A "dilapidated" house that has sat vacant for two years on Rosedale Avenue is ready to be ripped to the ground, after the Planning Board on Monday approved the building of two new homes on the 105-foot-wide lot.
As a condition of approval, the board stipulated that a wetlands study of the site be completed before construction commences, since some plant species that could indicate the presence of wetlands might be growing on the property. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) protects wetlands and sets up buffer zones around them.
A floodplain extends onto part of the lot, and wetlands could be within and bordering on the plain. The board stipulated that the owners obtain a "letter of interpretation" from the DEP clarifying whether the property contains wetlands.
The owner, Jason Springer, plans to build a pair of two-family houses on the site, with each apartment having three bedrooms. They would be two of the largest houses on Rosedale Avenue, according to testimony at this past Monday’s hearing.
Thomas Ercolano, the architect for the project, said the yard of the decrepit, vacant house, at the corner of Rosedale Avenue and Pleasant Way, has become "a dumping ground" and, after the new homes would be built, the corner would become livelier and safer.
Neighbor Dwayne White, who resides on Pleasant Way near the house, said a strip of land at the edge of the lot hasn’t been maintained and has gotten out of hand, covered with high grass, trash, and tires. That section also has a rodent problem, White said.
He welcomed the proposed redevelopment. "It’ll make my house look good, that’s for sure," White said.
The sloppy segment of land White complained about was, until recently, municipal property. The 50-foot parcel had been set aside to be a street, but it was never paved and didn’t materialize.
Subsequently, there was some confusion about who owned that property and was responsible for its upkeep.
Code enforcement officers were leaning on Springer to take care of it, but he refused, since it was public land.
Eventually, the owner petitioned the township to vacate the "paper street," and in February officials conveyed half the land, or 25 feet, to Springer and the other half to his next-door neighbor.
That additional footage brought the size of Springer’s lot to about 105 feet, which he told the board he intended to divide roughly in half. Springer argued that, although he needed a variance since ordinance requires each lot to be 60 feet wide, each of the two lots were still larger than most parcels in the area, which measure from 30 to 40 feet each.
