How can a three-story building contain five levels of parking?
That was a question the Planning Board wrestled with Monday night, as board members reviewed plans for just such a building on Lorraine Avenue, in the Upper Montclair Business District.
Landowner Michael Pavel wants to demolish two Lorraine Avenue buildings immediately west of the Valley Road Lukoil station and replace them with a structure encapsulating stores, dwelling units, a sort of mini-parking deck and a basement fitness center.
"This is very complicated," said Montclair Fire Chief Kevin Allen, who is a board member, during the hearing Monday. "I’ve never seen a parking arrangement like this, and I’m having a real hard time visualizing the impact of this."
Pavel hired a parking-deck consultant to assist architects with the novel design for the 36-foot-tall building, which is to have 139 indoor parking spaces spread across two underground parking levels and three above-ground levels.
Despite exerting substantial effort to maximize the on-site parking inventory, Pavel still fell short of the 206 spaces required under the township code. That deficiency triggered one of four variances the developer must get from the board.
Pavel, who also owns the Valley Road building that once housed The Olympic Shop, intends to include 21 residential units on the second and third floors of this proposed complex, and shops on the first two levels.
The basement would have a pool, a Pilates room and a warmup area, all open to the public.
After three hearings before the Montclair Historic Preservation Commission, Pavel and his team won approval on March 19 from that body, which controls the aesthetics of all structures in the business district.
The prospective building’s gabled roofline on its southern end is designed to echo the appearance of the Williams-Sonoma building across Lorraine Avenue and Mt. Hebron Middle School on Bellevue Avenue, said architect Paul Sionas. As the structure extends north toward residential neighborhoods, the roof divides into multiple peaks, suggestive of standalone homes.
Today, the property consists of two buildings lining the Lorraine Avenue sidewalk, a two-story structure from the late 1920s on the right and, on the left, a one-story building from 1930 that was formerly a gas station. They stand in front of a gravel parking lot.
Some board members questioned the developer’s parking expert’s contention that the business district’s parking lots and the metered spaces on Valley Road could accommodate overflow parking from the new building, on those occasions when the structure’s parking deck was at capacity.
Board member Lanny Kurzweil said the hour-by-hour traffic counts that the expert provided failed to take the economic downturn into account. Kurzweil said the statistics would not accurately reflect conditions on the ground if the nation’s financial climate were to improve.
"How can we adjust these numbers if there is an uptick in the economy?" he asked.
Meanwhile, board member Frank Haimbach seemed shocked that the expert did not consult with the Montclair Parking Authority (MPA) about how much the district’s parking lots are used. Haimbach said an analysis of the MPA’s revenue going back several years could give the board a better idea of how much higher lot usage is during better economic times.
The board did not decide whether to approve or deny this application on Monday. Another hearing is scheduled for Monday, June 8.
