right here that access is obtained from the first floor where it's actually shown on the plan, but there's    that's where the access is from. Number three, the applicant had previously stipulated    and I didn't list it in my previous list because it comes up here, that    in response to, I think, Mr. Brancheau's comments that the trees at the front of the property would not be fruit bearing or flowering. He was concerned about that. 
The new planner, MS. McMANUS has indicated that she's concerned specifically that the yew species could be a problem with respect to poisonous berries and was concerned about the dwarfed winged euonymus, whatever that is. I'll leave it to the planner's and landscape architects as to what is that is. In any event, what we're simply going to do is stipulate that we'll be happy to work with the village professionals with respect to the actual species that is chosen. We're all looking for things that are attractive and certainly safe for residents of the project and anybody whom may come by. There was a dormer suggestion with respect to the architecture. Here too there was specific testimony by Mr. Appel on September 6th, during his extensive testimony, which I'm referring the board to. And then last, it was testimony with respect to the noise mitigation by Mr. Appel on September 6th, and I did indicate here, MR. LOVENTHAL is going to be my very last witness, and if there is further questions about noise mitigation, perhaps he can answer them. So what do we intend to do this evening? We're going to bring Mr. Disario back up. He is basically done with his testimony with respect to traffic in terms of his direct. It is possible, obviously, that the board or others could have questions and that he be available for that. As I said, we've responded to MR. JAHR's comments since that time. I will specifically ask him to discuss the issue of parking, because he had not done that, we bifurcated that. So we'll finish that. He'll be open for your questions and that would hopefully conclude our expert witnesses. During the course of this hearing, and prior to this hearing during the Master Plan process, board members have had a chance to meet or at least see in the audience some 50 times Mr. Scott Loventhal who is the principal with Garden Homes that's responsible for this project, and because he is particularly knowledgeable and hands on about this project, I'm going to bring him as a witness as well. Not as an expert witness, although he is an attorney and a long term developer and certainly has expertise, but to simply answer any operational questions that you have. And you will note, although I didn't bring him back up now, because he has the list, during the course of the other hearings we've had on this, the other three nights, from time to time I would say MR. LOVENTHAL could probably answer that better. So he is going to attempt wherever I had said that before to answer it better. But his testimony will be fairly brief, basically to cover any open items that are here. And he is available, as are our other witnesses, for any questions that you might have. And that will conclude, what we intend to do, in terms of expert testimony. And then MR. LOVENTHAL will be prepared to answer any questions and close our case. So that said, in the way of introduction, any questions of me? Oh, I have one other thing I wanted to mention. I shouldn't    I'll give some credit to your attorney, with my last exhibit, there's a two page legal opinion from me basically speaking to the board about what I believe is the appropriate legal review standard in this matter and, in fact, any matter before the Planning Board for    and in particular something where the zoning is within the code and the site plan is basically conforming. But rather than wax eloquent again or put more lawyer time into it, the memorandum that MR. MARTIN and his office prepared that was submitted in the earlier application was    it was a very extensive and very well written primer on this very subject. As I say in my cover letter, although it was    it is specifically related or titled as to do with the Chestnut Village that's virtually the only place where Chestnut Village is mentioned, and it virtually is a primer that I recommend to this board. Therefore, I have attached it to my letter and I would like to enter it into this record as my last exhibit, which is, I believe, A 21, which would form our basic thoughts to you in terms of a legal standard of review. And I'll speak more on that when I do summation, but I wanted you to have that material in front of you. (Whereupon, Letter dated May 2, 2017 from Thomas M. Wells, Esq. Re: Legal Review Standard is received and marked as Exhibit A 21 for identification.)
MR. WELLS: Any questions? 
MR. MARTIN: Mr. Wells, thank you for that last exhibit. I just    I'll probably get a little bit more specific on certain instances with regard to this application, but thank you.
MR. WELLS: No, and I    and I understand that you may well do that as well, but it was so stellar, I may be using it outside of the Village of Ridgewood. I decided I'm not going to rewrite it. It's already written well for the board, so... 
MR. MARTIN: No copyright on it.
MR. WELLS: As you know us attorneys, we don't get really to copyright things.  I've even read briefs where I thought, "boy, that sounds good", and I wrote that.  It comes back. Okay. Should I call Mr. Disario? 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Did anyone have any questions? 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT?
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yeah, I do. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Yes.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  As to page 1 of the stipulations, Chris, you published a memo on September 6th, 2016, review and submitted materials and one of the comments you made was the age of the sanitary sewer collection system and examining the flow volumes and peak times and particularly under wet weather conditions. As a stipulation, I mean, if that needs to be upgraded, is that something that we should have as a stipulation, that it's evaluated and if need be upgraded, that the developer will    would pay for that? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: I'm not going to get into what the developer's contribution would be, but I would recommend that a condition of approval be that an examination be made of receiving sanitary sewer line to confirm that there is adequate capacity for the anticipated flow from this project. And that would be from South Broad, I think this sewer line runs down towards East Ridgewood and heads east on East Ridgewood Avenue. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: So you could do that at the site; is that correct? I mean, as far as the flow, looking in this? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: It would something I would have to do with the applicant's engineers.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  They may, as with another application that the board has heard, do some readings and analysis of the current flow in the line to determine what that is, and then we would look at what their anticipated calculated flow is to make sure everything would fit adequately.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yeah, and then you also mentioned under wet weather conditions, I'm assuming that's kind of    probably be kind of an extreme condition whereas   
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Wet weather conditions would be more of a worst case scenario.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yes.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Particularly for our system, because it is relatively porous. Our flow volumes do increase significantly during significant rain events. So we still    and we still have to, in fairness to the applicant, make sure that their waste products do get conveyed to our treatment plant. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay.  So, can we add that as a stipulation that that would   
MR. WELLS: Yes, first I'll comment, I have never appeared in any town where the rain didn't infiltrate the system. So that wet weather conditions, we certainly understand. And, yes, we'll stipulate to work with the engineer on that.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Anything else, Jeff?  Is that it?
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  That's it.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Does anyone else have any questions before   
MS. PATIRE:  Actually, it's funny because Jeff I was going to ask the same question I asked Melanie, is it something, if everyone got in the shower at the same time, do we have capacity to bring water to that site?  I know he's talking about waste, but I actually asked Melanie, if we ever talked about anything before   
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Well   
MS. PATIRE:     if you're going to shower at the same time, we take    we take the water   
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Are you interested in potable supply or   
MS. PATIRE:  Yes, yes.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  As far as I understand, from what Ridgewood Water has provided, I think they have provided, Mr. Wells can confirm, a Will Serve letter.
MR. WELLS:  They did.
MS. PATIRE:  They did?  Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  They did. So that's   
MR. WELLS:  They did. That's part of the record, A 20, of your exhibits.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  That means Ridgewood Water is comfortable in providing the water means   
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:    for what is proposed.  
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  From the wastewater end, designers have what is known as peak factors, that would be used to anticipate the flow. And that is what I would do with the applicant's engineers to confirm the conveyance needs had the capacity to bring waste to our plant. Our treatment plant, as I believe I mentioned in my memo, has adequate capacity for any increase proposed by this developer. 
MS. PATIRE:  All right.  Thank you. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  You're welcome. 
MR. MARTIN:  Mr. Wells, the stipulation sheet's going to get updated where would you like    where would you like to add that last one that Mr. Voigt and Chris just went over?  I just want to put it down, so...
MR. WELLS:  Oh, yes, I would suggest that that's just   
MR. MARTIN:  Previously agreed to? 
MR. WELLS:  Well, that would be a new one.  You can add it onto the sheet, if you'd like, on the first of the sheets, where stipulations previously agreed by the applicant, you can certainly make it 13 on that, but it's really going to be reflected in this evening's, you know, so anything that happens tonight is sort of new, but, you know, that's fine.
MR. MARTIN:  Right.  Okay.
MR. WELLS:  Ultimately, preparing the stipulations, as I did, is really for    to help the board remember what I've promised, because so much time has gone by, but, also, quite frankly, to assist your office, when you    because they ultimately have to find their way into the approval resolution and that's sort of the governing document, not what we present here.  So it's really to assist more than    and, rarely, do you go back to the actual record in the course of the resolution.
MR. MARTIN:  You saw where I was going? 
MR. WELLS:  Yes.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  I just do have one more question. I'm sorry. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Sure.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay. Mr. Wells, you talked about    I just want to make sure I understand what this means, milling and paving the full width of Board Street along the entire frontages, now help me to understand what that means for the entire    I mean, is it the whole   
MR. WELLS:  Yes, basically   
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:     length of the property or... 
MR. WELLS:  The length of the property, completely replace the street. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Right.
MR. WELLS:  Milling and paving, I    Mr.    your engineer can tell you better, but essentially you're grinding up and you're putting new, you know, Chris, help me. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Yes.  Generally they're milled to resurface with 2 inches of fresh top mix.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  For example, we just did that on Heights Road from West Glen north, three, four blocks.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Yeah, so, Chris, just so    just to add onto that, I mean, it's going to    we're going to have this nice section of road and then on the other sides, I'm assuming, it's    is that going to be redone as well? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  It is    it would be our intention. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Our intention may be working, if this is approved and this goes forward as just presented, we would like to work with the applicant that once they're done, that any village program on South Broad Street, they would probably pay their portion of the work in front of their site, as Mr. Wells just agreed, and it would be done by the village's contractor. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  That may be easier for all parties.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yeah, and then they're obviously, however    probably be done at the same time, so that's not going to   
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Yeah.  I mean, it would    just milling out that short section would be a cumbersome task. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yeah.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  It's a lot easier to do it if you resurface the entire South Broad from East Ridgewood Avenue down to    passed Brainard, certainly. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay.
MR. WELLS:  Which  
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  The whole section.
MR. WELLS:  Which everybody would be pleased with, so that we'll certainly work to see if that could be accomplished.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay.  Thank you.
MR. MARTIN:  The machines would be there and everything would already be set up by the developer that just can go ahead. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Yeah.  Or, again, our paving contractor would be set up and whatever tonnage in there, if it was expended, in agreement with them, they would reimburse us for.
MR. WELLS:  It is more typically it would be the village's contractor we would reimburse that cost, that would be the more typical way, than the other way around. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Yes. I mean, the Village has put in South Broad Street for a New Jersey Department of Transportation Municipal Aid Grant for 2016. 
Unfortunately 2016 was the year that the state had no money, so that grant got denied.  We may reapply, and then that would help offset the Village's costs for the work along South Broad.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Thank you. 
No further questions? 
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  All right, Mr. Wells.
MR. WELLS:  Okay.  I'll re call Mr. Disario.
D A N   D I S A R I O, having been previously sworn, continues to testify as follows: 
MR. MARTIN:  Good evening, Mr. Disario.  You remain sworn and qualified. Okay? 
MR. DISARIO:  Yes.
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. WELLS:
Q. Mr. Disario, I told the board that what was left of your testimony was to discuss the parking.  So if you would, tell us about the parking, what's proposed? 
A. Certainly. 
As the board is aware, a total supply of 187 parking spaces are proposed, that exceeds the requirement of 183 parking spaces as set forth by the Residential Site Improvement Standards. So, we exceed the requirement by four parking spaces. That parking supply consists of what I'll call standard spaces, as well as the term that you heard Mr. Wells refer to, tandem parking spaces.
So, a tandem parking space, you can liken it to a single family home, where you have a garage space and then you have a driveway in front of the garage space that could accommodate another vehicle. So, those two vehicles, one in the garage and one in the driveway, would be tandem to each other. Now, the question that always inevitably arises as to how you manage the use of the tandem parking spaces, because obviously if somebody is parked in the first space of a tandem parking space, and you have another vehicle in the second space of the tandem parking space, how does the first vehicle get out? It's simple. Those tandem spaces will be assigned to a specific unit within the building. So each tandem space or stall, so there's two parking spaces, will be assigned to a single unit. I refer you to    and I'm not sure in terms of the exhibit number, Tom. So, I have my report, which was revised January 26th of this year as Exhibit A 14.
Q. Yes.
A. Okay. So, referring to Exhibit A 14 in Table 5, there's a parking assignment summary.  Just to take you through how the parking, as proposed, will be managed. It's rather simple. For 79 units will be assigned one parking space for a total of 79 parking spaces; 19 units will be assigned two spaces, which are the tandem spaces. So, 19 units will have a total of 38 parking spaces assigned to them, all of them tandem. That leaves a balance of 75 parking spaces; 22 of those remaining parking spaces may be assigned to a unit that desires to have an additional parking space beyond the one that they're already assigned. And the remaining 53 parking spaces will be unassigned. They'll be available to residents, visitors, and they also consist of the accessible parking spaces that are proposed. So, again, just in summary, 74 units will be assigned one space, 19 units will be assigned all of tandem parking spaces, which equate to 38. There will be 22 other spaces that could be assigned to another unit, if they desire to have an additional parking space. And 53 spaces will be unassigned and available to visitors, residents, as well as the accessible parking spaces. I can tell you, I've worked on a few projects where tandem parking was proposed and is part of the overall parking supply. And in my experience there's never been an issue with respect to the use of tandem parking spaces. And it really largely comes down to a management situation in terms of how management assigns and monitors the use of the parking, not only tandem, but as well as the other spaces. In my experience, there's never been an issue. I think when you hear from the applicant when he comes up here, shortly thereafter from me, he's going to echo that in terms of they have multiple projects with tandem parking, and their experience is consistent with mine. There's never been an issue with respect to the use of tandem in any of our projects. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. 
MR. WELLS:  I'm done with my questions of Mr. Disario. So I would open to the board.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. Dave, do you have any questions for Mr. Disario? 
MR. SCHEIBNER:  No.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: COUNCILMAN VOIGT?
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  I know this was    this was part of the last discussion where it kind of, as Mr. Well's said, kind of degraded. And I just need some help with understanding from your tables that you have in your August 24th, 2016 report, and I looked at the    kind of rough surface, how it kind of increased dramatically, at the conclusion of this particular development. And I need some understanding as to why those numbers deviate so dramatically from the existing conditions. And I was hoping you could kind of explain that to me. It's Table 4, and it relates to some of the North and    South Broad intersection with East Ridgewood Ave and South Broad. Would you be able to kind of go through them, just so I could understand a little bit better, because my assumption is that this data we're going    we're going to create a much worse situation than currently exists at that intersection, so...
THE WITNESS: Well, not to get too technical, but that intersection is a stop controlled intersection.  And the unsignalized intersection methodology that we use to evaluate how a stopped control intersection operates, when you get to a failing condition in    right now during    and you're referring to Table 4, which is a weekday evening peak hour    
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Uh huh.
THE WITNESS:    you get a lot of traffic coming southbound on Broad either trying to come through that intersection or making a left onto Ridgewood Ave. So, that particular approach is failing today. When you get to failure with this methodology, the delay calculation becomes, in my opinion, oversensitive to additional volume that's introduced into the intersection, such that any additional traffic, albeit very small additions of traffic, translate to a severe increase in calculated load. But to quantify this for everyone, two things, we've assumed that all of the traffic that we've estimated that this project will generate, that everyone is driving their car. When in reality, some people are going to walk to work, some people are going to walk to the train. Some people are going to walk to the downtown business district in the evening or during the day. 
