Residents placed red dots on the names of restaurants they would not want to see open in town. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
After a prolonged battle over a Dunkin’ donut shop, Fair Haven residents took an “arts and crafts” approach to starting a new dialogue about fast food Tuesday night.
Mayor Ben Lucarelli, right, with Council President Jon Peters at Monday’s council meeting. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Steam continued to rise Monday night from last month’s controversial planning board decision to allow a Dunkin’ coffee shop to open in Fair Haven.
At issue at the council’s semimonthly meeting was a proposed ordinance that would all but ban fast-food restaurants, even as advocates acknowledged it was no more than a “stopgap” measure.
A consultant to the planning board recommends that left turns from the shopping center’s eastern driveway, above, be prohibited. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Attempting to address concerns over traffic safety, an engineer for a hotly debated Dunkin’ coffee shop proposed in Fair Haven has offered an idea he says will safeguard pedestrians.
Another traffic engineer, this one hired by the borough planning board, has also made some suggestions, redbankgreen has learned.
Shopping center principal Dan Hughes listens as objector Tracy Cole speaks. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
After a four-month detour over legal issues, a hearing on a plan to open a Dunkin’ coffee shop in Fair Haven resumed Tuesday night, just as hot as before.
For three hours, opponents predicted traffic and safety problems at the Acme-anchored shopping center on River Road where the shop would operate. The site’s principal owner called that scenario “ridiculous.”
Borough attorney Sal Alfieri and planning consultant Fred Heyer at Monday’s council meeting. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
A missing-in-action law that banned fast food restaurants in Fair Haven is effectively revoked and will have to be rewritten, the borough’s attorney said Monday night.
In that case, the next one needs to address “ambiguities” that enabled a proposed — and controversial — Dunkin’ coffee shop to clear the first hurdle to possible approval, officials and residents said.
Former Councilwoman Bea Sena reads minutes from a 2002 council meeting at which she voiced concern that parts of the borough code had gone missing. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Fast food joints in Fair Haven? Why, there oughta be a law, say some residents, angered by a pending proposal for a Dunkin’ coffee shop.
Well, it turns out there is — or was — a borough ordinance explicitly prohibiting fast food restaurants. But it seems to have vanished from the town’s official code book, a resident told the borough council Monday night.
What that means to the most controversial planning board application in recent history, as well as others expected to soon follow, immediately became a lightning rod issue.
After a four-hour session, the Fair Haven zoning board adjourned its hearing on a proposed Dunkin’ shop without a decision Thursday night.
Planning board attorney Douglas Kovats, right, leads a joint swearing-in of witnesses at the February 19 hearing. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Even Fair Haven residents hopped up about a proposed Dunkin’ shop might want to fortify themselves with extra caffeine Thursday.
That’s because a zoning board hearing on the controversial plan could prove to be a seminar in arcane land use law.
The Dunkin’ shop would occupy space alongside a new breezeway in the Acme shopping center. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The spillover crowd that was treated to an hour of arcane legal arguments over a proposed Dunkin’ Donuts in Fair Haven last month may soon get a free refill.
Lawyers for two objectors have filed appeals over whether the planning board has jurisdiction to hear the coffee shop’s application, leading to a detour in the case, redbankgreen has confirmed.
By JOHN T. WARD
A former Little Silver police officer now serving time for an attack on a handcuffed man in the borough police station did not get an unfair sentence, a New Jersey appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.
Steven Solari , 42, right, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2014 and ordered to forfeit his $91,000-a-year job and any future prospect for public employment after his conviction on four counts of official misconduct, simple assault and witness tampering.
The Middletown Planning Board last year rejected a proposal for 342 homes on the site of a former Avaya office building. (Photo by Joe Fisher. Click to enlarge)
By JOE FISHER
Organizers of last years successful battle in Middletown to stop a 342-unit housing development on a former Avaya corporate offices site are girding for round two: a court appeal by the developer.
In opposing the plan, a group that dubs itself SONIC, for Save Our Neighborhoods Integrity and Character, hired an attorney and expert witnesses, who argued that Four Ponds Center Associates application to the township planning board would adversely impact local traffic, the township school system, and the need to expand sewer capacity at the expense of neighbors.
After a year of hearings, the board rejected the application 9-0 last June, citing testimony of those witnesses as a major factor in the denial.
New Jersey’s state appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a back-injury patient who claimed doctors at Riverview Medical Center failed to inform him of x-rays showing he also had a large kidney stone.
In its decision of last Thursday, the Appellate Division ruled that a Superior Court judge was correct to dismiss a medical negligence claim by John Cifaretto, who underwent a series of treatments for the stone and claimed he suffered permanent kidney damage.
The decision concerns a 50-year-old apartment building on Bodman Place that the owner wanted to convert to condos. (Click to enlarge)
The state appeals court has upheld the Red Bank zoning board’s rejection of a condo conversion plan for the half-century-old Colony House apartment building.
The plan would have exacerbated a “severe lack of available parking,” the board said in its July 2008 resolution on the rejection.
In a decision dated February 10, the appeals court found that the board had acted reasonably in coming to that conclusion.