River Vale, Developer Reach Deal on Homes
By WALTER DAWKINS, STAFF WRITER
RIVER VALE Township officials have reached a tentative agreement with River Vale Developers on its controversial plan to build town houses on 15 wooded acres near Lake Tappan.
The preliminary agreement, which was reached at Monday’s council meeting, would give the township the right to buy a 5-acre parcel on John Street from the developer, which wanted to build 28 homes there. In return, the township would drop its appeal of a Superior Court decision overturning the Planning Board’s rejection of the initial plan to develop the Lake Tappan property.
Under the proposed deal, the developer would be allowed to build 50 town homes near Lake Tappan. It also would be permitted to build 11 single-family homes on Stanley Place.
“If we lose the appeal, the developer would have carte blanche to build on all three parcels,” Councilman Dwight de Stefan said, noting that the developer already has township approval for the Stanley Place lots. “With this, at least we have an option to preserve one.”
The Planning Board rejected the original proposal in September 2005, saying the plan for 78 town houses had insufficient street access for fire and emergency services, requiring that lifesaving equipment be hauled hundreds of feet.
Environmentalists had also fought to stop development on 44 acres of the River Vale watershed, which is zoned for housing. The township bought 18 acres of the tract in 2002 for open space.
The developer appealed the board’s ruling, and in June 2006, Superior Court Judge Jonathan Harris ruled that the township had to overturn its rejection.
River Vale appealed the judge’s decision and was expecting a decision last week. But River Vale officials and the developer asked the court to delay the decision while they worked out an agreement.
“With the appeal, it’s almost a rolling of the dice,” Township Attorney Holly Schepisi said. “And based upon the appeal, there was a very significant chance that all three parcels would have been built upon.”
But Mark Becker, co-director of the Bergen Save the Watershed Action Network, said he was not happy with the tentative deal.
“It’s good that [the John Street property] would be preserved, but they should not preclude trying to also preserve the Stanley Place plot, which is near Cherry Brook and the Hackensack River and falls within the 300-foot buffer from [a Department of Environmental Protection Category One protected waterway],” Becker said.
“The developer was interested in selling it, as well, and we had been working with the town, the Bergen County Open Space Trust Fund and the state Green Acres program to see about getting the funding necessary to pull that deal together,” he added. “So I think they’re compromising too soon.”
***
E-mail: dawkins@northjersey.com
(c) 2007 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.