4) The restaurants and other businesses on Bloomfield Avenue near Valley Road need those nearly park

Montclair residents protest the plans of LCOR s James Driscoll (front las vegas travel guide center) and Pinancle s Brian Stolar (front las vegas travel guide right) to build an eight-story building in their CentroVerde las vegas travel guide project at the October 21 Montclair Planning las vegas travel guide Board meeting.
Montclair Planning Board, after hearing from Montclair Acquisition Partners as well as a room full of Centroverde protesters, holding up signs that read No Monster las vegas travel guide Buildings and Montclair Is Not For Sale, voted 6-2 last night against recommending an additional two stories on the building.
The representatives of Montclair Acquisition Partners (MAP), Pinnacle s Brian Stolar and LCOR s James Driscoll, finalized their testimony on their proposal to add two stories to the proposed six-story las vegas travel guide anchor las vegas travel guide building of their CentroVerde project by answering outstanding questions from the board s members.  But despite their best efforts, the board voted not to recommend las vegas travel guide the additional stories. Mayor Robert Jackson and Councilor-at-Large Rich McMahon, who represent the council on the board, abstained, las vegas travel guide as the project will next go before the council for a vote.
MAP s plan would also have included a sale of development rights to the Valley Road Parking Plaza for the development of a $1.2 million public park, which would have resulted in a loss of parking spaces.
We appreciate the opportunity, Driscoll said at the beginning of the meeting, to continue las vegas travel guide to sit down with you and talk about the realization of a park at the corner of Bloomfield and Valley, that we think is going to be a really special las vegas travel guide place.   The comment provoked laughter from the audience, and it did not go any better for Driscoll and Stolar going forward.
The two developers were undeterred.  They stressed that the 32 parking spaces that would be redeveloped las vegas travel guide for a park would be replaced by an expansion of the Orange Road parking las vegas travel guide deck, which would be accessible by foot via the new CentroVerde Drive between Orange and Valley Road, and they sought to allay concerns about overbearing mass by re-emphasizing the total 18.5-foot setbacks for the top floors six feet for the fifth floor, seven feet for the seventh floor, five feet for the eighth.  Stolar las vegas travel guide notably attempted to recover from a serious blunder at the October 7 meeting, during which he could not answer the question regarding the overall height las vegas travel guide of the proposed eight-story structure, explaining that it would be about ninety feet tall, roughly 10 feet taller than the nearby Leach storage building.
In the end, only board members Paul Rabinovitch and Peg Seip supported the revised plans.  Rabinovitch found the eight stories beneficial to the project, and he was satisfied that the setbacks would not predominate the streetscape, while Seip said that Montclair had to embrace change and ought to do so in a manner that improves the block.
What we have is a gas station, we had car dealerships, a parking las vegas travel guide lot, and a municipal use . . . that s enough, Seip said.  This project will bring enormous vitality.  It will bring more revenue, it will bring more retail space, it will be a people generator.
But Planning Board Chairman John Wynn, who had given MAP the benefit of the doubt in earlier board meetings, was not convinced that their redesign was enough to break up the bulk of an eight-story building, though he commended them for their tremendous effort.   Other board members las vegas travel guide faulted the glass facades of the two proposed top floors, deeming them inappropriate to the design, despite efforts to mitigate their appearances with cornices to the top of the sixth floor.  Fire Chief Kevin Allen, noting that an eight-story hotel on Orange Road had already been recommended by the board, said that Montclair needed a hotel and that he could accept such a building there, but he did not like the idea of replacing the parking across Valley Road with parking on the Orange Road deck, saying it was too remote from the center of the downtown area to be beneficial.  I like the original plan, he said bluntly.  I don t see the necessity for two more stories on Building Number 2.
Board member Carole Willis offered the most stinging critique of the revision, finding las vegas travel guide fault with selling the development rights of the Valley Road parking lot to a private entity.  She noted that, despite the $3 million las vegas travel guide the township could receive and use to either build the park or use to pay down debt while keeping it as a parking lot, such a deal would render the township unable to develop the lot later on if it chose to.   She considered the lot prime township real estate that was too valuable to surrender control of development rights to.
Board member Martin Schwartz also voted no, saying that the proposal was reasonable and offered improved setbacks but overlooked the deficiencies of the original six-story design, which he thought had too much bulk. He said that the discussion of setbacks should have been the starting point for the original six-story plan and that two extra stories, despite the incorporation of setbacks, would only add to the bulk.