So, our estimates are conservative in that I think there will be less traffic generated by this development then we've estimated for the reasons I've stated. Aside from that conservative assumption, just to quantify what we're talking about as it relates to the intersection in question, coming north on Broad, making a right turn onto Ridgewood, we're talking about one additional vehicle every 15 minutes on average. It's similar in terms of vehicles coming down Ridgewood making a left onto Broad. So, the amount of additional traffic associated with this project, in my opinion, is not significant. Yes, in terms of applying the methodology it equates to a large increase in delay, all right? But when you take a step back and look at it practically, you're not going to be able to receive a noticeable change in operations, because the amount of additional vehicles through that intersection attributed to this project is not that high.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: So why did you apply this methodology then if it makes it look so bad? 
THE WITNESS: Because we, as traffic engineers, are prescribed to use this methodology to evaluate traffic conditions.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: So these numbers are accurate?
THE WITNESS:  When you get to a failure condition, like we have for the southbound approach, I'm respectfully submitting to you that I think the delay associated with the methodology over estimates the delay. And it's supersensitive to increase in traffic volumes. You could increase it by one vehicle and you're going to see a dramatic increase in delay as calculated by the methodology.  So it's flawed.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Thank you.
THE WITNESS:  You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  MAYOR KNUDSEN? 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Did you say it's wrong?
THE WITNESS:  Flawed.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Oh.
THE WITNESS:  Flawed.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  I have a question on the tandem parking. Pardon me. I just want to get the right location. What is the widths of the aisles in the parking lot? 
THE WITNESS:  They're all 24 feet.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: And then how many of the tandem spaces are within, let's say, proximity to an entrance or exit? 
THE WITNESS: The entrance and exits that are proposed along Broad Street? 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Within the parking area? 
THE WITNESS: So, Mayor, I'm a little confused by your question, but let me just take you through the site plan. So we're referring to Exhibit A 11. We have a driveway on the northerly end of the site proposed to Broad, that would be an in only driveway (indicating). On the southerly end of the site we have another driveway that's proposed to Broad that would be exit only. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: No, I'm talking about the exit to the parking area, how many    and maybe I misspoke.
THE WITNESS: Well, we have a perimeter circulation aisle, which is one way and that circulation aisle connects from the enter driveway on Broad to the exit driveway on Broad, one way circulation in a counterclockwise pattern. Along that circulation aisle that runs along the perimeter of the site, there is intersecting circulation aisles that take you into the majority of the parking that's proposed underneath the building. In terms of tandem parking nearby, I guess these interior intersections, is the question you're asking?
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Yeah, I'm interested in knowing how many of the tandem spaces are actually within that proximity of the exiting or entering the parking area. 
THE WITNESS:  My quick count is about eight.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  So, just in terms of tandem parking management, and you said kind of like a single family house, the driveway is what you're expressing, but the difference in that scenario is that you don't have other vehicles insinuated into the area coming in and out of that. So doesn't that impact negatively to the proposed traffic exiting and entering? 
THE WITNESS: One    I'll give you two    a two part answer to that. I live in a single family house.  It's my wife, me, my daughter and my son. Both of them have licenses now. It's no different than us parking    let me back up. My wife's Italian. We have a two car garage. It only takes one car, because we have to have the fridge and the freezer outside taking up my spot where I would normally park my car in. So having said that, my wife gets the garage spot, my daughter and my son park on the driveway behind the garage spots, and dad parks on the street, because I'm usually the last one to come home, because of hearings like this every night, which is    so when my wife wants to leave to go to her teaching position in the morning and my daughter, who doesn't need to leave until later is parked behind her, my daughter has to get in her car and pull out into the street where there's traffic along the street going up and down, just like if you had    just like if you had tandem spots, where this grey is, that's a circulation aisle coming in. It's no different than traffic that would be circulating up and down this aisle (indicating) with tandem spaces here and somebody pulls out into that aisle. It's directly analogous to my situation in my house, but we're pulling out to a public street as opposed to an interior circulation, parking circulation aisle. The second part, to answer your question is, what you've asked is no different than the spots that are not tandem along these aisles (indicating). The spots that are just single spots, it's the same situation, somebody pulling out from a single spot is confronted with the exact same amount of traffic, if you will, if there's anyone circulating in the two way aisle pulling out from a single spot. So I think when you start to look at this in context, it's a 93 unit residential building. You're not going to see a lot of circulation occurring along those aisles at any particular time. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Okay. Thank you. I'm good.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay.
MR. MARTIN: Just a quick follow up question on that: Is the 24 feet there, is that two way traffic? 
THE WITNESS: Yes, that's standard. Standard parking design practice, 9 by 18 stalls, so 9 foot wide by 18 foot deep, that's what we're proposing, served by 24 foot wide aisles for a two way circulation. That's standard parking design. 
MR. WELLS: I was going to ask you to emphasize circulation, but I think you've really done it completely. The only question that I don't    the board may not understand, you talked about the fact that it would be one way around the building, two way individual aisles, but one way around the building.
THE WITNESS: Correct.
MR. WELLS: How wide would the access drive be around the building?
MR. MARTIN: That was my next question.
THE WITNESS: I was going to shoot from the hip and say 30 feet, because typically that's what it is, but in this instance it's 31 feet. So there's a 31 foot wide circulation aisle around the perimeter of the site. 
MR. WELLS: So, my follow up question on that, the board members may be curious or maybe not, but if per chance someone was stopped or disabled or whatever, for whatever reason, along that way, even though it's not two way traffic, the one way traffic would never be impeded by virtue of that? 
THE WITNESS:  No. And, typically, one way circulation aisles in terms of ordinance standards, range in widths from 12 to 15 feet. So, effectively, we're proposing a one way circulation aisle around the site that's twice as wide as typically required.
MR. WELLS:  That's exactly right.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay. Frances, do you have any questions? 
MS. BARTO: I don't have any questions, no.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Melanie? 
MS. McWILLIAMS:  How wide is the street currently right there in front, Broad Street, right in there? 
MR. WELLS:  Chris, do you know? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  Probably around 28, 30 feet.
MR. WELLS:  I was going to say about 30 feet. We may not know that or he's going to measure it. 
THE WITNESS: Yeah, it's got some on street parking on it and two way flow.  It's going to be on the order of 30, probably a little wider.
MS. McWILLIAMS: Okay. And if    do you know if it's considered an arterial street or    Chris may be better to answer this, but if I read it correctly, and I might have a couple of numbers off, but I believe it's looked to widen on the development's place there, 50 feet or 60 feet or 30, 40 and then including the right of way. 
THE WITNESS: I'll defer to your engineer. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER: That could be a problem on South Broad Street, widening just in front of the development, because the street is relatively consistent from East Ridgewood Avenue southward. If we were to make a wider section in front of this development, it could lead people to think that was, like, additional on street parking. And I don't believe we are intending it to have on street parking in front of this applicant.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay.  Is there no parking in front of there?
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  I believe there's no parking in front.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  No parking?  Okay. And sidewalks, I think, are required, once the development is put in, to be replaced on both sides of the street? I don't actually know right off the top of my head about sidewalks. I think they're on the other side currently. 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  There are sidewalks on both sides of the street and I think that MR. JAHR had a pedestrian circulation plan with those recommendations. 
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I saw it.
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  And I believe Mr. Wells had stipulated that they would agree to that.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay. 
MR. WELLS:  No, we're replacing the sidewalk on our side of the street. 
MS. McWILLIAMS:  On their side.
MR. WELLS:  The other side is fine as far as I can tell. 
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I mean, I just    I'm just double checking a few different facts, but    so if widening that street there to accommodate for a development of that size isn't really an option, I'm not    I    you know, I guess I'm just struggling with that for a moment, but that's okay. 
THE WITNESS:  Well, let me just touch on it for a second. In my opinion, there is really no reason to widen Broad Street. When you get wider roadways, people drive faster. So I believe to be in keeping with the context of the character of the area and the volumes that are going to be generated by this development at the driveways, there's more than sufficient width that exists today for those driveways to operate safely and efficiently. 
MS. McWILLIAMS: Yeah, I'm definitely aware of all of that and concerned with the safety of the entire development. I'm trying to additionally, you know, look ahead and    to all the other development being put in the area, you know, we're adding more congestion. So I mean if the idea is to minimize congestion by keeping the roadway wider, I understand. I certainly wouldn't    I think everybody knows I wouldn't want anything to be less safe. 
MR. WELLS:  Can I suggest something? This follows on what Chris said a few minutes ago. The problem we have is if you think about the street starting at East Ridgewood Avenue and running all the way out, it would be very difficult to widen the entire street and unless you were widening the entire street, it would actually make it less safe to widen it for one small section and then go back to thin again.  So it really doesn't make any sense. In addition to the fact that we're creating only one car every 15 minutes. So it's not    we're not substantially increasing what's there.
THE WITNESS:  And why    I could tell you there's a lot    I'm not going to make any comparisons to the village, because I know you're unique onto yourself, so I won't do that. But I can tell you there's other municipalities with very wide streets that are implementing what's called a "road diet," they're starting to narrow the streets down, because they find it's better for pedestrians. So, your widened streets, have longer crosswalks, they require people to be in the travel way longer as we're making crossings. So, really the trend, especially in areas such as what we're talking about, the trend is for narrower streets and really to return the right of way to pedestrians and bicyclists, as opposed to vehicles. 
MS. McWILLIAMS: Definitely, I've heard of that and very familiar with it. My last question, I think maybe the Mayor covered it already, the tandem parking. You don't foresee    you know, I have concerns, I guess, about anybody needing to back out or move the    you know, do the car swap when you have somebody coming and they have to wait. If somebody pulls up, you know, say somebody comes up behind them as they're getting ready to do the car switch, do you have    do you then have to have enough space and room for people to back in, back all the way out so somebody else can back out, pull out? It's two way right where the tandem    tandem parking is.  So if somebody would only maybe have to do one lap around.
THE WITNESS:  All the parking is served by two way aisles. And we're not talking about a large parking lot. So if you get into your vehicle and you're not a tandem user, let's say, and you start to make your way out towards the one way circulation aisle, you're going to be able to see all the way to the one way circulation aisle. So if you see someone pulling out and they're in a tandem spot, you're probably going to get used to stopping far    far enough back to let them pull out and do the car swap. 
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay.  Thank you.
THE WITNESS:  You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay.  Debbie? 
MS. PATIRE: Yeah. Just a few things. I don't necessarily disagree with you on the wider streets means faster cars. I guess my question to you is: Based on where the cars would be exiting the building and making a right hand    I'm sorry    making a left hand turn, there is on street parking in front of New York Sports Club, in front of the church and stuff there, so if your average parking spot, I think you said was 9 feet wide; is that right  
THE WITNESS:  Not when it's parallel.  So on street parking, parallel parking is   
MS. PATIRE:  No.  In    in your parking   
THE WITNESS:     is less.
MS. PATIRE:    garage it's 9 feet wide, is a parking spot? 
THE WITNESS:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:  So, the street is about 30 feet wide. Right? So three cars on that street, you got two way traffic and parking, let's just call it 27 feet and if the street is 30 feet wide, do you feel that it's safe for two cars going this way with on street parking (indicating)? 
THE WITNESS:  Absolutely.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.  So, you have never had anyone block your car or    that's a narrow    it's just that it is a narrow street in that vicinity with the on street parking there.
MR. WELLS:  Maybe you can help by simply saying how wide is a parallel parking space typically?
THE WITNESS:  Typically a parallel parking space is anywhere from 6  to 8 feet wide.   
MS. PATIRE:  The average car   
THE WITNESS:  Well, it; s not   
MS. PATIRE:    what's the average car?  So an average car     
THE WITNESS:  Six feet.
MR. WELLS:  Six feet.
MS. PATIRE:  Six feet wide? Okay. So they're parked and the curb is 7 feet? So    okay, so my question to you is   
THE WITNESS:  But just remember, and I think we lose sight of this sometimes, this is not a greenfield site. There were businesses prior in use on this site.  
And right now the site's being used for commuter parking, where you have cars coming in and out all day. So it's an active site with respect to turning maneuvers in and out of it and to our knowledge there's been no issue with respect to people turning around  
MS. PATIRE:  I'm looking at the proposed ingress and egress, so that's what I'm looking at right now, what you're proposing, and what you're proposing so it's not about    I'm not comparing what it's being used today, what the cars are or their    or their habits or routine. I'm just looking at where you have your ingress and egress and does it make sense for the proposed building.  So I'm just looking at that, how people "live" on that street, when they park in the morning and go to the gym, dropping their kids off at church, what they're doing in that area.  So that was my question. Do you feel that that's safe with the size road to have parking and two way traffic. 
THE WITNESS: Without question, yes. 
MS. PATIRE:  Okay. That was my question. 
Thank you.
MR. WELLS: You're welcome.
MS. ALTANO: Just one quick question: Regarding your methodology coming up with the right amount of parking spaces, and I'm sure, you know, it works, because you do it many times, but have you ever gone back to a project already completed and actually seen if this works? If actually what you've done and what you have incorporated in your study worked out either better or worse? 
THE WITNESS: Are you taking about specifically the tandem parking and how it operates or the overall parking supply? 
MS. ALTANO: Well, basically the whole parking supply, you know, relative to the site and how you come    the methodology you were talking about before.
THE WITNESS: So what the requirement is, is set forth by state statutes. And we're bound by that as well as the board in terms of a parking requirement. So we have no control over that. 
What I can tell you, though, is our parking supply equates to about two spaces per unit. It's 93 units are proposed, we have 187 parking spaces proposed. I can tell you I've done parking studies at other developments, rental residential developments. The actual peak parking demands that we have found at other developments are lower than the parking supply that's proposed. 
So I anticipate that you're not going to see a parking    peak parking demand approach the number of parking spaces that are proposed, but, again, we're bound by state statute to provide that number of parking spaces and that's what the applicant has proposed for that reason.
MS. ALTANO:  It's also you're confident that    that shouldn't be any problem? 
THE WITNESS:  With all due respect, I am extremely confident that the proposed parking supply is going to be more than adequate to accommodate the demands that this proposed project will generate.
MS. ALTANO:  Okay.  And the other thing is that a funny segue to your refrigerator story, I'm Italian and I don't have a refrigerator in my garage.  So get your spot back.
THE WITNESS:  We have a fridge and a freezer.  
MR. WELLS:  Do you have a second kitchen?
THE WITNESS:  We don't have a second kitchen. 
MR. MARTIN:  The Irish only have one refrigerator and freezer. 
MR. WELLS:  One for beer and one for the food? 
MR. MARTIN:  Yeah, how'd you know?
MS. ALTANO:  Thank you.
THE WITNESS:  You're welcome. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Joel, any other questions?
VICE CHAIRMAN TORIELLI: I'm not going to discuss the freezer in my house.
No questions. 
MR. WELLS:  Thank you.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: I don't have any questions either, so I guess   
MR. SCHEIBNER: Rich, I have one follow up question.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Yeah, sure.
MR. SCHEIBNER: One of the areas in which your analogy doesn't work with the tandem parking is the fact that so many of these tandem places are so close to the wall that you can only back out in one direction.
