We attempted to obtain Franklin Township - Land Usage Board (LUB) approval for our mill site plan last Wednesday night, September 3rd. Ironically, it was one year to the day since we last made a presentation to them. In that year we worked on the issues and concerns that they brought up regarding our initial site plan. Also we worked with NJDEP to get our wetlands permit and, of course, we worked with the NJDEP Non-Point Source Pollution group to get approval for our proposed gray-water only septic system. In addition, we modified our site plan to increase parking to address one of the LUB members concerns about the possibly of parking over-sized, extended cab pick-up trucks in the mill parking lot. Lastly, we increased the width on the entrance to the parking lot to address LUB concerns about two way traffic entering and leaving the parking lot simultaneously. This last point was the issue that drove the whole septic re-design issue. Basically, we spent one year addressing their concerns and issues to prepare for the meeting last Wednesday night. Unfortunately, the LUB was not satisfied with our efforts. One LUB member cited on-street parking concerns on Maple Ave with the existing MWA River Reseource Center as the reason to reject our submission. We view his statements and concerns about existing parking problems as totally without merit and a fiction. To our knowledge, over the past seven years, there was only one parking complaint on Maple Avenue where one Plant Sale visitor parked in front of a residence in a Legal Parking area. The bottom line was that no vote was taken on Wednesday night; the vote was postponed until the next LUB meeting on October 1st. The LUB told us to scale down our plans to only have a museum on the first floor and in the basement with no office spaces as we had planned for the second and third floors. Then wait a couple of years to see how things work out. The MWA rejects the museum only direction as economically infeasible and outside the scope of our charter. We are a watershed association and not a historical society. We had planned to use the office spaces in the mill ourselves as we are rapidly out-growing the River Resource Center. We have done nothing but good work for the community and the Musconetcong Watershed. Neighbors around the River Resource Center drop by to praise the work that we have done to revitalize the Maple Ave/Old Main Street area by renovating and re-using a formerly derelict old building as our headquarters. Beth and I and the rest of the Mill Restoration Committee, Cinny MacGonagle, Bill Leavens, Peter Banta and Jim Hedden are working on a strategy to deal with this situation. We are not happy with this course of events and unfortunately may have to finish up some of the existing mill site work and then mothball the entire project until we can find a viable way forward. A couple of old adages come to mind: Let no good deed go unpunished and If restoring old mills was easy, everybody would be doing it. I will post more information on this as we work the issues and develop a strategy.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 21:46:21 +0000
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