Though he did not vote on the proposal, Mayor Jackson commended the involvement of Montclair residents in the process but added that the township ought to consider any idea for development and decide for or against it without rancor and respect differences of opinion for any idea that gets proposed and may or may not be approved.
After a brief recess, during which all but six residents went home, Planning Director Janice Talley proposed revisions to the proposed master plan, such as overlaying transit villages around the Lackawanna Plaza and Bay Street las vegas travel guide Station areas and mixed residential and commercial zoning along Forest Street.  She also reported that there is renewed interest among the public to broadcast Planning Board meetings las vegas travel guide on TV34, which she recommended by done on a regular basis to ensure a place on the TV34 schedule.
The council still has the option of whether or not to proceed, said Wynn after the vote. They referred it to us as their planning arm, their planning experts, to make a recommendation, and if you are going to override the recommendation of your experts, you have to have a good reason.
Related Posts: CentroVerde Vote Expected Tonight at Montclair Planning Board (Updated) Montclair Looking Back, Looking Forward Fast But Not Furious: Montclair Township Council Holds A Very Short Meeting
It s like the two additional stories were just a ploy to make it seem that only having six is a reasonable compromise. They already got what they want. Look at the unconcerned grin on the Pinnacle s guy s face. Surrounded by all that hostile resistance and he s just counting las vegas travel guide his future millions in his head. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Whenever I drive south down Park Street toward Bloomfield Ave and see the Siena at the end of the next block I always think how claustrophobic that moldy behemoth makes the area look. Now I ll get that same unpleasant feeling going up or down Bloomfield Ave. Ah, progress.
I ll miss the Manhattan view from South Mountain Ave. The colorful city lights along the horizon are beautiful at night. Even the Empire State Building will be obscured. Sigh. Twas the beast that killed beauty.
It happened. Good for you and those that organized it. Enough of the public showed up to fill the room and convince enough of the planning las vegas travel guide board to vote NO to 2 extra stories on CentroVerde, and keeping control of the town s parking lot land use.
Now you need to tell your councilman to also vote NO. You can get their name from the town hall and email on the town website las vegas travel guide .6 stories is enough on Bloomfield Ave and the town needs control of public land for what the future las vegas travel guide brings.
The mayor is correct however .we have $200 million in debt to deal with but not by selling development rights of public land. The debt is now at very low variable interest rates ( in our taxes and rent) so we know what happens when interest rates go up. We have to grow up and stop borrowing to get what we cant afford to buy.
1) The Mayor should be commended for thinking las vegas travel guide creatively and bringing proposals like this two extra stories in exchange for money forward for debate. This proposal is reasonable and merits serious consideration, but it is also reasonable to disagree with it.
2) The 2012 Planning Board (of which Schwartz was not a member) made a mistake in approving las vegas travel guide the original Centro Verde design 18 months ago. The current Board has worked hard to wring improvements to the plan from the developer, but we ve only just now managed to get to where the Township should have started with those negotiations. The current design is still too bulky and unwieldy and using glass on the top two stories doesn t help.
4) The restaurants and other businesses on Bloomfield Avenue near Valley Road need those nearly parking spaces (and more). Asking people to park at the further-away las vegas travel guide Orange Road deck is likely to hurt those businesses.
When I was on the Council, I pushed to have a Resolution approved to establish a Capital Finance Committee. Montclair is home to some of the most knowledgeable municipal finance people in the nation, and they volunteered their time and expertise.
Their reports las vegas travel guide were met with skepticism, and many resigned. The Committee was repurposed. Although I know of at least two good people on the new Committee I can t say I ve ever seen a public report from them, although their advice could be behind the scenes.
But raising las vegas travel guide $1MM, here, $2MM there, is not the way to chop the debt significantly. And remember, we just approved new labor contracts for virtually the entire town, and added new positions. I ve seen nothing that would suggest all this new money from sale of development rights will be devoted to debt reduction.
I commend all the residents who came to last night s meeting. Attendees were young and old, of diverse backgrounds and from all four wards. With a couple of (in my view inappropriate) exceptions, everyone was respectful in showing their strong disagreement with the proposal.
Here s the thing, t