THE WITNESS: Right. And they're at the end of the aisles. So you're not going to have anybody that's coming up towards you, because you're at the end at the aisle  
MR. SCHEIBNER:  But the car that is backing out is in the way of the cars going to follow  
THE WITNESS: Right. They would have to  
MR. SCHEIBNER:  They're going to have to back out all the way out to another aisle in order to allow the first car to even get out.  They're both going to have to back up that distance.
THE WITNESS: You're correct. The first car will have to back out and leave. They might have to go out to another parking aisle and then come back in or they're    what's likely going to happen, I'll tell you what the likely scenario is, there's going to be empty parking spaces in the row or the aisle that they're going to do this maneuver in. So one of the    the vehicle that's in the back of the tandem will pull into one of the empty spaces, the one that's in the front of the tandem will pull out and leave, and the first one will pull back in and probably park in the first tandem spot or they might just go to an unassigned parking space to allow the first vehicle to leave and then just leave it in the unassigned parking space until they're ready to go. 
MR. SCHEIBNER:  I foresee a lot of driving in the    in these lanes in reverse, which I think really does present a little bit of a safety issue. 
THE WITNESS: I think all of the parking spaces you're going to have to reverse in order to leave, which is not uncommon to any type of shopping center that you may shop at. When you have 90 degree parking and two way circulation aisles, you have to drive in reverse to leave a spot.  So this is not an atypical situation.
MR. SCHEIBNER: It's more than reverse to leave the spot. You would have to reverse and go down an aisle in reverse in order to get to a place where you can go forward. 
THE WITNESS: If you're at the end of any of these circulation aisles, that last spot can pull out and then pull forward up the aisle towards the one way circulation perimeter aisle and then park in an available space. You're not going to be backing up out of any of these spaces all the way out to the perimeter circulation aisle. 
MR. SCHEIBNER: I disagree. You're going to have to back out all the way out to one of the    one of the other aisles. 
THE WITNESS: We're going to respectfully disagree then. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Let me ask you another question.
THE WITNESS: Sure.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: On Dave's point. Is it fair to rely on the other empty spaces that may or may not exist?  Is it fair, I mean, as this planning board, as it relates to us, is it fair for us to assume that those spaces necessarily will be empty and available for somebody to do that? I mean it may be the best case scenario, but what if in the worst case scenario someone had a party, someone had visitors, somebody else had their cleaning people, someone else had a service person painting apartments, I don't know, whatever people do, but they might have guests. So, is it fair, just in terms of circulation, safety, and, again, to Dave's point, having to back out, should we assume that there will always be a parking space or a way for somebody to avoid backing up that distance. 
THE WITNESS:  Well, I think there's a flawed assumption. My opinion is that someone is not going to back out of one of the spaces that are at the end of the circulation aisles and then back out in reverse all the way to the perimeter circulation aisle. So, we can respectfully disagree on that point. I'm offering you my opinion as an expert traffic engineer. That's not going to happen. Similarly, I don't think the board has to rely on, oh, if there's an available parking space in the aisle where somebody needs to back out because of a tandem space, no, I don't think you should rely on that. So I think you're charged with looking at things practically. You're going to hear from the applicant where he has this type of tandem parking in multiple projects that's operated without an issue. I can tell you I've worked on two projects where this identical design is implemented in operation and I could tell you it is operated without issue. If you want to talk worst case scenario, and I think it would be very unlikely to happen, but worst case scenario, somebody can pull out, leave the site and come back in and then park where they need to park if they need to let somebody out. But that would assume that there's no available parking spaces in the aisle that they're coming from or anywhere else on the site. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  So now, I mean, we're actually kind of speculating here, but I guess that if two people had to do that, that would then add to your traffic generation, your trips   
THE WITNESS:  It would   
MAYOR KNUDSEN:     and then that would change that number.
THE WITNESS:  In terms of the driveway movements, absolutely. 
I can tell you that the analysis shows the driveway is going to operate with very high excess capacity. So in the unlikely event you get a couple of people going out and coming back in, there will be absolutely no issue with respect to the driveway operations or operations along Broad.
MS. PATIRE: Mr. Disario, could I ask a question? 
THE WITNESS:  Sure.
MS. PATIRE: On something you said earlier that raised a point and made me think. 
So my husband, I love him dearly, I am Italian, he is not. And he is    he's a little lazy, but I love him. So let's just pretend that him and I have a tandem spot and we're in one of these wonderful apartments. And he knows he has to leave for a meeting early in the morning and he gets home before I do from work, because I'm here at a board meeting like you. He would park in the second tandem spot and force me, his lovely wife, to go and drive around and use a different spot that isn't occupied at that time. So maybe it's more towards the applicant, but what would you do to ensure that my husband and I, who have these two tandem spots, aren't taking up other spots from folks that live in the building, right, based on your calculations about 187 spots, I know that there's only four quote, unquote, above the quota for the spots, what would you do to ensure that we are both parking in the spots and    that we're assigned to? I guess    and it more may be an operations thing, but he would absolutely do that, not even a question. So I guess    and you had brought something up and I started thinking, because it would be one of those things, he would park in the back spot so I couldn't    so he didn't have to move the car in the morning because he would have to leave early. And so, technically, we'd be taking up three spots when we're assigned two in the building. And that's a real situation.
MR. WELLS: The number of unassigned spaces? 
THE WITNESS: Right. At all times there will be a minimum of 53 unassigned spaces and that number could actually be 75 unassigned spaces. 
MS. PATIRE: Or it could be 30, if people have extra cars that come    that move in, if you have additional drivers that need extra spots in the garage. Am I right, that they could be assigned?  I'm just asking. 
THE WITNESS:  Well, let's go through the numbers again, so it's clear:  74 units will have one space assigned to them; 19 units will have the tandem   
MS. PATIRE:  Yup.
THE WITNESS:    spot assigned to them. That leaves 75 additional parking spaces; 22 of which the applicant has indicated they would assign to a unit if that unit didn't have a tandem space, and one in additional parking space.
MS. PATIRE: Right.
THE WITNESS: So you could have a minimum of 53 that would be unassigned at all times. And that could go up to 75 if there's no other people in the building that would like to have a second parking space, but they've only been assigned one. So at all times you have 53 unassigned parking spaces. So, there's going to be more than enough  
MS. PATIRE:  To cover my husband and his car?
THE WITNESS:     to cover your husband. And what I would tell him is, hey, you know you have a meeting and you're going to leave early, go park in an unassigned spot and let me park in the tandem spot. 
MS. PATIRE:  Right. And, look, I understand all these numbers are mapped out with facts, I get all that, but those are real life situations. And, again, I don't know how many cars there are    all the, you know, tenants would bring, but it's a    it's a real life situation.
THE WITNESS:  And just to    just to allay some of those concerns, again, we're parked at two spots per unit. 
MS. PATIRE:  Right.
THE WITNESS:  Actual peak parking demands per ITE are 1.2 per unit. 
MS. PATIRE:  Yes, and that's understood.
THE WITNESS:  So   
MS. PATIRE:  Understood.
THE WITNESS:     we have more than in excess in terms of average peak parking demands for an apartment complexes like the one that's proposed.
MS. PATIRE:  He would just take the one closer to the door so...
THE WITNESS:  Yes, he would. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Again, just a quick question, with the handicap spaces, how are they    were they assigned?  How do they    or are they not in those    that mix of unassigned spaces? 
THE WITNESS:  The 53 includes the accessible parking spaces. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  So then    okay. 
THE WITNESS:  And, obviously, if one of the residents were handicapped   
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Then what would be  
THE WITNESS:  Then they absolutely can be assigned. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  It would be assigned to them and you'd give up one of the other parking spaces. 
THE WITNESS:  Correct. 
MS. ALTANO: Yes, so    I'm sorry. So when you said the 53 spaces originally you have 53 spaces will be unassigned, basically they are unassigned but they include the ADA spaces. 
THE WITNESS:  The accessible parking spaces, correct. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  MR. JAHR, would you like to ask questions of Mr. Disario? 
MR. MARTIN:  MR. JAHR has been sworn in on this application.
John, if you'll raise your right hand?  Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?
MR. JAHR:  I do.
J O H N   J A H R,
155 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, New Jersey, having been duly sworn, testifies as follows:
MR. MARTIN: Okay. And just for the record, state your name and business address.
THE WITNESS:  John Jahr, Petry Traffic, 155 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, New Jersey.
MR. MARTIN: Mr. Wells, do you stipulate to MR. JAHR as a traffic engineering expert? 
MR. WELLS: We actually did previously in the last record, and, yes, I'll do it again.
MR. MARTIN: Thank you. 
Thank you, MR. JAHR.
MR. JAHR: Thank you. Just for recordkeeping purposes, there was a traffic study submitted by the applicant and reviews done by our office starting with August 24th, 2016; an additional evaluation, January 26, 2017; and reports of my office, January 26, 2017 and April 19, 2017. 
The applicant has responded to my concerns with regard to the traffic study and they have answered all of the questions to my satisfaction regarding the traffic and parking impacts for this project. I had no further question regarding the traffic studies or the traffic impacts. All of my questions and concerns have been addressed by them either in writing or by the various hearings. 
With regard to the parking, there isn't too much else I could say about tandem parking. I think that you guys have adequately vetted your concern with it. I would like to ask if    I may be missing something, how are outside folks and visitors handled in the site plan? In other words, let's say that somebody is late for the train one day and they    can they get in your place and park there? Is there going to restricted parking? How is that going to work? 
THE WITNESS:  No outsiders are going to be able to park on this site, unless they're a visitor or a resident. And that's purely    again, it goes back to management. And you'll hear from the applicant a little later after me what the management plan is. But it's not    this is not an atypical project for them. They have probably hundreds of these types of projects throughout the country. 
MR. JAHR: Okay. I would like to say that I agree strongly with the applicant's traffic engineer with regard to the possibility of excess parking available on site. So I'm not quite sure how that's going to work, but is there some rule or requirement that if they do have a significant amount of excess parking, are they going to be allowed to vendor it to    you know, to sell it to others to use, if that becomes the case.  How does that work?  Is there anything that we need to worry about with that?  Maybe you can give us a little guidance from the applicant's point of view on this? 
MR. WELLS:  I can tell you that the Village does not presently have an ordinance that would necessarily allow that, but, for example, members of the Council    or the Mayor and members of the Council have had some negotiations with the YMCA that had some excess spaces, but right now there is no facilitating ordinance for that that would allow someone to lower the, you know, the amount of parking that they're required to have by leasing spaces to someone else. 
MR. JAHR:  Well, for the sake of conservatism, okay, you're providing RSIS in excess parking. If in the future you find that you really only need half of the parking that you now provide, what protections can the village have that you're not going to now sell that parking to say   
MR. WELLS:  To my point exactly, the village has a protection, we have to have the parking that's required. What I'm telling    I thought you were asking as a practical matter with    if that was a desirable result to do that, that would take some legal craftsmanship, not just on the village point, I'm not exactly sure you could do that in the face of the state law that requires the spaces with RSIS, but... 
MR. JAHR: So basically the condition of your approval is regards to parking. If you ever want to change that, then you'd have to come back to this board or  
MR. WELLS:  For sure.
MR. JAHR:  Okay.  I just want to make sure  
MR. WELLS: For sure. I'm not    and honestly we're    as in a commercial use where it's not dictated by RSIS, I think it would be possible for the village to allow someone to no longer    to lease some of their spaces, because they weren't needed and to allow less spaces per the village requirement. I'm not sure they could do that with RSIS. I think   
MR. JAHR:  I think the board is more concerned that there is not going to be enough parking.  I think    I'm concerned what happens if there's too much, so it sounds to me like the village is protected to the maximum extent possible. That's all I wanted to make certain. I didn't want to overlook that. I wanted to make sure the village had the maximum possible protection if it went either way. 
THE WITNESS: And I've spoken to the applicant and the applicant stipulated that none of the parking that's proposed will ever be leased to a third party in any way, shape or form.
MR. MARTIN: Just point of reference, MR. JAHR, in another community this issue came up and I think Mr. Wells hit it on the head when he said the requirement for the amount of parking spaces doesn't change. In the other community, they had enough parking, they had extra parking that didn't count towards their requirement, that had to be approved by the Planning Board, just like you said. In this instance, what we're talking about 157    187, 183 is five spots I don't think it makes any sense, correct? 
MR. WELLS: There's also the concept, as you're very familiar, of shared parking.  So that in other words    and there are provisions with the code that allow commercial uses to essentially lower their requirement based on shared parking, but that's not    none of that applies here. 
MR. JAHR: Just trying to make sure the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted. I'm sure you can understand my concern for the village's best interest. I think that    you know, they stipulated to everything in my    my report. I'm, you know, quite pleased with the    where the applicant stands on the traffic issues on this. I think that they've done everything they can to mitigate their    in my opinion, they've done everything they can within reason to mitigate their pedestrian and mitigate impacts to the maximum extent that I could see at this juncture. I do think that we will have to come look at this somewhere down the road if this board does choose to see this application favorably, I think we will    may want to look how it really does get parked and how many people really are walking up and down as compared to driving. 
And I think that that's something that the traffic report is definitely conservative, and I think that things may flip, you know, in actual reality later. I think we're protected on both sides. I really don't have anything else. I think they've satisfied all of my concerns. Is there any questions the board may have of me with regard to the traffic study? 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: We're not up to that point. We're just crossing him. 
So we'll move on.
MR. JAHR: I'm done. I'm done asking questions, other than I know for a fact that when his daughter doesn't get up in the morning, he's got to move the car. 
THE WITNESS:  That's true.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay.  Chris, do you have any questions?  
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  No.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Beth, do you have any questions? 
MS. McMANUS:  No, I don't. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Next    anyone from the public have any questions for Mr. Disario? 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: No. Can we ask John Jahr questions? Or we didn't get to the point where we can ask John questions? 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Yes, we're not there yet.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Okay.  Thank you. 
MR. MARTIN:  Mr. Wells still has the stage.  
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Understood.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Is there anyone from the public that wants to ask questions of the traffic expert? (No response.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Seeing there are none.
Thank you.
THE WITNESS: Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. 
MS. PATIRE:  Thank you. 
MR. WELLS:  Don't leave. 
THE WITNESS:  I'm not.
MR. WELLS:  MR. JAHR may have some additional questions. 
So I would like to call Scott Loventhal. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Sure. 
MR. MARTIN:  Good evening, MR. LOVENTHAL. 
Raise your right hand, please.  Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes, I do.
S C O T T   L O V E N T H A L,
820 Morris Turnpike, Short Hills, New Jersey, having been duly sworn, testifies as follows:
MR. MARTIN: And please state your name, your business title and your business address.
MR. LOVENTHAL: Sure. Scott Loventhal, spelled L O V E N T H A L, Garden Homes Development, 820 Morris Turnpike, Short Hills, New Jersey. And I'm the managing member of Ridgewood Dayton, LLC, the applicant this evening.
MR. WELLS:  What I would like to do, with your permission, MR. LOVENTHAL and the board is, he is not an expert, so we're not going to qualify him as an expert per se, but I'm going to ask him if he would, to just give you a little bit of an introduction of what he does in the development process and his familiarity with this particular project. And then I'm simply going to allow him    because he did take notes as to the things that were raised that were concerns that he could address and I'm just going to let him answer those, bring those matters and then be available for your questions. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Sure.
MR. WELLS:  So you're on.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Sure. 
