New amendments were negotiated into the development plan by the Borough before being sent off to the planning board for their Nov. 8 meeting.
A special borough commissioners meeting last Thursday addressed comments and concerns from residents about referring proposed amendments regarding the Bancroft property to the planning board.
The borough purchased the Bancroft property for $12.9 million by signing an agreement between Bancroft School and 2 Hopkins Lane, LLC, the buying company of Brian O’Neill of Recovery Centers of America. Originally, O’Neill wanted to use the property to open a drug rehab center.
The borough negotiated new amendments into the development plan before being sent to the planning board for its Nov. 8 meeting. Commissioner John Moscatelli said minor changes were made to the length of the housing buildings that will be constructed on the lot. The planning board needs to review the amendments before a final plan and guideline can be submitted to the developer.
“This is not giving them a green light to do anything, this is giving them a green light to develop a plan that will then be analyzed further,” Moscatelli said.
Resident Chris Maynes expressed concerns that waivers to the plan are giving the developers too much leeway and the commissioners were amending the plan due to exhaustion of having to negotiate for the past 18 months.
“Whatever goes there is going to be there for 150 years, so we need to get it right,” Maynes said.
“First of all, we are not wearing down, we kept going and we could keep going, there’s nothing to wear down,” Solicitor Mario Iavicoli said. He continued by saying all sides of these compromises were weighed carefully, and the amendments are a reflection of the hard work the borough has put in over the last 18 months.
“A year ago, this would have been 20 pages, if we had gone forward and said ‘all right.’ We got it down to three pages and it took a long time, and a lot of time and a lot of effort to get it down from the 20 pages of amendments to these few. I just want to add that,” Commissioner Jeff Kasko said.
“If anyone thinks that we were taken to the cleaners by this guy (O’Neill), they are wrong. If anyone thinks we have been walked over by this guy, that’s wrong,” Kasko said.
All commissioners approved the resolution to propose new amendments to the planning board.
