|
Mantoloking Road Businesses Take Fight Against Wawa To Zoning Board
By Keith Hagarty
With hundreds of area business owners and residents on hand, the Township Zoning Board of Adjustment recently began hearings on controversial plans to build a 24-hour Super Wawa convenience store and gasoline pumps on Mantoloking Road, between Susan Drive and Church Road.
Plans call for the construction of a 5,589-square-foot convenience store, with 16 gasoline pumps, three 20,000-gallon underground gasoline storage tanks and enough allowable room to accommodate 59 parking spaces.
The board began the first in what is expected to be a series of hearings on the application. The next hearing date is scheduled for April 30 at the municipal building on Chambers Bridge Road.
Several variances are being sought for the application, according to WaWa's attorney, Timothy M. Prime, some of which include waivers for ingress and egress, as well as for adjustments to the planned proximity of drainage basins and the construction of a berm along parking stalls in the right of way.
The three conditional use variances being sought by WaWa include "some of the toughest variances to get under the land use law," according to attorney Edward Liston, the attorney representing a group of eight local business owners opposing the plans, known as Route 528 Business Owners.
"You have to show special reasons," said Liston. "You have to provide an enhanced quality of proof, and I don't see how they're going to do that here."
Some of the other additional waivers being sought include those for a gas station being within 1,000 feet of an existing church or school in the B2 zone; a 75-foot residential buffer requirement, where only a 25-foot buffer is currently proposed; as well as driveway design and sign waivers.
Plans to bring the expansive convenience store and gas station to a 3.4-acre parcel on the quiet Mantoloking Road area has been met with strong resistance from a group of local business owners, known as Route 528 Business Owners, who have banded together to hire an attorney to fight the application.
Last month, over 50 local business owners, family members and township officials gathered in the garage of Joe's Service Center at the Liberty gas station on Mantoloking Road to protest Wawa's construction plans.
Lisa Wheeler, whose family has owned Joe's Service Center on Mantoloking Road for over 50 years, said she staunchly opposes the Wawa application as both a business owner and a resident.
"My father started this business 50 years ago," she said, "but as a resident, I live on this street, I have children who ride their bikes up and down this street," she said.
In addition to the impact on her business and surrounding merchants, Wheeler said she's also concerned for the safety of the residents and the influx of traffic bound to come to the area should Wawa be approved.
"I know a lot of these people on a very personal level," said Wheeler. "I'm concerned for the safety of our residents, and I'm also concerned that by Wawa coming in, it's going to put a lot of the mom and pop shops out of business on this street, and we're going to have a lot of empty businesses on this road."
The group said they first became aware of Wawa's intentions to build on the vacant lot about a year ago, when the former property owner alerted them of ongoing negotiations he had been having with the company, according to Wheeler's brother, Jeff Bevacqua, a partner of Joe's Service Center.
"We immediately walked across the street to find out what was going on," said Bevacqua. "We weren't notified, however, of anything officially happening until this past January, when we got a letter from the (township zoning) board of adjustment."
When it was still in the early rumor phase, Bevacqua said he and several other area merchants were hoping the application would remain just that. But the recent board meeting soon put such hopes to bed.
"We were hoping that it was just going to go away," said Bevacqua. "Right after we saw the engineers from Wawa over there (at the proposed site), the very next day, a surveyor came out there, and he was there for a week, and then a drilling company came there and they were here for three or four days, so we knew something was going on. We just didn't know when it was going to happen."
Mayor Stephen Acropolis and several members of the Township Council have similarly expressed their disapproval of the planned super store and gas station.
"They have to prove a hardship," Acropolis said of any applicant's attempt to receive waiver approval from the zoning board. "They have to prove special reasons why they need it there, and there has to be a hardship. I don't see any hardship, and there's absolutely no reason in my mind why it has to go there."
Calling the construction of a Wawa at the site, "a terrible idea," Tony Bertolini, the owner of Mike & Son's Auto Repair at the Eagle gas station, agreed wholeheartedly that allowing such a business would inherently cripple several mom and pop shops sprinkled throughout the area.
"I agree with that big time," he said. "Everybody's a little worried right now."
With a series of gas pump islands planned for the Wawa site, Bertolini said he's concerned about the potentially devastating impact to his business, and those around him.
"They're going to severely undercut us," he said of the average price of gasoline and fuel. "It's a good area and good people. We do auto repairs, but we do gas too, and if I'm not pumping gas, then there's going to be people I'm going to have to layoff."
| 