So I'm the director of development for Garden Homes. Garden Homes is a privately held real estate development company with a number of disciplines, residential being our largest, both for sale and rental communities throughout the northeast and quite frankly throughout the country. I oversee most of our development activity here in northern New Jersey. Part of what I do is initially identifying sites, which I'm going to talk about in a moment, and why we identified this site and what we thought was important as we looked at this site. I initially identify sites. I work with our acquisition professionals in acquiring these sites, and ultimately take them through the entitlement process, hiring a team of professionals, including many of which have testified here for you this evening, and in past hearings, of course, from the site engineers, architects, environmental experts, geotechnical experts, planners, so on and so forth, in order to create a project that ultimately is well received within the community and provides us a return. 
And how do we get our return? We get our return, quite frankly, from providing an experience to our resident. Our resident either in the form of a renter or in a purchaser. That's a good experience. In this case, we're going to be up for our grades. We're going to get graded once a year by our residents. And if the project is not marketable and the project doesn't provide an experience to our residents that is a good one, they have other choices. We call them today renters by choice. You know, our world has changed. And it used to be a homeownership world. Now there are still plenty that would like to see homeownership, but there are plenty that would like to rent. And that's why we identified this site as a wonderful place for renters. We identified the site as a wonderful place for young renters. We think some young professionals that have grown up in this community will probably want to rent here as a steppingstone to where they may live in the future, hopefully Ridgewood. And more likely, empty nesters who have lived many years within Ridgewood and don't have    that's one of the things I'll talk about in a second in terms of identifying the site, that we think it will be well received in the community, that don't have a housing choice that we're providing for here. And we identified Ridgewood as a community that I think many, many moons ago at a master plan amendment I looked at the inventory with, at the time, the planning board and suggested to them that there hadn't been an appreciable number of new units, residential units, built in the Village of Ridgewood in almost 40 years. That's remarkable considering that Ridgewood is such a balanced community in terms of its housing stock, with the exception of what I just suggested, and also such a vibrant community, one that we think can be made more vibrant by virtue of introducing some 24 hour life in your downtown. 
So, when we had an opportunity to identify what    well, we know one of the difficulties in Ridgewood when we look back is that there weren't available assemblages of land. And, unfortunately, the recession led to car dealerships being one of the true victims of the recession.  Car dealerships that weren't located along state highways where they properly    at least in this day and age, properly more    placed more appropriately along state highways where they had an opportunity for shopping at a number of    a variety of auto dealerships. The downtown just didn't present what it may have presented in the 1940s and '50s when the Brogan Cadillac site was first put into existence. So we identified a derelict property, one that was closed and one that was available, and looked at that site being within a quarter mile of a gas station and a bus station. I think that's been lost in a lot of the testimony that's presented. We also have a very robust bus station here in Ridgewood and I think that we're within walking distance, so it provides our potential residents with more options; vehicle, pedestrian options, train and bus. And that's very unique and that was what was one of the things that was certainly very unique to this site. We also found a site where we in what we do could, without much assemblage, we just have two parcels here, could provide a project that presents the opportunity for appropriate staffing. We usually try and look for projects that are approximately 100 units in size and that allows us to staff them appropriately. This gave us something in that general range in the downtown of Ridgewood and presented what we think was a    what we know, quite frankly, was a void in your housing stock, an opportunity for those young professionals and young people within the community and more likely empty nesters. We'll also see our share of demographics throughout the spectrum, of course, within what we'll be developing. But as I said, I think it's really important that this project ultimately be well received in the community, but more important or just as important, is that it needs to be well received by the residents that are going to live there, because they're going to have the choice. So when we talk about tandem parking, when we talk about uses that    this project won't be for everybody. I think elevator buildings with interior hallways are not going to be for everyone. Do I think that I'll find 93 people, 93 residents that want to live here? Absolutely. Our studies suggest that we will.  And the project can be a success and be one that provides for a void in this housing    the housing market here. What's another goal that we have? We want to provide a safe, efficient experience for our residents. Why? So they renew. It's that simple. We really want them to renew. We also, having a large portfolio of real estate, it's very important to us that a lot of things that were talked about from a safety perspective, that those things are implemented. If they're not implemented by our own management team, we have issues related to insurance, and casualties and claims. And those are not good for our business. So we pride ourselves on doing everything correctly, not just simply minimum codes    and I'll talk about that in a minute in the context of a few items that I picked up along the way, not simply meaning the bare minimums, but providing things that are above and beyond the code in order to provide an experience for our residents that's going to have them renew their lease, and hopefully pay an increase in rent at the end of that term as well, you know, those are negotiated also. So I think those are goals that we want to talk about. Along the way I picked up on about a half of dozen items that I wanted to speak to, a few of them are very, very brief. The first and foremost that came up, I think in our first evening, was a concern about our methods for removal of sanitation and recycling. With this building being unique to Ridgewood, I understand that the process by which how you remove recycling and sanitation is very, very important. The first thing that I did as a development professional is I spoke to your professionals. And I spoke to an Ed Bethune (phonetic) and a John Spano of the DPW at the time    this goes back now sometime    and a Linda Salvi (phonetic) of your DPW and your recycling department to get Ridgewood specifics on the site plan, not the county's, Ridgewood's, right out of your code. And how does Ridgewood want to handle recycling? And how does Ridgewood want to handle trash removal? So, what we're generally doing is looking at our own operations first and then we're looking at the municipality's operations and trying to obviously blend those two so that they work correctly. In this instance, I can tell you without any concern whatsoever that we are    will be in full compliance with your recycling requirements and full requirement [sic] with your trash removal requirements. I understand that we'll be required to hire private sanitation and what    from an operations' perspective what we ultimately do, these elevator style buildings will have either a single    in this case two trash chutes, one in each wing of the building. Residents will be bringing their trash to that trash chute. They will not be leaving it in the trash room. They will be bringing that trash and the trash will enter the trash chute. It will then come down to our ground level where it will enter a compactor. It will be compacted into a very small mass and then on those trash pickup days, this    the sanitation trucks will have a very limited time of day to spend on site, because there are on staff porters who will be removing those four yard containers, they're very small, that are contained with a top, they'll be removing those to where they're meeting those sanitation trucks and they'll be offloading that sanitation. It's about a 5  or 10 minute operation. It's very clean. It doesn't leave anything. While we do provide, because your ordinance provides for a location for an outside dumpster, that's really in a rare occasion where we have some overflow, we talked about events, something that might go on in the community room, cardboard, people that are moving in, then they can't fit those things in a trash room or in a compactor. And they're going to be brought to an outside dumpster, which, of course, details in which are provided for on your    on our site plans, an outside dumpster, and then trash will also be picked up on those    on those trash days. With regard to recycling, I reviewed    I reviewed your recycling requirements. We can meet them in their entirety. Recycling will be handled through regulations with our management company. People, of course, will be policed to be recycling, just as your policed at your single family home or your town home or any other rental community within the village. And, yes, it is somewhat of an honor system that hoping that people are going to do their part in terms of recycling. But we will meet all the recycling requirements in terms of separation, and in terms of how that recycling is handled. Recycling is left generally in bins in those trash rooms, which are on each floor. So it's very convenient for our residents. And then those recycling bins throughout the day are removed to the outside dumpster location. And those recycling bins are then removed by a recycling vendor who will come through on a frequency that would be set by us based on the demands of the complex. So I wanted to get that out of the way. I know that was important. Are there any questions on sanitation or recycling? 
(No response.)
MR. LOVENTHAL: Pretty straightforward. Environmental I know was a concern, I think COUNCILMAN VOIGT raised it and several others, and I want to    since I don't profess to be an expert, and I'm not suggesting I am, but I'm going to read to you where we stand in terms of environmental remediation on site. 
There was and continues to be    there's one remaining environmental issue on the site, which I'll talk about in a moment, but there was when the Brogan company ceased their operations, they did hire a licensed site remediation professional, an LSRP and a licensed environmental firm. The LSRP is now mandated by the state and the LSRP acts in the place of the state and he is actually overseeing the work that is being performed by the environmental company who was cleaning the site. They completed a Phase I environmental site assessment. They did have a number of areas of concern, as we know AOCs, they're called, that were identified. They then completed a Phase II.  And I could only characterize many of the environmental issues that existed, and I'm using past tense, because the majority have been remediated since we've been in this process for now more than five years since they hired their licensed site remediation professional. Most of the environmental issues that existed on the site were what you would typically find in the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s in an automobile use. They were hydraulic fluids. They were oils. They were various things associates with the lifts that were in the garages. Of what I think initially were more than 40 AOCs, areas of concern, that were identified, we are now down to one. The only one that remains is one that is, what we call, historic fill. And historic fill is identified by the DEP as what people used to do in New Jersey and throughout the country when they would take down a structure, they'd bury it. Both what has been identified through a remarkable number of borings on this site is wood, shingles, various products that were probably attributable to the single family homes and I'm sure at some point in small commercial buildings that existed on this site many years ago. 
The historic fill, the manner in which historic fill was removed will be done so, so it's done initially in connection with the excavation of this site. It will continue to be overseen by the licensed site remediation professionals and will ultimately lead to what's called a response action outcome or what used to be known as a "No Further Action" Letter. So the one remaining AOC, if this board is so inclined to grant us an approval, will be taken care of in connection with the excavation. The grading was considered in connection with where that historic fill is located. There may be, in some instances, because it's never exact science, some areas that are over excavated, there's more debris, wood, building materials that are found in the ground. All of that material is offloaded and manifested appropriately in accordance with DEP regulations and is sent to    in many cases sometimes it's listed as classified or unclassified and sent to a variety of labs    excuse me, a variety of landfills in various places. And then that    ultimately, that historic fill issue will be resolved. So that, from an environmental perspective, I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of where we stand. There's been a long and arduous process over the last five years the Brogan company has undertaken. We have, as a contract purchaser, have our own. So there's now a third party, environmental expert who is overseeing, kind of doing a peer review of that environmental work. So there's actually three people that are reviewing where we stand. 
The interesting thing about where this site sits is that the DEP wouldn't necessarily require that historic fill to be removed and that historic fill could, if this site was not developed, continue to contribute to environmental issues in and around this property. But in connection with what we hope will be a development of this site, that last area of concern will be taken care of. Any questions on environmental?  (No response.)
MR. LOVENTHAL: Okay. Great. Tandem parking. Maybe I should have started there, since this was something that was on everyone's mind. While tandem parking is not something that is provided for in your ordinance. Your ordinance is silent as it relates to tandem parking. I can tell you having developed six recent communities where we have tandem parking in northern New Jersey, it is both safe, it is efficient. And the residents generally are most appreciative that they have the opportunity to have two spaces with some of those more coveted units. And we generally do that by virtue of the size of the unit, the rent that's obviously paid as to which units are getting two spaces. If someone didn't want two spaces that were in a tandem format, we do have the opportunity, because of the flexibility in our parking here, to potentially give one resident spaces that are next to each other because of the unassigned nature of some of those spaces or as I    my theme earlier on, this project may not be for them if they don't like a tandem space, but they like a large unit and they're just uncomfortable with the concept of pulling out of the tandem space. I can tell you that we have not had, that I'm aware of, a single incident, from a safety perspective, a single fender bender. I could tell you that, you know, it's hard for me sitting on my hands during all of these hearings to not, you know, scream out often, I think it's overstated as it relates to how much traffic is under a parking level on any given time of day, morning, noon or night. There's virtually no cars. And I've witnessed this myself, I have experience in each of our projects, there's very few cars. Yes, during that peak hour you may have some movement of vehicles, but usually within any given row there's never more than one or two cars at any given moment and residents get used to the tandem space. They want two spaces. They want to control their spaces. They're reserved, as I said, for that resident. And very, very quickly just like backing out of the driveway into often    as Dan suggested    a busy street, which they won't be doing here. They'll only be backing out into a very lightly trafficked interior access driveway. They do it once or twice and they're used to it. And ultimately    we haven't had anyone that has said to us in any of our complexes where we have tandem parking that they are uncomfortable with it and they want to move. And they want to move out of that tandem space. We haven't had, that I'm aware of, anyone that's ever made that complaint. They get used to it very, very quickly. And most of them are very appreciative they have that premium of two spaces assigned. I will also say to you something that's lost in the tandem parking and why a lot of municipalities are now actually including it in their ordinances is that it leads to less impervious surface. When you have    an impervious surface, meaning paved areas, when you have parking that's up against one another as opposed to needing another 24 foot drive aisle, you now have two spaces, one behind one another, and you're reducing impervious surface. So we're able to get more parking within a smaller footprint. So, yes, it's a technique that we're applying that you might say, well, it's a way of getting around the aisle.  From our perspective, we're saying, why do you need more paved surfaces?  We're putting more parking under a building where residents are desirable of that parking, and giving them a better experience by having covered parking that is protected. So, we haven't found it to be an issue. We find it to be safe and efficient in all of our projects and the closest one that I've spoken about in the past with this board and with the governing body is a project that we built on 208 in Fair Lawn, the Fair Lawn Promenade project. Each of our two residential buildings there, which are more luxurious apartments, contain tandem parking. And the tandem parking is very efficient in that complex as well. So if anyone is interested in looking at it, it's right here on Route 208. It's 10 minutes from the project. Elevators, I think COUNCILMAN VOIGT was concerned about elevators and the ability to accommodate    and the Mayor as well. Nevertheless, what I wanted to do is make sure that everyone understood that the local building codes do require at least one elevator to accommodate a stretcher. Stretchers are not accommodated lying flat. They're in a    they're accommodated with an angle. Those elevator cab heights are 9 foot, instead of a standard elevator, which would be less than 8 foot. They have a cab width at 7 foot 5. They have a depth that's about 6 foot and a door width that's 4 foot. That's not necessarily a standard elevator. That's an elevator that accommodates a stretcher. We use several brands, every style of elevator, whether it be Otis, Kone, ThyssenKrupp, all have a stretcher accommodating elevator. I can stipulate that all of the elevators in our building will accommodate a stretcher and that the third elevator that we spoke about will have that 9 foot height as well, if not more, so that we can accommodate moving from that third elevator. 
So from a safety perspective, we are more than confident that we not only meet the minimum code, but we're going to be doing that in each of the elevators to allow for that stretcher, if necessary. Any elevator related questions?
MS. McWILLIAMS: I have a question.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Sure. 
MS. McWILLIAMS: Did you just say the elevators accommodate not    stretchers that are not laying flat?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Right. Elevators    an elevator that is deemed an elevator that accommodates a stretcher, they don't lay flat, that's correct. The way that a person that is transported    and I don't profess to be an emergency expert, but I'm just telling you what these elevators are    has a person that's in an angled position. 
So the stretcher is angled so the person's almost sitting, not completely upright, but somewhat extended probably a 45 degree angle. And that is a stretcher accommodated elevator. None of the elevators, other than maybe large, very large freight elevators that you wouldn't find in a residential setting like this, would not accommodate a flat stretcher and your emergency services would not be utilizing a flat stretcher. I'll take it a step further that I also spoke to your emergency services. I wanted to talk to them about the concerns that were raised and sprinkled throughout this about safety as it relates to an ambulance or a rig that might be going under this building. 
