Jones Lang LaSalle
Hotel plan is given a green light
Thursday, January 26, 2006
By BRIAN X. McCRONE
Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR - A 160-room Hilton Garden Inn and four office buildings on a site at Route 1 and Meadow Road won unanimous approval from the township planning board last night.
When constructed the hotel will be the fifth along the township's stretch of the Route 1. It is part of the 225,000-square-foot Greenview Corporate Center to be built by Switzenbaum Associates of Philadelphia.
No date for the beginning of construction was announced last night.
The complex will have access from both Route 1 and Meadow Road, though the buildings will be set back several hundred feet from both roads, according to plans presented at the meeting.
Thirty of the 64 acres at the site also eventually could become township property or otherwise be left as preserved wetlands as part of the deal. Those 30 acres will be part of the township's "Greenbelt" region in either case, officials said.
The project was presented to the planning board five times in the past two years, but the initial designs were met with strong objections by the nearby owner of Windsor Woods apartments.
The new proposal for the tract, which stretches between the Lowe's Home Improvement-anchored Square at West Windsor shopping center and Meadow Road, is more in line with township zoning laws. The approved plan does include a variance allowing a shorter buffer zone between the hotel complex and the neighboring apartment buildings.
Objections to the application were again made by an attorney for Windsor Woods.
"There's a risk that this plan is not going to survive a review by the Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission," attorney Christopher Tarr told the board. "The DRCC has not reviewed the application since new stormwater regulations were passed in 2004."
But board Chairman Marvin Gardner said the board would not guess as to how the new regulations would affect the plan. He said the DRCC approved the initial stormwater plan in 2002.
Tarr also argued that the buffer variance does not mesh well with the township's master plan, which states that the normal 85-foot setback zone should actually be expanded to 100 feet when it separates a residential property and a commercial property.
The variance included in the approval would permit parking spaces to be built within what is supposed to be an 85-foot buffer zone between the properties.
Tarr said he was unsure last night if the owner of Windsor Woods, West Windsor Developers LLC, would appeal the decision in court.
The Hilton would join four other hotels along West Windsor's Route 1 stretch - the 107-room Palmer Inn, the 120-room Marriott Residence Inn, the 124-room AmeriSuites and the 348-room Hyatt Regency Princeton - and become the newest of about 30 hotels lining the busy Route 1 Corridor.
Besides the hotel, which would be 98,000 square feet, the two large office buildings would be 54,000 square feet and the other two would be 10,300 square feet.
Hotel plan is given a green light
Thursday, January 26, 2006
By BRIAN X. McCRONE
Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR - A 160-room Hilton Garden Inn and four office buildings on a site at Route 1 and Meadow Road won unanimous approval from the township planning board last night.
When constructed the hotel will be the fifth along the township's stretch of the Route 1. It is part of the 225,000-square-foot Greenview Corporate Center to be built by Switzenbaum Associates of Philadelphia.
No date for the beginning of construction was announced last night.
The complex will have access from both Route 1 and Meadow Road, though the buildings will be set back several hundred feet from both roads, according to plans presented at the meeting.
Thirty of the 64 acres at the site also eventually could become township property or otherwise be left as preserved wetlands as part of the deal. Those 30 acres will be part of the township's "Greenbelt" region in either case, officials said.
The project was presented to the planning board five times in the past two years, but the initial designs were met with strong objections by the nearby owner of Windsor Woods apartments.
The new proposal for the tract, which stretches between the Lowe's Home Improvement-anchored Square at West Windsor shopping center and Meadow Road, is more in line with township zoning laws. The approved plan does include a variance allowing a shorter buffer zone between the hotel complex and the neighboring apartment buildings.
Objections to the application were again made by an attorney for Windsor Woods.
"There's a risk that this plan is not going to survive a review by the Delaware & Raritan Canal Commission," attorney Christopher Tarr told the board. "The DRCC has not reviewed the application since new stormwater regulations were passed in 2004."
But board Chairman Marvin Gardner said the board would not guess as to how the new regulations would affect the plan. He said the DRCC approved the initial stormwater plan in 2002.
Tarr also argued that the buffer variance does not mesh well with the township's master plan, which states that the normal 85-foot setback zone should actually be expanded to 100 feet when it separates a residential property and a commercial property.
The variance included in the approval would permit parking spaces to be built within what is supposed to be an 85-foot buffer zone between the properties.
Tarr said he was unsure last night if the owner of Windsor Woods, West Windsor Developers LLC, would appeal the decision in court.
The Hilton would join four other hotels along West Windsor's Route 1 stretch - the 107-room Palmer Inn, the 120-room Marriott Residence Inn, the 124-room AmeriSuites and the 348-room Hyatt Regency Princeton - and become the newest of about 30 hotels lining the busy Route 1 Corridor.
Besides the hotel, which would be 98,000 square feet, the two large office buildings would be 54,000 square feet and the other two would be 10,300 square feet.
posted by Jones Lang LaSalle NJ News Blog at 11:05 AM
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