GREEN BROOK – The township's neighbors to the north, Warren and Watchung, are taking Green Brook to court over its affordable housing plan that calls for 88 to 90 housing units on property that is only accessible from Warren.
It's the second lawsuit in Somerset County Superior Court challenging the plan that provides for the development, which would include 18 affordable units at the northernmost tip of Green Brook on 16.65 acres along Wichser Lane bordering on both Watchung and Warren. The property is near county-owned Warrenbrook Golf Course.
The other lawsuit was filed Aug. 6 by Delilah Magao, Carlos Magao, Noreen Witte and Thomas Witte, residents of Wildwood Lane in Watchung. They claim their "million-dollar homes will border a high-density development just over the property lines in the backyard, altering neighborhood character."
Green Brook has not yet filed a response in court to the lawsuits.
Warren and Watchung have also filed court challenges to Green Brook's affordable housing plan.
The only access to the property is by Wichser Lane, a dead-end road that intersects only with Mountain Boulevard in Warren east of the municipal complex and by a paper street, Hauser Lane, a 20-foot right of way also off Mountain Boulevard.
The suit filed by Warren and Watchung says Hauser Lane "represents inadequate access to the site" for emergency vehicles, including fire department apparatus.
Both suits argue that Green Brook's rezoning of the property for multi-family housing is inconsistent with Green Brook's master plan.
Both suits also say the property is environmentally sensitive. According to the lawsuit filed by the municipalities, "the site is critically constrained with environmentally sensitive areas with no evidence to suggest that proper due diligence had been done to ascertain the location and presence of onsite wetlands, buffers or flood hazard areas."
The suit filed by the Wildwood Terrace residents says the proposed development "will worsen flooding and runoff impacts" for the neighbors. The suit also says the area has "historically experienced flooding, which has worsened due to overdevelopment uphill in Warren and Watchung, and the increase in significant weather events."
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Their lawsuit also says the property lies on "steep, heavily wooded slopes abutting the Watchung Mountains."
The neighbors' lawsuit also argues that Green Brook's plan is "spot zoning in favor of a single developer" who owns the four lots in the property. The lawsuit alleges that the developer, Robert Berlant, posted an ad for the site a year before the plan and the zoning ordinance was adopted.
Green Brook's affordable housing plan is also facing two more challenges filed by the Fair Share Housing Center and Green Brook Meadow LLC.
Both challenges say the township should not have included the Green Brook Regional Center, a state-run facility for people 55 and over who are developmentally disabled on Greenbrook Road, in its calculation of existing affordable housing units.
"In reality," the Fair Share Housing Center's challenge states, "the site simply does not qualify as affordable housing."
The Fair Share Housing Center also contends the township needs to provide more documentation on how the affordable housing plan was drafted.
Green Brook Meadow, owner of property at 238 Route 22 West, also alleges that the township rejected its proposal for 350 units without "any proper or justifiable information."
Green Brook has a goal of providing zoning for 113 affordable housing units in the next decade.
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