They made it very clear to me that under no circumstances would they ever bring an ambulance or an emergency services rig under this building. They don't need to. There is only a very short distance from either the front door or the driveway that circulates around the building, and they would not be bringing an elevator into    excuse me, they would not be bringing an ambulance under this building. So    and I can certainly refer to who we spoke to and what information they gave us as it relates to the ambulances, if you're interested. We spoke to a Tony Lillo who is your chief and director of Ridgewood Emergency Services. He indicated that while their tallest elevator is 9 foot 8, that the 8 foot 2, which is required by code is all that he would be looking for. And we have stipulated that our parking level will be at 8 foot 2 throughout. I also brought with me as, it relates to height, and it was something that we can hand out and enter as an exhibit, what that detail looks like as it relates to warning signs that go in so that our buildings are not damaged. 
MR. MARTIN:  Mr. Wells, we have to make sure it's checked out. A  
MR. KOHUT:  A 22.
MR. MARTIN:  A 22. 
(Whereupon, Garage Height Photo is received and marked as Exhibit A 22 for identification.)
MR. MARTIN:  Garage height photo?
MR. KOHUT:  What do you want to call it?
MR. WELLS:  Yes, that's fine.
MR. MARTIN:  Garage height photo.
MR. KOHUT:  Garage height photo?  Fine.
MR. MARTIN:  Do we know what building this is?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I'm sorry?
MR. MARTIN:  What building? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes. This is a building that we're developing. If anyone is going south on the Garden State Parkway at the Essex tolls in Bloomfield and wants to see another project that is consistent with what we're doing, this project is called Oaks Pond. It's located on the southbound side of the Garden State Parkway in Bloomfield just at the Essex tolls. You see our last building is going up as we speak. We've got three buildings that are approximately 300 units, a clubhouse, pool and amenities. And many of the operations in those buildings are identical to the operations that we would    and consistent with the operations that we would expect here. So, what this photo is providing, just to put an orientation and put it into perspective, is as you're entering below the building we call out the 8 foot 2 clearance height. And what I would say to you is that where that yellow boom is, is not 8 foot 2. So if somebody hits that, they know that they're already too high, but the 8 foot 2 is actually up above that, so it gives us a little bit of a warning.  If somebody hits it, you hope that they're only, let's say, 7 foot 8, 7 foot 10, they hit it and then go, hey, maybe not so fast and they don't go under that building. So that's what we're providing. And it's a standard detail that we provide on all of our buildings in order to provide safety, in order to make sure that we don't have a scenario where a vehicle that's too tall for under the building goes under that building and either damages the building or compromises our sprinkler system. 
I think someone asked also along the way if there was ever a car fire or something like that under the building, how would that be taken care of and your emergency services made it very clear, they would simply be pulling a hose to that location from either our standpipe or likely from the hydrant on the street, and they would be    they would not be bringing a rig under a building. Our dry system that would exist, the sprinkler system has a wet system and a dry system. In places where we don't have temperature control, it's a dry system. So the garage level has a dry system.  Our dry system would likely be activated and would probably be putting out any minor vehicular fire, even before emergency services are there. Questions on garage height? Signage?
(No response.)
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Your planner and a number of    your planner being Beth McManus and not Blais earlier, brought up a question that I wanted to address, and I think that might be my last one, regarding insulation and how we are going to    what details are we going to implement in order to ensure that a project that is adjacent to the rail ultimately provides for that tenant experience that we're obviously looking for. So, what I wanted to indicate to the board and to Beth is while our construction documents are not complete, obviously at this stage, what we do in these scenarios we're along    in Bloomfield along the Garden State Parkway or in other instances where we're along rail, and I've built in Allendale and I    along the rail, seems to be a theme for obvious reasons that along the rail is    is a good place in northern New Jersey for residential now. 
What we're doing is we're looking from a code perspective and we're hiring not only an architect, but we hire an acoustics special    specialist, excuse me    and we have an acoustic specialist by the name of Michael Spencer who's from Pennsylvania who's widely used in the industry. And what he does is he analyzes sound both from our basic code compliant architectural plans and then he makes recommendations that will allow us to    and I want to use the term correctly    to improve upon the STC rating, sound transmission code rating. Like right now code in residential settings is a 45. What that number means, I don't know. But we will not be designing these buildings to a 45, at least along the rear. I also think it's important to note that design of this building leaves us with virtually no units that are directly oriented on the rail. In fact, as    I will just walk to the plan, if I recall from the floor plans, most of the ends of our building are where we contain our stairs, our stair towers. So there we've got two levels of 12 inch block to also help with insulation.
But even along the sides of this building, and even along our amenity a deck areas, what we will be doing both from our windows as well as our walls, our windows will have a soundproofing to them that will improve the STC probably over 50. And I am just putting that out there, 45 being standard, somewhere between 50 and 55 is a robust detail. We will also be implementing either batt insulation that is soundproofed or blown in insulation which is a technique as well as that we use in these environments, again from our perspective while I'm appreciative and respectful that the board asked the question, it is only in our best interest to provide a living environment that we recognize the train schedule here. One of the reasons why the residents will want to be here is because of that train schedule, but they want to meet the train in the morning and they want to be sleeping through the night. If they're not that's the grade that we get is a failing grade.  And they don't renew their lease, you know and I think that that's something important where we say well, "what if", "what if", "what if", "what if". As a renter by choice you have a 12 month lease.  If we ever had someone who is completely dissatisfied, there's ways of getting out of your lease sooner. But we're always about providing quiet enjoyment in our lease and ultimately providing that experience that we spoke about that's going to have them renew that lease in the future.
So these sound deadening techniques are important to us and will ultimately be implemented in this building. I am not sure that I had anything else that I came up with along the way.
MR. MARTIN:  A landscape planner.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Say that again, I'm sorry. 
MR. MARTIN:  Landscape issues?  I know you're not the designer on this.
MR. WELLS:  Well, There was extensive testimony on that by Mr. Lapatka.
MR. MARTIN:  I know there was.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes, I   
MR. MARTIN:  But this is the manager, from the management.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I could certainly    I could certainly at least provide   
MR. WELLS:  As to maintenance?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Hold on.
MR. WELLS:  Maintenance concerns?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  From a maintenance perspective?
MR. MARTIN:  Yes, maintenance and maybe some of the landscape ideas. I mean   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I will tell you that   
MR. MARTIN:  Lay it out in   
MR. LOVENTHAL:    Your ordinance does not require lawn sprinklers. And I know that there are debates among environmentalists whether lawn sprinklers are good, are bad, or indifferent   
MR. MARTIN:  God bless you.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Bless you. From our perspective we will be considering the recommendations of our landscape professionals, but we don't have significant amount of turfed areas, but we do anticipate that we will be sprinklering our landscaped beds and we'll be sprinklering our turfs    turf    excuse me    because we want to keep things green. But we will be doing so in a manner that is consistent with any local ordinances or any DEP obligations. And certainly won't have an impact if you have a water demand issue in the peak months, that's the first thing that's obviously shut down is sprinklers and those either odd/even. We find that less watering is better. In terms of the planting, we are proposing, as had been discussed by Al Lapatka our civil engineer, and a lawn area along the frontage of the building, a small courtyard that exists where there will be robust planting. We didn't have on this design three amenity decks and I certainly wanted to give a little bit of understanding    a little bit of detail as to what those amenity decks include. They're part of, of course, the recreational component or the active and passive recreation obligation within the ordinance. But we provide that because this is a site that really doesn't have a significant amount of otherwise places for someone to sit outside and enjoy the weather. I will say that every one of these units, and I don't know if it came up with our architect, every one of these units does have a balcony so they're    and that, of course, was calculated in our    in our outdoor space as well. But in addition to the private, and those will be private balconies. In addition to the private balconies each of the rectangular green, and I'm pointing to our overall site plan, each of the rectangular green amenity decks are over the parking level of course, so allowing us for the large footprint under the parking level to provide protection. And those amenities decks, while they're shown in green, they are not all turf and they are not calculated as all turf in all of these calculations. They're a combination of hardscapes, seating areas, it's passive, of course, recreation because they're only between 40  and 50 feet wide, but they are separated from the units that are at grade on that level so that the resident that lives at that level would have a private balcony like any unit above him, but then there would be a screening and they'd be separated by some    usually some planting and a railing. And then the rest of the amenity deck would be accessible to all residents for use on we generally have a set number of hours for those outside amenity decks, that they're not providing for any disturbance to any of the residents late in the evening. And what I think was important that I bring up in the building, this will be a highly amenitized building. And how do we define amenities? First amenity starts with staffing. We're proposing a daytime concierge. We do not anticipate at this point that we would have a 24 hour manned desk because it just doesn't warrant it with the number of units. But we have a daytime concierge that's available for residents. We also utilize a very sophisticated    Building Link, it's called, a computerized system that allows our residents to communicate back and forth with our desk attendees. That Building Link allows them to handle both management issues, maintenance issues, emergency issues and security issues. Each unit also is equipped with a video intercom system that would allow access so during the day a guest would need to be announced, other than if a code is given out to a rear door or something like that. But a guests would be announced with our daytime concierge. And they would be buzzed up to a residence. So these are not going to be units where outside solicitation would be allowed by either, you know, people who are selling encyclopedias    are they doing that nowadays? I don't think so. Selling whatever they might be selling, they won't be doing it in this building. And I think, you know, the emphasis, which I could have stipulated to several moments ago is that the amenities are not open to the public. It's very important. The parking, we have no intentions of it being open to the public, unless as has been discussed in the past, we truly are parked at 1.2 and the municipality is interested in figuring out a way in which we can utilize some of that additional parking to the benefit of the community or the benefit of the public. And that would take a very robust detailed document because we don't necessarily want to introduce the public onto this site. I'd rather have more parking, which I anticipate we will, than we need, than not have enough and give up 10, 20, 30 spaces to an outside agency. So we'll never be doing that. Any of the amenities that we offer in our public spaces we have not completely programmed our public spaces yet, we do so as we get closer to a project being completed, but we intend on having an interior community room at the ground level, that will be available on a routine basis for community functions within the community. It's also available only to our tenants to use for private functions on a very short term basis for birthday parties or a Super Bowl party, things along those lines. We've got a package room. All of the postal services are taken care of within the lobby area, so the resident will enter our lobby and he'll be picking up his mail in his own US Postal approved post office box. We also know that nowadays with Amazon and the like a package room is very important. We even consider in some of our buildings now a refrigerated package room with all of the deliveries that come both from the short term delivery services and things like Peapod and Fresh Direct and things like that. So we consider even refrigerated package rooms. It's also important to know that our entire premises are also security, that we have cameras that are 24/7 monitored that will provide us with video if there's any issues on site. So these are very secure sites both interior to our project, at our amenity decks, and throughout the perimeter of the development in order to give those residents just every comfort level. We're not gating. I think that was something that came up. The detail that I showed you in terms of how you enter and exit the parking below the building, we will not be gating those spaces. And maybe it's a good time when a question came up, I think with Debbie and Melanie regarding how we enforce parking, so what would be doing is, is one of several methods. We'd either be giving out placards that hang from rearview mirrors, whatever ultimately the management on this site feels is going to be the most visible for them. Sometimes it's stickers. Sometimes it's placards. Sometimes it's a variety of techniques, where they're going to be given an assigned number of parking spaces and they're going to have a placard that's going to be assigned for that unit. And that unit's number is going to be consistent with that space. And they're going to be parking there. Now, there are going to be the unassigned parking spaces which will be available to our residents. We require, as visitors come to this site, that they register their vehicle. It's usually a very quick "write your license plate and your number down" and assuming we don't see a vehicle that's consistently parking there on a daily basis where we know someone's, you know, sneaking into the lot and running to the train, we try and, you know, be loose with how we enforce the visitor's parking because we don't want them to think that, you know, that we're overstepping our bounds. But we have a very sufficient system in place by which we monitor our residents' parking and our visitors' parking to ensure that third parties are not parking on this site. I think that's all I have.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: David, did you have any questions at this point? 
MR. SCHEIBNER: No.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: COUNCILMAN VOIGT?  
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Scott, you mentioned a couple of developments that you had in Fair Lawn?
MR. LOVENTHAL: I'm sorry.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  In Fair Lawn? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I have one development, two development that we built   
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yeah.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  What are the names of those again? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  It's Fair Lawn Promenade which is the development that's on Route 208 which we opened about three years ago. And that has the Starbucks and it's a commercial and residential site. Our residential buildings, we have 150 residential units in two building at the rear of the property, 75,000 square feet of commercial space. And next door to that property is Fair Lawn Commons which is a different style of housing. Those are the walk up buildings, three story    two  and three story walk ups, more of a suburban setting. But    question?
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Are they close to the Nabisco?  
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes. That's correct.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yeah? Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  That's right. Just south of Nabisco, just south of Columbia Savings and the Mack Cali building or what was formerly Mack Cali. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: And they have tandem parking, you said? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: That's correct. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  That Fair Lawn Promenade project has tandem parking under both buildings.  The buildings have been in occupancy now for approximately three years. And I am not aware of a single safety issue or a single incident, nor a single resident who did not find    who found issue with the tandem parking. Management says it operates very efficiently.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Thank you.
MR. LOVENTHAL: You're welcome.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  So just remind me.
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  I know Peapod, Amazon, all the deliveries that come, you know with those units there could be quite a few.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: So what is the plan for deliver? Where is the    where do the trucks deliver?
MR. LOVENTHAL: So we have identified a delivery space actually it's the space along the most southern driveway, I could walk over and point to it.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Sure.
MR. LOVENTHAL: That's striped. This is, again, a 30 foot    31 foot wide one way driveway.  We're striped along the most southern curb line and that is striped for deliveries, short term only, so with have the opportunity for both moving vans as well as those quick deliveries, but I'll be honest with you, with no parking, no parallel parking located along the frontage of our project, we can't police whether UPS, the postal service or FedEx quickly stops, runs their packages in, and runs out. They may very well deal with your local law enforcement if they want to enforce those rules, but we do provide that parking that's available for those trucks and we have found that two spaces which in this case is about 70 feet long, which is more than two spaces for most of those small box trucks, is more than you sufficient.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: I mean realistically they will park in the street   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Correct.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:     and jump out and make those deliveries.
MR. LOVENTHAL: I would suggest to you that that's probably the case as it the case in most of your downtown. And, quite frankly, most places, you know, where there    their third party delivery services, while we can encourage them to use the spaces that are provided    and what often becomes the case is there    as you all know from your places of businesses as your    and your home, those routes are very routine. Those drivers are often the same. I can tell you that we will always attempt to enforce the utilization of your parking spaces, but obviously we can't enforce parking on a public roadway. We can only encourage that they park in the right place.  If there's another suggestion that you have I would certainly be willing to listen. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Well, let me just ask another question because you've done all this traffic analysis based on cars coming and going that may or may not be living tenants, but where was the analysis of the potential impact of those vehicles or is that something that's just not contemplated? And maybe it's a question for John Jahr. I mean I don't know, maybe you have some analysis or study that you've done at other locations as to how many vehicles of Peapod or Amazon, et cetera, come every day, but certainly that could add to the impact.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I would    without being a traffic expert, I will allow Dan to step up and John Jahr to offer his testimony, but my    my suggestion to    to answer that question is that is ITE which is what Dan and John refer to, the appropriate standards, I would only suspect, includes, based on the type of use that's being analyzed, those various types of potential deliveries that may exist, and I would rather Dan step up and offer that on the record as an expert.
