Photo Credit: Johnson Development Associates
By Elizabeth A Meyers
PublishedSeptember 6, 2023 at 9:39 PM
ROBBINSVILLE, NJ -- The Borough of Allentown as well as a group of area residents, known as The Alliance for Sustainable Communities (TASC), have filed a lawsuit against Robbinsville Township seeking to void the approval of a 500,000 square foot warehouse complex in Mercer Corporate Park.
According to court documents obtained and reviewed by TAPinto Hamilton/Robbinsville, Allentown has joined with TASC and area residents Kenneth Mayberg, of Robbinsville, and Gregory Westfall, Patricia Brown, Mary Woehr, all from Allentown, in filing a legal complaint with the Superior Court of Mercer County.
The property in question is located at Mercer Corporate Park on Corporate Drive -- which is off of Robbinsville-Allentown Road -- and is zoned Office-Research-Hotel (ORH.) Under a Robbinsville ordinance, warehouses can make up 50 percent of properties in these zones.
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However, the plaintiffs complain that the property is adjacent to Allentown's Historic Village and National and State Historic District. They further take issue with the planned buildings potentially covering almost 50 percent of the 90-acre parcel of land and almost 50 percent of the property with impervious surfaces.
The application was first filed by South Carolina-based Johnson Development Associates in February 2021 but was not fully approved until March 2023 after numerous public hearings.
The Resolution adopted by the Land Use Board, which TAPinto also reviewed, lays out in detail the approval process as well as the conditions set by the board that must be met by the developer.
The document notes that the Land Use Board held seven public hearings on the application on December 6, 2022, December 13, 2022, February 21, 2023, February 28, 2023, March 21, 2023, March 22, 2023, and March 28, 2023. The Township says that all of these meeting were live and members of the public were able to speak or question the applicant's professional witnesses.
The lawsuit by TASC and Allentown contends that members of the public did not have the opportunity to pose questions.
However, meeting transcripts of the February 21 meeting alone show that 16 members of the public, including residents of Robbinsville, Hamilton and Allentown, spoke during the public portion of the meeting and received answers to their questions. Many of these remarks raised questions about truck traffic, noise, contamination of the Indian Run floodplain, and possible impact on the historical area of Allentown.
Additional meetings also provided an opportunity for public comment.
For instance, on March 22, seven members of the public spoke. Many of these comments raised concerns about stormwater runoff and impact on the local environment.
Meeting transcripts show that responses were given, where possible under the legal jurisdiction of board, to these questions.
TASC and the Borough of Allentown charge in the lawsuit that the public and the objectors were not permitted to provide expert testimony on wildlife and wetlands, which provide habitat for the endangered and threatened species on the property. The lawsuit further claims that appropriate approvals by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) have not yet been obtained by the developer.
However, according to Michael Herbert, an attorney with Parker McCay who is representing Robbinsville Township in the lawsuit, Johnson Development Associates has already achieved most NJDEP approvals and is pursuing the remaining approvals pursuant to the conditions of this Land Use Board's approval.
The plaintiff's cite the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology database in claiming that "the Mercer Corporate Park is one of New Jersey's top birding hotspots with 200 bird species observed there" including several threatened and endangered species such as the American Bald Eagle, Great Blue Heron, Northern Harrier, and Osprey.
Herbert says that the determination of wildlife species on the property also is left up to NJDEP to review.
Finally, the plaintiff's lawsuit claims that a member of the Land Use Board said at a hearing that they were only voting for the application because a board attorney directed them to do so.
Herbert denies that claim saying that all of the "board members chose to vote to approve the application pursuant to their own judgment aided by the guidance of the board professionals including the attorney."
Robbinsville Township and the developer plan to file court documents countering the claims. A case conference would then be schedule by the court prior to a hearing being set. A timeframe will be set by the presiding judge.