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Suggested changes to the Springwood Avenue Redevelopment Plan that got the nod from the Asbury Park Planning Board on Monday is but a sign of things to come.

Included in the changes is assignment of the municipal-owned parking lot on Memorial Drive for valet parking and allowing for single-family detached homes in the residential zone.

The latter makes way for Interfaith Neighbors’ Parkview AP housing project. Originally presented semi-attached townhomes, the nonprofit returned at year’s end with a new layout and design for the mixed income project, which features an adjacent income property for each new homeowner.

In a nutshell, the project features 20 new residential units along Springwood Avenue, bordered by Atkins and Sylvan avenues and Adams Street. Ten detached three-bedroom, two and ½ bath, single-family townhomes face Springwood Avenue and 10 one-bedroom, one-bath apartments located above a two-car garage that faces Adams Street. They include ground floor office space, making it appealing for live-work candidates, project officials have said.The goal will be to include 40 percent deed restricted affordable sales for low to moderate income homebuyers.

But the new plan eliminates originally proposed rain gardens to help with stormwater management.

“Our requests for these amendments are cost driven, by and large,” Interfaith Neighbors Executive Director Paul McEvily has said.

Existing site and soil conditions, as well as groundwater levels, and the need to comply with the State’s stormwater management requirements sparked the need to go back to drawing board, he has said.

Wesley Lake Commission Chair Gail Rosewater [at right] asked the board to be mindful about stormwater management.

“That water [runoff] goes into our lakes and into our oceans and it is really an environmental problem,” she said. “Perhaps they can build a rain garden somewhere in between their building and the lake that they are impacting, or put in tree boxes or bioswales or stormceptors or whatever it s they feel that they can do to contribute to the community and to the ecosystem of our community.”

Amended changes spark a larger issue:

The 7 to 1 vote sent the amended redevelopment zone changes back to the Asbury Park City Council but Mayor John Moor was the lone dissenting vote, saying he did not disagree so much on the specifics but on procedure.

“This plan goes back to 2008,” Moor said. “A comprehensive review of the plan is needed.”

Moor pointed out that the plan calls for a review of Section 3 guidelines by the defunct Office of Asbury Works. The mandate requires developers to hire local contractors on projects funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD].  

“There has not been an Asbury Works for five years,” he said. “So, who do these developers report to. We are hitting bits and pieces but we are not looking at the entire plan. This is not just Springwood Avenue, this is the CBD, Main Street, and Asbury Avenue [redevelopment zones].

Board Attorney Jack Serpico said the onus rests on the City Council.

“We can’t act on our own on these,” he said. “It has to come from the Mayor and Council via resolution just like this one.”

The City’s Planning and Redevelopment Director Michele Alonso said those guidelines are addressed in subsequent developer’s agreements the governing body enters into with anyone who builds within their redevelopment zones.

Other than master waterfront redeveloper iStar, who has to sign off on any changes, the governing body can act as it sees fit.

“The master plan recommendations trickle down,” she said. “If the Master Plan says to make a change to a redevelopment plan then it is up to the governing body and the Planning Board to enact it.”

Redevelopment Plan changes are introduced by the governing body, sent to the Planning Board to ensure it conforms with what is laid out in the Master Plan, and then voted on my ordinance by the Mayor and City Council.

Planning Board Chair Barbara Krzak said their ad hoc Master Plan Implementation Committee is currently vetting needed changes to redevelopment zones that the City Council will need to address in light of the December adoption of a new Master Plan.

In the end, Board Member Trudy Syphax questioned Moor’s point that no one is making sure developers are hiring locally as laid out in Section 3 guidelines.  

In other business, the Planning Board voted to officially hire Michael Sullivan of Clarke Caton and Hintz as its Board Planner. Sullivan has been serving as the board planner for close to two months and replaces the previously long serving Heyer, Gruel, & Associates. He also serves as the City’s Zoning Board of Adjustment Planner.

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