MR. JAHR: If Dan wants to sit he can sit. The trip generation proposed in the a.m. peak hour calculations would actually include that. But most of the time those deliveries don't take place between the 7:00 to 9:00 and 4:00 to 6:00 hours. So those    so the study is not studying that time period when we typically sees those deliveries. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Okay. That's my questions. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Frances, questions? 
MS. BARTO:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Melanie? 
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I just quickly    I wanted to just    I go right back to the elevator thing for one second    
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Sure.
MS. McWILLIAMS:    just kind of past too quickly and I'm envisioning in my head somebody on the fourth floor of this building being given CPR, you know, and being in cardiac arrest and then being propped up and put in an elevator and brought down to an ambulance and it's not possible that it is really not.  So I actually looked up New Jersey Building Code and it does say that elevators and new dwellings are to include or should provide, regardless of height, it has to meet the dimensional requirements of a 24 by84 inch stretcher laying flat horizontally. So I am wondering will this    do your elevators    I didn't catch what size you said they were, but will they then meet that?  Because I mean I don't know how else you'd get some    you know, somebody down.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I am going to stipulate so you that it has been our experience in the past that while there may be one or two medical occasions that would suggest that they lie flat, we are providing elevators that are required under New Jersey building code that meet those dimensions   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  The 84 by 24 inch?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  If    if that's what they that, that's what we're providing. That's stipulated.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Well, that's the stretcher size I'm      I don't know   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Well, are you    are you reading The elevator section? Are you reading a stretcher section?  Because I have the elevator detail   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  No, I'm reading the elevator section   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Okay.  In a residential mid rise building? Or in a healthcare scenario?
MS. McWILLIAMS:  No, in a residential building and in    so it actually says in new buildings, residential buildings four or more stories above grade four    four or more stories below grade has to be   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Okay.
MS. McWILLIAMS:     at least one elevator shall be provided for the fire department emergency access to all floors, the cars shall be of such a size and arrangement to accommodate a 24 by 84 inch ambulance stretcher in a horizontal open position.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes, I'm going to stipulate that if that's what you're telling me is the current code then that's what our elevators will provide.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay.
MR. WELLS:  We're going to meet the code.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Right. I    I just wanted to check I mean I was hearing that you can't    there's just certain medical instances in which you cannot properly back up and bring them down. And I hope you're never    you know we're never in that position. But it certainly happens so, all right.  Okay.  Especially    I mean yes. 
MR. LOVENTHAL: Our elevators will meet today's building code as it's required for accommodating those stretchers.
MS. McWILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Debbie? 
MS. PATIRE:  Sure. 
So I did a little research on your website and I understand you're building both commercial and residential.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Correct.
MS. PATIRE:  And my question to you is, is all of your residential are rentals, correct? So there's no   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  No.
MS. PATIRE:    no condos or   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  No, that's not   
MS. PATIRE:  That's not correct.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  No.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.  So in the State of New Jersey   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:     what would you say around is your split on rental and condominium? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: That are currently in development? That are currently in construction? That have been constructed over the last 50 years of our organization and business? 
MS. PATIRE: Anything that's up    anything that's under construction and built.
MR. LOVENTHAL: Anything that's under construction   
MS. PATIRE:  That's currently under construction. Let's say that's   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I would say currently we're doing approximately 80 percent of our projects as rental and approximately 20 percent as for sale single family condominium or townhome.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  In Bergen County it happens to be about a 50/50 split. I've got four for sale communities that are currently being finished and three or four rental communities that are in development or construction.
MS. PATIRE: And so how do you make your decision on if something is going to be a rental property or a condo property?
MR. LOVENTHAL: That's a very good question. There is often analysis done. And in this instance the analysis was done that a rental community and the analysis is we're looking at the existing housing stock at the time that we're identifying the property. There are times that even in the cycle because real estate is very cyclical even within the cycle we are considering a project that may have initially been considered for rental, we consider for for sale. And sometimes vice versa. So there is a number of factors that are considered, local demographics, the aging population, a variety of factors that are studied and in    and the analysis and, ultimately, we came to a conclusion that there was a void in this community for this type of rental community and from day one we were prepared to go with a rental community. The trend recently has been based on that concept of renters by choice and there being less of a stigma that may have in previous generations been associated with rental product, that more product than not that's new is being built as rentals and the market is    is absorbing that product in a very healthy way.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay. The management company who will run the building is that under you guys.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  That's correct.
MS. PATIRE:  It's your management company?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  That's correct.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL: It's in house management   
MS. PATIRE:  Got it.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  We don't sub out management. We also say, well I never use    like to use the word "never" we're a generational builder. We're a privately owned company. While there are occasions where projects get sold, this is a business like anything else, we generally hold our projects as a generational builder for the long term and manage them in house for the long term.  So you will be able to find me if you have an issue because I stay personally involved with each of my projects, not just till final CO, but throughout from a bigger picture perspective, but the communities that I have developed and I maintain a rapport with that community well beyond final CO.
MS. PATIRE:  Understood.  And you guys I think you said were based in was it   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Short Hills.
MS. PATIRE:     Short Hills?  
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Correct.
MS. PATIRE:  So    and I appreciate the reference to Fair Lawn because it's close to us.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:  So for this scaled project we'll call it somewhere around 100 units   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:    I think you were saying it's kind of a minimum you do   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes, that's usually our    that's right. And larger. 
MS. PATIRE:  Got it. Have you done anything in and around call it Summit, Chatham, Westfield?  And I know you said something in Allendale, I'm not York sure where that is, but are there anything that you guys have done call it in the past five years in any of those communities   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:    that you can talk about? 
Could you tell us   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I'm just curious, talk about in what perspective? 
MS. PATIRE:  What are the names of them, I guess? And my follow up question to that would be, you know, you said you're targeting young professionals and empty nesters.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:  So, I go back to, even in I guess in Fair Lawn   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:    we can talk about as well, what were your expectations, I guess, was it going to be 50 percent young professionals and 50 percent empty nesters? And who actually wound up renting units? So I'll make it up did families come in? Did you find it was definitely a swing towards, you know, millennials and    I'm just curious on what you see in your experience in the past, call it even three years, as the projects changed.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I'll start locally. We have not seen a significant change in terms of the demographic that might be renting in this type of project. When you made    when you asked that question, we built a variety of product types in Summit we did luxury townhomes. In Cranford we built a project that is almost identical to this that's at the train station in downtown Cranford.  It's 116 or 118 total units. We are seeing a very similar demographic in each of these developments with less emphasis on young professionals. We're finding that it appears that young professionals are migrating back to the cities and not staying in the suburbs and we're finding more of an emphasis on empty nesters. I will also say that a market that is often targeted is divorcees.  Sometimes a husband who doesn't want to leave a community because his wife and children are living there, and just needs an apartment in town, wants something high quality, wants some extra bedrooms for the children when they visit or they share that experience. So we're find divorcees is    is something that in a rental scenario because of the economics of a rental and not the permanent nature of purchasing something, divorcees become a player. 
MS. PATIRE:  Right.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  We completed a project that is almost identical to this in Springfield, right at the Baltusrol Country Club primarily all empty nesters, very few    because you're not accessible to a desirable downtown, it's more suburban product. It's adjacent to an affluent country club. So you're finding a lot of empty nesters that belong to the club who live part of the year in warmer climates and are here during golf season. So that project is called Skyline Ridge that you see from Route 78 on the left side. It's a highly amenitized luxury project that is in Springfield. Riverfront is our project in Cranford that I just referred to approximately 116 to 118 units and a commercial component. Fair Lawn Promenade right here on 208, is certainly a place that you can take a look at    at the level of amenities and welcomed, as I've always done to both the governing body and the Planning Board, welcome an advanced notice, we can have the management walk you through, take a look at things at any point.
MS. PATIRE:  For your rentals   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. PATIRE:    do you normally go out and is it a one year rental, do you try to get two    year    only one year rentals?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Correct. A 12 year    a 12 month term. Excuse me. A 12 month term, 1 year rentals.
MS. PATIRE:  One year rentals.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  That's correct.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Always one year.
MS. PATIRE:  And the    the    I guess does the current occupant/tenant have a first right of refusal on when you say   
MR. LOVENTHAL: The law required that we offer all occupants that are in good standing a renewal.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Renewals depending on the    either the municipal, if they have any type of a rent control in place or market conditions dictate what the rent might be on renewal.  Sometimes it remains flat sometimes there's an increase. And in the rare occasion there's concessions that are given if the market isn't warranting... 
MS. PATIRE:  Just a couple other questions, sorry. From a rental perspective does the management company go out and lease those? Do you work with realtors how does that   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  No. On the rental side? 
MS. PATIRE:  On the rental side.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  All of our leasing, I would say 90 percent of our leasing now is done on line.  We have a website GardenCommunities.com. I welcome you to take a look. All of it is automated.  We rarely are even printing brochures anymore. We find that people are printing our PDFs right off of the website and are coming in and are signing applications either on line or otherwise.
So we're not, in our rental portfolio, utilizing any outside brokerage firms. The portfolios are    we're using the typical websites that you're seeing ForRent.com, Rent.com, Apartments.com. And our own website. We have a lot of search engine optimization in our website. We come up very high in every list in a community where someone puts in, you know, rentals in Ridgewood who are so inclined.  
MS. PATIRE:  I have another question, and I'm not sure who this is to, Chris, so let's just pretend there's 5 units that have gone unrented for a year. I'm going to make this up. Are they allowed to sub those out to like an air bnb or things like that? 
MR. MARTIN:  If there's an ordinance, I'm not sure if there's an ordinance on subletting.
MS. PATIRE:  Is there an ordinance?  I just    I    
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  We have an ordinance.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Remember this   
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    an air bnb is usually and owner of a condominium    an individual condominium that would be renting   
MS. PATIRE:  Yeah.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    his unit.
In this instance   
MS. PATIRE:  Yeah, I'm just asking   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes, in this instance   
MS. PATIRE:     because the world is changing and...
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes, We're not utilizing any of those pseudo hotel or overnight service. We don't need to. Our portfolio is currently about 97 percent plus occupied which in most investors' eyes is 100 percent occupancy because there's always a 3  to 5 percent occupancy factor    vacancy factor considered. 
MS. PATIRE:  So you don't see us competing with the Lair Lawn property?  What are your    what are your rental there in Fair Lawn for a one bedroom and a two bedroom? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Our one bedrooms start at 2,000 at month.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  And our    we do have two  and three bedrooms there that go up to almost 4,000 a month.
MS. PATIRE:  Okay. And have you figured out what the rentals would be in Ridgewood based on when    I know the market can change.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  The market does change. We have a range but   
MS. PATIRE:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    we'll be analyzing that right up until a week before we open   
MS. PATIRE:  So do you expect this being in and around the same ball park? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes, probably slightly higher depending on the unit and the square footage, slightly higher than those numbers.
MS. PATIRE:  All right.  Great.
MR. MARTIN:  There was a quick question on corporate relocation around here is kind of popular as you know   
MR. LOVENTHAL: I'm sorry. I didn't hear the first part?   
MR. MARTIN:  Corporate relocation.
MR. LOVENTHAL corporate relocation? 
MR. MARTIN: All throughout the area, I mean, Allendale, Mahwah, Ramsey, wherever, anything like that where there's a relationship with like    just making this up    the Montvale Mercedes or something, if they have a corporate relationship that they    you keep a couple of apartments and their businessman may come over and stay for a year with their family or whatever.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  We haven't entered into any   
MR. MARTIN:  No, but   
MR. LOVENTHAL:    of type of those arrangements in the past. They may become more and more prevalent in the future. I will say on the for sale side we utilize, you know, the national firms that Weichert, Caldwell Banker, with regard to the corporate relocation. They generally bring us buyers in   
MR. MARTIN:  And generally it's condos, right? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.  It's more in the condo market. On the rental side, any of those services could simply go on line and then    and, you know, of course try and collect a fee from the perspective renter. We're not paying outside fees to those services, we just don't need to.
MR. MARTIN:  Right.  Thank you.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Just a quick question about the Allendale property   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Sure.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Sorry to interrupt. Who ended up    you said    I think you said Cranford that you ended up more with empty nesters   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. McWILLIAMS:     and    so who ended up in the Allendale   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  So Allendale is a townhome for sale community.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  So it's a little different   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:     the price points there were    it's a gated community, units that range, you know, they are individual units.  They're townhomes   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I wouldn't even   
MR. LOVENTHAL:    and condo flats. It's very difficult to put it in perspective. Allendale also a very good regional school system it's really hard to put it in perspective. We have more families there because those    you know, the towns today become more   
MS. McWILLIAMS: Did you not find in Fair Lawn it was a lot of families as well? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  No, we have very few school age children. Do I know the number off the top of my head? I don't. But I can tell you that the school biz does not even enter the property in Fair Lawn, with 150 units there are very few    and when I say very few, it's probably    we have 150 units there. I would say there might be 10 to 12, and they're not full time residents. They're often the    I don't want to say "victims" that's not fair. They're often the    result is the right word, they're often the result of divorces as opposed to the victim.
MR. WELLS:  MR. LOVENTHAL, we're far afield   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  We're far off from here   
MR. WELLS:     from the site plan.  But   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I got it.  Thank you. 
MR. WELLS:  But since we're this far off   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I got it.
MR. WELLS: I recollect when the project in Fair Lawn was rented three years ago, at that time you were surprised by the number of Ridgewood residents that went there. Do you know how that ended up? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: We had quite a few Ridgewood residents in the Fair Lawn project. 
Can I quantify it?  No, but out management reminded me    our managers, and again, there was a reference to third party management, it's not third party management. The managers work directly for me, work directly for our organization. There are a good number of Ridgewood residents. They are primarily empty nesters who sold large homes. They took some of our larger units. And they said it's as close as they could be to Ridgewood since the product isn't currently available for them in town. So    but they're happy residents of Fair Lawn now. 
MS. PATIRE:  Do you think they'd prefer a condo    sorry. 
MR. WELLS:  We really should try to go back to the site plan.
MS. PATIRE:  I know I just   
MR. WELLS:  It's okay.
MS. PATIRE:  Obviously that was a joke.
MR. WELLS:  No, it's    he's selling units up here. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Exactly. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Isabella? 
MS. ALTANO:  Yes.  Thank you for your presentation. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. ALTANO:  I just wanted to ask a question, you spoke about green areas.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Green areas, yes.
MS. ALTANO:  And this is more of a architectural concern. 
What is the distance between    from one unit to the other? If we're    we're at the window   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Across the amenity decks? 
MS. ALTANO: Across, yes.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I can look exactly. I think I said in the 40  to 50 foot range. I'm not sure there's a dimension on here, but I could see by parking spaces so let's call it    yes that's about 50 feet.
MS. ALTANO: It's 50 feet.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  If you're interested I have an exhibit that was presented by the architect as to what those amenity decks look like. I only have one. But if you wanted to pass it along just to get a sense of what an amenity deck looks like. And, in fact, it's in a project that is built locally in Cranford. I can grab it if you'd like to see?
MS. ALTANO:  Sure. If it's available. And can I continue with questions   
MR. LOVENTHAL: Certainly.
