COAH regulations an issue at townhome hearing

BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

RED BANK - The borough Zoning Board approved an application for 15 townhouses last week, but not without some discussion about the spirit of the state's Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) regulations.

Although all of the professional testimony for the project, known as Lincoln Square, was finished last month, board member Thomas Williams had requested that the board hold off on voting.

The Lincoln Square project calls for the construction of 15 market-rate two-bedroom, three-story townhouses, with a garage for each on the first floor.

The townhouses will be contained in two buildings, fronting on both Bridge Avenue and Cedar Street.

In the building facing Cedar Street, two stacked affordable units are included in the plan, with a two-bedroom unit on the first floor and a three-bedroom unit on the second and third floors.

Williams said at last month's board meeting that he was concerned that all of the units would have a garage, except the affordable units.

At last Thursday's board meeting, Williams said that the Planning Board set a precedent when it voted down a townhouse development for several reasons, including the fact that the COAH units were planned to be stacked units, rather than two-story units like the rest of the development.

"The board wanted more parity with the affordable and market-rate units," Williams said. "After thinking about it, as much as I think it is a beautiful and well-thought-out plan, I think the affordable part of this project was an afterthought. The affordable aspect needs to be reworked."

Glenn Geiger, the attorney for applicant Matrix, said the affordable housing portion of the project was "not an afterthought."

"[The affordable housing units] were originally going to be across the street at the Chelsea project [another application submitted to the board by Matrix]," Geiger said. "We acquired additional land on an adjacent lot so that we could put the affordable housing on this site. It was far from an afterthought."

Williams said that although he appreciates that the applicant has now included the affordable housing in the Lincoln Square project, the Chelsea project, which called for two two-family houses across Bridge Avenue from Lincoln Square, would have provided garages for all of the units, including the affordable units.

"It seems to me that the off-site units would have had more amenities than this project," Williams said.

He also said that access to and from the affordable units was more limited than the market-rate units.

"Every other unit has a front door and a back door," he said. "By design, these people are isolated and apart from the rest of the community. The community aspect of this project is the common area in the back. These people would not have doors that front that."

Roger Mumford, a partner in the application, said that because the property is currently dilapidated and contains five single-family homes and the Mid-State Mechanical building, the proposed project would be an asset to the existing community.

"I've built a lot of affordable housing in New Jersey," he said, "and I have always been concerned with parity. I take enormous exception to your saying that the affordable housing was an afterthought. Rather than putting it on the Chelsea property, we saw that it was the spirit and intent of Red Bank to see it built onsite."

Mumford also said the affordable units would not have garages because state regulations call for at least one affordable unit to be accessible to people with disabilities, and to meet that requirement, the applicant had decided to make the two-bedroom COAH unit a single-story unit on the ground floor, in place of a garage.

"I can't tell you how much time and planning we've put into this." he said. "The only mistake I made was, because this property is so dilapidated, thinking that we would get more support from Red Bank in trying to revitalize it."

Williams said that he understood that not every affordable housing unit must have a garage, but that he believed the people who will live in those units should have some nearby storage space for bicycles.