Friday, January 31, 2014

HAP Plans Senior Housing, Land Use Boards Get Busy

The troubled Elmwood Gardens housing complex, now slated for demolition, will be reborn as senior housing, according to a legal notice.

The Housing Authority of Plainfield is soliciting proposals for redevelopment of the site on West Second Street with one-bedroom, age-restricted Section 8 apartments. The proposals are due on Feb. 14 at HAP offices on East Front Street.

Next week the city's land use boards will hear applications for other proposed projects, including a new restaurant on South Avenue and 20 apartments on West Front Street.

Alicia Lam of Westfield is proposing a 17-seat takeout restaurant at 638-44South Avenue, along with a warehouse and two apartments.(I'm told  the owner received approval for the 1st floor restaurant a few months ago- she is before the Planning Board because she is requesting to add a second residential apartment to the second floor. The building presently has the restaurant and 1 apartment, if approved by the Board, the building will contain the restaurant and 2 apartments.) She is seeking relief from numerous land use regulations in her application to the Planning Board, which meets at 7 p.m. Thursday (Feb. 6)  in City Hall Library. (Note the time change, which was ordered by new Chairman Ron Scott-Bey at the board's Jan. 16 reorganization.)

Spark Properties LLC is proposing to demolish a building at 719-731 West Front Street to make way for a three-story structure with seven commercial units an the first floor and 20 apartments on two upper floors. The applicant is seeking preliminary site plan approval and various waivers. According to a legal notice, the hearing will be at the Planning Board's  Feb. 6 meeting.

Documents related to these applications will be on file in the Planning Division office for public inspection.

The Zoning Board of Adjustment also meets next week, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (Feb. 5). Legal notices cite two applications, one seeking "certification of a pre-existing non-conforming status" for a building at 130-32 North Avenue which has a restaurant on the ground floor and apartments on upper floors.

Another application is from Keystone Enterprises LLC/Dawn to Dusk Preschool to construct an additional classroom on the second level of an existing building, making a total of eight classrooms to accommodate the previously-approved capacity of 120 children at the daycare. it is located at 1500-1512 West Third Street.
(I'm told this one will not be heard in February- the Applicant did not provide notice to the newspaper in time- most likely it will be rescheduled for March 6.)

Documents for the Zoning Board applications are also on file in the Planning Division office on the second floor of City Hall, 515 Watchung Ave.

Note: Legal notices are a handy tool for tracking redevelopment. Besides being published in the newspaper, they can also be searched for on the New Jersey Press Association web site.

--Bernice

3 comments:

  1. Im gonna just get right to the point, if its true that elmwood gardens formerly known as the new projects are slated to become housing for seniors, that means that the residents were duped into believing that they after demolition of the present buildings and the construction of the new townhouse units they would be able to return to their neighborhood, once again the poor are hoodwinked and bamboozled, instead of displacement on the west bank its displacement on the westend, organizing for peace progress and prosperity for all Mr.X

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    1. This is great news for the neighborhood, peace and progress are on the way...unless of course its our seniors who are dealing drugs and packing guns then we are right back where we started

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