MS. ALTANO:    as you look for it. So I'm    I'm concerned about privacy and I'm concerned about does it    I feel a little bit more confident because it's 50 feet, however what if there's something going on in there and these people are right there. And I am talking in terms about noise and concern, you know, if anybody is using the green area for a    I don't know a party? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I could tell you it hasn't been an issue in the past. We have rules and regulations in place regarding noise, regarding what can be done. There's no ball playing. There's no loud music. We set hours and then those amenity decks are    have access cards that residents are given and those access cards don't operate after certain hours. So they can't go out onto the amenity deck overnight. We have not    our amenity decks are pretty consistent with what we've done in other projects, in terms of the distance between buildings and as I think I tried to describe each of those units will have it's own small private balcony or terrace at the ground level. And then there will be a screen, it's usually an aluminum rail and a small bedding of landscaping. It's usually only around 4 foot in height but it creates that barrier between the private balcony and the rest of the amenity deck. And 50 feet is certainly not an issue at all in terms of any issues regarding, you know, violations of anyone's privacy.
MS. ALTANO: Right. I'm also concerned about light coming, as you go higher, the flow of light coming to the darker floors.
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes, the amenity decks are generally lit with architectural lighting that's low to the ground, that's just dealing with raised    there's raised planters that some have some access lighting on those planters. But most of the amenity deck have very low landscape lighting, low voltage landscaping lighting it's just providing a lot more safety. And as I said they're not open late at night.  So it's really not a matter, you know, in the winter    in the summer months you have lighting till 8:00, 8:30. There's some very limited decorative lighting which we provide for safety on those decks but nothing that's going to be an issue   
MS. ALTANO: Okay. That's fine. And you said you have another project that's very similar to this one. So have you included those areas in those projects? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Say that again?  Did we?   
MS. ALTANO:  You mentioned that you have built another project that is similar to this.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes, I'm going to show you that picture   
MS. ALTANO:  That's the one you were talking about.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    if I ever find it, but I'm having trouble multitasking at the very moment.
But here is it. And this is   
MS. ALTANO:  And that's worked well in terms of that space.
MR. WELLS:  We're going to mark that   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  The    yes, the spaces are well received   
MR. WELLS:     A 23? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:    and have   
MR. KOHUT:  We marked it already, it's A 6.
MR. WELLS:  Oh, I'm sorry.  A 6.
MR. KOHUT:  It's A 6. 
MR. WELLS:  Oh, okay.
MR. KOHUT:  A 6.  If you look at A 6, courtyard photograph.
MR. WELLS:  Courtyard photograph, right. 
MR. MARTIN:  Andrew, that's the Cranford Courtyard Photo.
MR. KOHUT:  Yes.
MR. MARTIN:  Okay.
MS. ALTANO:  Thank you.
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes, you could pass it around. I only have one. I didn't expect on entering    if you want to enter it as an exhibit we have    it's an electronic file. 
MR. WELLS: Yes, it was entered. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  And that's a    that is actual photograph of our project in Cranford which is located on South Street directly across from the Cranford train station. There's a commercial component in the front where we have Starbucks and a number of retail and restaurant tenants.  And then behind it is the 116 or so units. They happen to follow the same architecture, the Tudor architecture we utilized in Cranford as you can see in those   
MS. McWILLIAMS: How tall is this one? Do you know    do you happen to know.
MR. LOVENTHAL: The overall height? It's both a    it's three  and four stories over parking.
MS. McWILLIAMS: Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  So it's    it's   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Roughly the same.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    it's the same as this.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Okay. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yeah.
MS. ALTANO:  That was it. Thank you.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  You're welcome. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Joel, do you have questions? 
VICE CHAIRMAN TORIELLI:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: How many years have you been with Garden Homes.
MR. LOVENTHAL: I'm almost embarrassed to say I'll be celebrating my 25th anniversary. I'm an attorney by trade and did start as an in house attorney and transitioned over to the development business, but I will be there 25th years in September. And I'm only 27. (Laughter.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  That's the answer I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  I was there after two years. But almost 25 years, over 20 years on the development side and about five years handling what Tom is doing, land use and transactional deals.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Thank you.
And what are the lease terms you would offer, is it only a year? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Correct. It's only one year terms that are all renewable.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Any exceptions? Do you ever do a shorter lease for anybody? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  No. We don't. We don't do short term    the only time you have an opportunity to do a shorter term is if you've already been there for a 12 month period for one year, you have an option of signing a short term rider and you pay for that rider for the privilege of having a 90 day period. Let's say, if you're in transition, about to move, but not shorter, no short term rentals at all. The 12 month is the    is the minimum term.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: And the Fair Lawn project is that fully rented? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: Fully rented, correct. We've had virtually no vacancies. And where we've had a vacancy because it is the business of rentals, and people are there often because they're in a transitional time and it's transient hosing to a certain extent, I say that positively, not negatively.  All    any vacancy we've had has been rented within a two week period. So we maintain just about 100 percent occupancy at all times.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. Thank you.
John, did you have any questions for MR. LOVENTHAL? 
MR. JAHR:  No.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Chris, did you have any questions? 
MR. RUTISHAUSER:  None.  Thank you. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Beth, did you have any questions? 
MS. McMANUS:  I have no questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  I have another quick question.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Yeah, sure. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Are these the balconies that you're proposing for this project? Is this similar?
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Right.  So you have    these are only French balconies that have   
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Oh, okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:     on this courtyard. The ground level is what I was referring to where you see that they actually have a private balcony that's then separated by landscaping   
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Oh, okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    these particular units you're not seeing it, there's only some Juliette or French balconies.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Right, that's what these are.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Exactly.   
Yes, they just don't have the full balconies.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Now what is it    just out of curiosity, what is the width of that? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  That's also approximately 45 feet, if I'm not mistaken.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Really? 
MR. MARTIN:  So each level of    each level would have its own balcony, not    not for    in the Dayton would have its own balcony?  
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Each unit we're proposing in our project to have its own balcony there may be other windows where there are corner units that we are proposing in our elevations some of those Juliette French balcony, they're more decorative. But every unit there we're proposing does have its own balcony, correct. Or if they're on the ground floor being on that amenity deck it's a patio. 
MR. MARTIN:  And how big    how big is the deck on the balcony? Is it 4 feet 6? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: They're about 4 feet wide and then usually about 8 to, 10, 12 foot    usually you can put a    you know, a 32 round    32 inch circumference table with, you know, two or four chairs.
MR. MARTIN: Understood.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  So there's room for people to utilize those for passive recreation.
MS. PATIRE:  Scott, do you allow pets in your building? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  So that's a good question.
We haven't decided whether we will allow pets here. We've gone back and forth based on the market. In Fair Lawn I split the difference and one building is pet friendly and one building is not    no pets. So we kind of hedged our bets there. Fair Lawn we only have, I think, about six dogs and a handful of cats in the 150 units. And we only allow them, as I said, in the one building.
MS. PATIRE:  Right.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  We're not sure what we're going to do here yet. We really    you know what we'll probably do, what we would do about six months before we do an, kind of a peer group, where we solicit prospective renters and we try and take their temperature. The trend is being pet=friendly and gives a revenue source as well because most of the competitors and we are charging for a pet because of, you know, issues associated with damage that they may do and things like that. So there are changes.
MS. PATIRE:  And I have one other question, as a general rule of thumb do you keep X percent of net revenues for improvements to buildings in   
MR. LOVENTHAL: Yes. There' a reserve that's kept on each project. So each of our projects are single asset entities. Every project is run independently of one another. We take an internal management fee. We charge back our expenses to each project individually. And then we do have a reserve that's put aside for the capital improvements as needed.
MS. PATIRE:  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. All right. We're going to opportunity it up to the public.
Does anyone from the public have questions for MR. LOVENTHAL? 
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Seeing none.
Oh, state your name, address, spell your last name.
MS. REYNOLDS:  Lorraine Reynolds,
550 Wyndemere Avenue.
Just a quick question the one apartment complex in Cranford that you said is similar to this? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. REYNOLDS: Do you know    you may have said it but I didn't hear, do you know what the percentage is of empty nesters and millennials or families are in that one? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: I don't know specifically, but I think it's very consistent with what I've suggested most of our new projects in these suburban communities in New Jersey have been made up of, which is a rather small percentage of families, and a second category would be singles and young couples, young professionals. And the more predominant is empty nesters. In fact we're finding    and this is not suggestion as it relates to this application, that there is significant room in the market because of our aging population for all age restricted projects. We have several rental communities that are all age restricted which you didn't see many years ago and that's because we're now finding that we're losing much of market share because there are not significant numbers of young people that are living in these developments   
MS. REYNOLDS: Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    in the suburbs. Today the trend is that most of those young professionals are finding their way back to the larger cities because that's where the vibrancy is.
MS. REYNOLDS:  And are you finding that either category, either the empty nesters or the young professionals, if there's two people in the apartment, do they tend to have    do either the older people or the younger people tend to have two cars? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: It depends. I can only answer that by suggesting to you that we comply with RSIS in each of our projects. And by complying with RSIS, I am not aware of any parking issues that exist. Cranford is a perfect example because their downtown has some of the same challenges that Ridgewood's downtown has, we have the same parking count. We're meeting RSIS at approximately 2.0, despite they're being directly across from the rail where there are suggestions that waivers are acceptable from RSIS, that you could go down to 1.2   
MS. REYNOLDS:  Uh huh.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    we still have    don't quote me, but approximately 2.0, we might have between 1.8 and 2.0. All having to park on site because the municipal parking is very challenging.  And we don't have any issues.
MS. REYNOLDS:  Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL: So whether it's one or two cars and what ends up happening, because we assign and you register your car with us as the owner and manager of the complex, we don't lead to the parking problems that may be    that you might think exist because we're limiting those number of registered automobiles to that unit. We're not allowing more than two vehicles to be registered for a particular unit. So we kind of control that.
MS. REYNOLDS:  Even if somebody wanted, somebody had a   
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Yes.
MS. REYNOLDS:     25 year old move back in with them, they can't bring    they can't have another car? 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  And, again, there might be occasions by which    but our general rule is that a unit is only    we're reserving that space, those spaces, those vehicles are registered for that unit, one or two spaces, and that's generally    yes, there are unassigned spaces on site and I'm not going to suggest to you that there isn't an occasion where, yes, that third person, if the child comes home from college and is there for the summer   
MS. REYNOLDS:  Uh huh.
MR. LOVENTHAL:    or moves back in that there might be an additional car. That certainly can    all I can suggest to you is that we don't have parking issues where we compliant with RSIS   
MS. REYNOLDS: Okay.
MR. LOVENTHAL:     in very similar conditions.
MS. REYNOLDS: All right.  Thanks.
MR. LOVENTHAL: You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: State your name and address, spell your last name.
MR. GLAZER:  Dana Glazer, G l a z e r, 61 Clinton Avenue. According to NorthJersey.com Garden Homes paid $225,000.00 in federal fines to preserve more than 100 acres of land to compensate for its alleged failure the prevent stormwater from flowing off ten construction sites including residential developments in Elmwood Park, River Vale and Allendale. Can you comment on this as how this might relate or not to what's going on here? 
MR. LOVENTHAL: I can only comment that you're reading an article, that's fine. I can comment that we can, do and will comply with all environmental regulations. What you're reading is something that there was an enforcement action as it relates to many high profile developers by the EPA in New Jersey. It was primarily recordkeeping so what you read in the paper doesn't necessarily mean that that's what the enforcement action actually is substantively about. And that as it relates to this project and any project that we built, we meet and exceed all environmental regulations includes discharge of stormwater.
MR. GLAZER:  So did you guys    did you end up paying the $225     
MR. LOVENTHAL:  We did.  We settled a    we entered into a consent decree and our recordkeeping is now where the EPA would like it to be, yes. 
MR. GLAZER:  Thank you.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Anyone else?  (No response.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  All right, being there are no further questions I guess we're at a    a point that we'll end the application right now.  And I guess   
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Well, I'm sorry, Richard, we    we're going to ask John some questions at some point and   
MR. MARTIN:  Can I make a suggestion?
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Yes. 
MR. WELLS:  Can I    since we're very close to the end and the only thing you have to do is your two witnesses and they're pretty covered, why don't we get that done? 
MR. MARTIN: Well, Mr. Wells, it's about ten after ten, I do have to speak with the board, nothing to do with this application, but it's an executive session issue. I believe we have three professionals and, quite frankly, I think you're going to sum up. And I do want to open it to    I told Andrew as well as I wasn't told that it was going to be summation. So I need an opportunity to prepare for the board, you know, what I usually do is a submission to the board before a vote.
MR. WELLS: Okay.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: I mean you got another date for June 20th and I mean if the board has any   
MR. WELLS: I understand that, and asked for that date so that we could be prepared to do that.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Yes.
MR. WELLS: I'm just suggesting that for continuity, I mean it's not that late in the evening.  I suspect, for example, MR. JAHR is basically done. I think he even indicated that. He won't to come back another night if we just spend another new minutes and finish him up. That's all I'm saying. 
MR. MARTIN: Is it your proposal that you would sum up and there is board discussion and a vote on the other date or after these people testify that night   
MR. WELLS: Yes. Yes. I'd be happy to do that. And I understand your concern about wanting to be able to legally instruct them and so forth. Although we have    we have accommodated the fact that we've extended this application many, many times we can do it one more time, in order to get us to the end. I'm just saying efficiency right now, at least MR. JAHR, who is basically done, I think we should finish. That's all I'm suggesting.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: I don't think John is done yet. I have a couple questions for him.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: You want to ask him.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Well, we do need a break then?  
(Whereupon, off the record discussion is held.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  All right. We'll take a five minute break.
MR. WELLS:  Okay.
(Whereupon, a brief recess is taken.) 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Call the meeting back to order.
Michael, can you call the roll?
MR. CAFARELLI:  MAYOR KNUDSEN? 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Yes, here.
MR. CAFARELLI:  COUNCILMAN VOIGT? 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:  Here. 
MR. CAFARELLI:  Mr. Torielli? 
VICE CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Here.
MR. CAFARELLI:  MS. McWILLIAMS?  
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Here. 
MR. CAFARELLI:  MR. SCHEIBNER?
MR. SCHEIBNER:  Here. 
MR. CAFARELLI:  Mr. Joel?
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Here. 
MR. CAFARELLI:  MS. ALTANO?
MS. ALTANO:  Here.
MR. CAFARELLI:  MS. PATIRE? 
MS. PATIRE:  Here. 
MR. CAFARELLI:  MS. BARTO? 
MS. BARTO:  Here.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  I guess we'll proceed with MR. JAHR and finish him. 
MR. WELLS:  Then we'll call it a night, yes.  
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Yes, okay.
MR. MARTIN:  MR. JAHR, you remain sworn and you remain qualified. 
J O H N  J A H R,
Having been previously sworn, continues to testify as follows:
MR. MARTIN: So any questions, I guess, Chair? 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. You want to just give us the benefit of any additional direct that you have with respect to this development application? 
MR. JAHR: With regard    I believe I covered it previously in my testimony that all my concerns have been resolved to this point and brought in through testimony by the applicant. I think at this point I will just open myself to questions of the board, any questions or clarifications or concerns.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. Sure. 
All right.  Dave, we'll start with you. Do you have any questions for MR. JAHR? 
