[ back ]
RINGWOOD - Rhinesmith development returns to drawing board
(by Teresa Edmond - Staff Writer - September 10, 2008)
RINGWOOD - The Board of Adjustment carried an application for a commercial/residential development on the Rhinesmith property to a Jan. 7 meeting, thus repeating a year-old pattern of carrying the application because its developer has been switching up its construction plans.
Introduced at least a year ago, according to Board of Adjustment Chair Jack Dunning, Glen Rock-based Realty Associates seeks a use variance to pursue its plans to construct a three-story building with commercial use on the first floor and residential use on the second and third floors.
Since the application’s introduction, the developer changed the building’s plans, including the number of residential units in the building from the original 14 to between 10 and 12 units, according to Dunning.
Midvale residents have long opposed the project because they say such a building would be an eyesore in this section of the borough. Ryan, who attended the Sept. 3 Board of Adjustments meeting, said the building would be too large for the Rhinesmith property, a vacant lot on Ringwood Avenue overrun with grass where a school once stood.
“They say it will make the section look beautiful, but it won’t,” she said.
Ryan said the application for the commercial/residential building is up in the air.
“We don’t know what the town has in store until they have prepared their propositions,” she said.
Perhaps not surprising to either the board or attendees at the Sept. 3 meeting, the Board of Adjustments announced that it received a letter from Brian Chewcaskie, legal representative for Realty Associates, asking the board to carry the application to next month’s meeting. According to Board of Adjustments Attorney Ralph Faasse, the developer and its attorney are “still evaluating the project.”
William Grygus, Board of Adjustment vice-chair, proposed that the board should carry the application to the January 2009 meeting with the understanding that the board gets an extension through the end of January. Grygus also said the board would mail notifications to residents near the property to let them know at which meeting the application would be heard. This is so the board would save residents the trouble of attending a meeting only to discover that the application won’t be heard that night.
“This thing is dragging out,” Grygus said. “I think it’s gone by long enough.”
Although the commercial/residential building is a start-from-scratch project and not a remodeling project, Realty Associates needs a use variance to go ahead with the project, Dunning said. Therefore, the Board of Adjustments, and not the Planning Board, is authorized to grant the use variance.
Realty Associates is negotiating with the borough to swap land, as Mayor Daniel Mahler first unveiled at a council meeting last July. If this deal goes through, the borough could construct its new municipal hall on the Rhinesmith property and Realty Associates could build the commercial/residential building on the lot where the current municipal hall is located.
As of press time, Chewcaskie hadn’t returned phone calls from Suburban Trends seeking comment.
[ back ]