MR. SCHREIBER: You're satisfied that the tandem parking is not truly an issue? 
MR. JAHR: Tandem parking is not    is not my favorite kind of parking. I    I don't I don't see it operating very differently than what their traffic engineer testified, though. It's very similar to what works with my single family house and most others. Do I try not to have it?  Yes, I    do I think the applicant probably tried not to have it? I think that so too. It does appear to me that it will work just like the other spaces. It's just an inconvenience for those people who have to, you know, be behind one another. So I do think that    I don't see a safety issue with it because it's going to operate like the other parking spaces in the area. So I see an inconvenience for the owners. I think that they're probably going to park in other spaces that might be empty. But I think it'll be safe.
MR. SCHEIBNER:  And do you see any problem with the tandem parking at the end of an aisle, where there's only one direction that the vehicles can exit from the tandem parking?
MR. JAHR:  Well, I    I see it operating just like any other parking space at the end of an aisle. So I don't    I don't see    I don't see that being very different than any other parking spaces at the end of an aisle. It's always nice not to have a space at the end of the aisle and to have some, you know, you know, where you stripe it off or that's where they put like a green island or something. I'm sure you see that in the commercial lots a lot. But not really an option here in this case. 
MR. SCHREIBER: That's all. Thank you.
MR. WELLS: COUNCILMAN VOIGT? 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: John, can you opine on the consideration of the garage being built on Hudson Street and how that might affect this development and the traffic flow in that area?  I know that we had talked in some preliminary way about changing some of the exits from the Hudson Street, garage going up Hudson Street, and then taking a left on South Broad, to get out during the evening is    how is this    how would a garage affect    in that area affect this particular development? 
MR. JAHR: There is no question that should the Village consider and someday hopefully erect a garage at Hudson Street that there would be effect on South Broad and Hudson Street and Passaic Street as a    as a system. The driveways at this development operate at very high levels of service. So even with the addition of the garage I don't anticipate seeing their driveway level of services having much of a change. However, I do feel that, you know, as we    if we do put the garage there, it will be more traffic in the area, so I think that the improvement which the developer has offered to put forward in    by way of, you know, sidewalk improvements and widening and handicap ramps and crosswalks, and whatnot, will definitely help to    to mitigate at least their impacts and their negative effects on what could be a potentially very good project for the Village at some point in the future.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: So from a sidewalk standpoint that will be in ADA compliance with, kind of, the ramps on the sidewalks as well, is correct? Did you put that in your report? 
MR. JAHR:  Yes. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Okay. All right. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. MAYOR KNUDSEN.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: I have no questions. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay. Frances?
MS. BARTO:  No questions right now. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Melanie? 
MS. McWILLIAMS: I think at the moment I'm comfortable unless you    I mean do you have any other outstanding concerns that you would address to us to take, just a better look, or a closer look at as we go through this? 
MR. JAHR:  Well, I think I went over those in my report.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  In your report.
MR. JAHR:  Yes.  And I covered that.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Rather I mean anything from tonight?
MR. JAHR: I would say that's a very open question. And I would like to answer by saying the report I did for both the Chestnut Village and for this are very similar in regards to my feelings about the need for the Village to seriously consider some updates to the ordinance that include requiring sidewalks and certain other pedestrian improvements and focusing more on necessarily    actually kind of the opposite that you had the discussion before about widened the street, I would like to see us widen the sidewalks. I would like to see us   
MS. McWILLIAMS:  I think that's in there's as ell, some of it   
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  But I mean    yes? 
MR. JAHR: Yeah, I'm    I'm really in favor of us capitalizing on our train station and seeing it used to its best potential and best fulfillment for the for the improvement of Ridgewood. And, therefore, creating that safe pedestrian routes and more, you make it easier for people to walk back and forth. There's    you know, it's    it's still nobody wants to get out of the car, but I think you at least do your share. All right. We're doing the best we can to try and encourage people not take their car and to, you know, get out with the umbrella and make the trek at the train station. I know, how many moms have to    have to, you know, I'm the dad that always had to drive my son to school. I'm sorry. I just had to do it. So I    I get that. So my recommendation would be to please continue to be pragmatic, please continue to be mindful of the fact that    that although I agree with Mr. Disario that the traffic generated by this development is not significant. I think DOT has defined that for us. We know what that is. I will say, though, in Ridgewood, our cup is full. And just that one more drop is    that one more drop (indicating) is what you're    is what your concerns are that's what you you're saying, John, we have these traffic issues and that's because the cup's already full. So just the one more drop is making it overflow and creating additional concerns for everyone here. So let's continue to do our best to keep them    you know, widen the sidewalks, keep the traffic volumes down and do our best to do better planning to move forward.
MS. McWILLIAMS:  Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Debbie? 
MS. PATIRE:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Isabella? 
MS. ALTANO:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Joel? 
VICE CHAIRMAN JOEL:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay.  I have no questions. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  I    I actually have one question.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Sure.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  Sorry. So, John, it actually goes to the Councilman's question as, you know, you and I walked down this area a couple of weeks ago with our planner Beth. And the observation was that there were a number of driveway openings, cutouts, on the existing site and that prevented parking along that west side of Broad Street. 
MR. JAHR:  Yes.
MAYOR KNUDSEN: And so there was a moment when we realized or I had realized that if we had    when this development happens, there'll only be one entrance, two entrances and exits.  And so just two    two driveways and that allows us the opportunity to possibly add more parking along the street. So, again, to COUNCILMAN VOIGT' s question, what would happen    even though it has nothing to do in the sense of this    your report, what would happen if we added 20 additional spaces to the street there? 
MR. JAHR: Well, it's something to consider. I'm not sure how those spaces would get used.  In    in fact, you know, it's something that we should look at. I believe that    that right now the proposal is that there be no parking posted along the entire frontage of this project. Is that correct? 
MR. WELLS: That is correct.
MR. JAHR: Okay. So my understanding is right now or I think that what we can look at as the project develops and we see how their parking is, if in fact they have a surplus, which we predict they will have, then maybe put    allowing parking there for the other businesses on Hudson and, you know, possibly other, you know, local community users, for example the church or the nearby schools, might be something we can consider. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. No other questions from the board?
(No response.)  
MR. WELLS:  I have no cross.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Mr. Wells?  Okay.
Is there anyone from the public that has questions for MR. JAHR? (No response.)
CHAIRMAN JOEL: All right. Seeing none. So I guess we're finished with MR. JAHR and we're going to continue this application without further notice to June 20th, 2017.
MR. WELLS:  Can I    can I just ask for clarification, it's the intention of the board that MS. McMANUS and MR. RUTISHAUSER would also testify on behalf of the Village?  Is     
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Yes, that would be the intention.
MR. WELLS:  Okay.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  And then there will be public testimony, when people show up for it and want to testify. And then we would close it. And then have public comment. And then you could make your summation.
MR. WELLS:  Good.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Yes.
MS. McMANUS:  I'm terribly sorry, but I just    knowing that this meeting is going to be carried to June 20th, I just checked my calendar. I have a conflict that evening.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay. 
MS. McMANUS:  Perhaps, if the board were so inclined I can give a little bit of testimony tonight so as to avoid having to send somebody in my place? 
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay. 
MS. McMANUS:  I'm sorry to throw this   
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay.
MS. McMANUS:     out at the last minute.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay. Well, do you know how long your testimony is?
MS. McMANUS: I don't anticipate it would be long because quite frankly the applicant    I had a few comments in my report and the applicant's already addressed a few of them.  And if    of course if the board would like me to send somebody in my place I'm happy to do so, but    but there might be an opportunity to address the majority or perhaps all of the comments. 
MR. MARTIN: Mr. Wells, I happen to think that MS. McMANUS should testify tonight.
MR. WELLS:  I do too. As I said before, and we still would   
MR. MARTIN:  I think someone else should still come on that day.
MR. WELLS:  We'll still be happy to come back on the 20th. We understand that the board isn't ready to conclude this evening but so we'll come back on the 20th. But I think if we can take a couple more minutes, I think we can get it done.
MR. MARTIN: Just highlights.
MS. McMANUS: Okay. I will try to be brief in my    in my comments this evening.
MR. MARTIN: I don't know if I swore you on this one.
MS. McMANUS: I don't think so.
MR. MARTIN: Raise your right hand.
Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? 
MS. McMANUS:  I do.
E L I Z A B E T H  M c M A N U S, 100 Barrack Street, Trenton, New Jersey, having been duly sworn, testifies as follows:
MR. MARTIN: And just for the record state your full name and your business address.
MS. McMANUS: My name is Elizabeth McManus. I'm a planner with Clarke Caton Hintz, planner for the board. My business address is 100 Barrack Street, Trenton, New Jersey 08608.
MR. MARTIN:  So stipulate to professional planner expert?
MR. WELLS:  I will.
MR. MARTIN:  Thank you.
MS. McMANUS:  Okay. So I issued a report on March 30, 2017, for this application. There are two sections that I would like to highlight for comments this evening. The first section is Item 2.4    and I should also add that the applicant provided in his    in new stipulations for my report in the    in the exhibits that were handed out this evening all of these items were addressed to some extent. But I want to go through those with the applicant. So the first item is item 2.4 in my report on page 2, it states that the Village's ordinance requires that parking shall be screened with    excuse me    in accordance with Section 190 118.3(e)10(d) if parking is proposed under the building, as it is, it shall be screened with architectural elements consistent with the building materials. I know that the applicant previously provided testimony during one of the hearings which was pointed out in the stipulations. The comment is really that although the testimony was    may have been provided there's no    there's no images provided in the testimony. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Well, there actually was.
MS. McMANUS:  Okay.  I didn't have those exhibits.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  Right. The full set of site plans on sheet A 2.1 rear, right and left side elevations are shown with the proposed detail for the screening. So that's    that's a full set of plans that's already an exhibit.
MR. MARTIN: And, Mr. Wells, what number is that exhibit? 
MR. WELLS:  I can give it to you as well. 
MR. KOHUT:  It's A 3.
MR. MARTIN:  A 3.  Thank you.
MS. McMANUS:  Okay. Thank you. 
MR. LOVENTHAL:  The architectural detail is    is decorative aluminum rails that we utilized that you may also be seeing in some of the rendered photos that are exhibits as well. 
MS. McMANUS:  Thank you.
MR. LOVENTHAL: You're welcome.
MS. McMANUS: So I am happy to answer any questions, but quite frankly I was really looking for an opportunity to review that exhibit. The applicant's provided that at this point so I can take a look if I have any further questions I'll alert the board prior to your next meeting. The next section I'd like to address in my report is Section 4 beginning on page 6. And this is my general commentary section. And as I said when I first opened up my comments is that a number of these items have been addressed. Item 4.1 requested additional information on how those exterior amenity areas would be accessed. The applicant has indicated through the testimony at various points this evening that those amenity areas will be accessed from the first floor. And so there'll be a balcony for   each resident has a balcony then there's also common area access to these amenity areas. And so that comment   my question has been satisfied. Item 4.2 we requested some amendments to the plant material, the applicant has indicated that they'll comply. So I have no further comments on that item. Item 4.3 is additional commentary on the architecture. Simply providing some guidance to the board, if you're so inclined to provide    to ask additional questions about the height of the building and how its appearance could be mitigated. And the last item is 4.4, addressed testimony and noise, I was looking for additional information. The applicant provided that during their testimony earlier this evening. So with those five comments throughout this report, those were the only additional items I had wanted to raise beyond what your previous planner had done in his report. So with that, that concludes my testimony, but of course I'm also available for questions from the board and public.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay.
David, do you have any questions.
MR. SCHREIBER: No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  COUNCILMAN VOIGT? 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: So you say the architecture percepts the height that they uses, elimination of unnecessary dormers? 
How does the applicant feel about that? 
MR. WELLS:  I   
MS. McMANUS: I don't want to put words in your mouth.
MR. WELLS: Well, MR. LOVENTHAL can elaborate but my point was that Mr. Appel did actually address all of that issue. And the relevant point is we are conforming to height. What she's doing is making a suggestion    her aesthetic suggestion on how it could appear to be less. Mr. Appel testified that    it's been a while, but I think even this board remembers extensively on how he had worked to accomplish that and we stand with his testimony at this point.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Okay. So you're reluctant to consider that, is that   
MR. WELLS:  That would be right.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT:    generally   
MR. WELLS:  Yes.
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Okay. All right.
MR. LOVENTHAL:  If there were any suggestions that she had I certainly would review them with the architect, but we think that from an architectural perspective that the    that we    the site the    the height perception balances with the architectural style. But we would certainly listen and if she marked up a set of plans I would bring it back to the architect, there might be some suggestions we can do that.
MR. WELLS:  If you look at the plans, there's practically no project anywhere that's made more effort to try to create different sight lines and so forth in terms of working on that height issue. So we think we've got it done. 
COUNCILMAN VOIGT: Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  MAYOR KNUDSEN? 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: Yes.
So I    commenting on that tandem parking, but just to go through that design piece, do you want to just walk through that 190, I think, 90(c) is that what you...
MS. McMANUS: On the tandem parking item? Mayor, do you mean the compliance issues associated with the tandem parking? Is that what you're... 
MAYOR KNUDSEN:  The code that you cited is 190(c)   
MS. McMANUS:  Yes.
MAYOR KNUDSEN:   which is unobstructed at all times   
MS. McMANUS: Yes, it requires all parking areas and structures to have an    I can provide a quote if necessary, but it essentially requires that all parking spaces have unobstructed access at all times and so that is the municipality's ordinance that    although it doesn't specifically address stadium parking.  It doesn't say those words, but that requirement conflicts with    appears to conflict with the tandem parking in that the first space, the parked in parking space, that space, does not have that unobstructed access because, of course, it's surrounded on all sides by parking or perhaps the parking structure.
MR. WELLS: Which is why we've got it for an exception to the site plan ordinance on that.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. 
MAYOR KNUDSEN: No further questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Okay.  Francis, do you have any questions? 
MS. BARTO: I don't have any questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Melanie? 
MS. McWILLIAMS: I'm okay for now. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Debbie? 
MS. PATIRE:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL:  Isabella? 
MS. ALTANO:  No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Joel? 
VICE CHAIRMAN TORIELLI: No questions.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. I have no questions. 
Applicant have any questions? 
MR. WELLS: I do not. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Anyone from the public have questions? Questions? 
(No response.) 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Okay. That finishes   
MR. WELLS:  Officially done.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Yes. 
MR. WELLS: Go on vacation or whatever, or going to another hearing.
MS. McMANUS: Thank you very much. Sorry about that. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: All right. So this application will be carried the June 20th, 2017, without further notice, and the consent of the applicant?  
MR. WELLS: Yes.
MR. MARTIN: And no prejudice to the board. 
CHAIRMAN JOEL: And no prejudice to the board. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wells. Thank you for being organized. 
MR. WELLS: See you on June 20th. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JOEL: Thank you.
MR. MARTIN: Thank you, Mr. Wells. (Whereupon, this matter will be continuing at a future date. Time noted: 10:44 p.m.)

Approval of Minutes: The minutes for June 7, 2016 and June 21, 2016 were approved as written.

Adjournment - The meeting was adjourned at 10:44 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
      

Michael Cafarelli
      Board Secretary

Date approved: August 7, 2018