August 25, 2025, Planning Board Special Meeting Transcript - WEHI

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 21 Now, zoning wise in Planning Area 1, yes, but if you read the rest of the state plan there's lots of language in there about how to develop in ways that create smart growth and it doesn't automatically mean anything anywhere in Planning Area 1 is what the state plans calling for. Number six, connected road infrastructure. Do you have a neighborhood where you can walk around the block or are you creating loops and lollipops where primarily you drive to have a play date. So, again, we can measure this in metrics, such as intersections per unit or lengths of road per unit and we have numbers that come with that. This grading exercise here you can grade individually if that is more smart growth or sprawling. Number seven, transit accessibility. Do you have means of actually getting somewhere from your living unit that isn't a car. Well, this, again, is some estimates because the plan is not detailed enough but the estimates for the nearest bus is 1.45 miles, the nearest train station 5.1 miles, and no sidewalks, right. So you actually have to drive to get to these public transportation options. Community Note Accessibility. How many things can you get to in a reasonable time. And we use the

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 22 measurement of human walking speed. So we go about, average person, about three miles an hour, so you can go a mile in 20 minutes. Can you walk to any of these destinations on average. I just took a center point inside the development diagram there. So on average from the center of this development proposal, estimate that schools 1.7, grocery store, 1.5, park, 2.1 miles, police 3.7, fire 1.4, library 3.3, post office 1.7. These are real things that people will do every day of their lives. So this is, it's an index. Like the Dow Jones index. It doesn't mean this is measuring everything that everyone's going to do but it gives you a sense of what a development will create as far as user miles traveled and it'll give you a sense of how much of that you can actually do not in a car. All right. So, again, without sidewalks it makes it really not likely that you can likely walk to these destinations. Land Resource Impact, in this case we do have a patch of forest that's over 100 acres and that would mean that there is a core area, that means interior to the edge of the forest is considered special habitat, because there are some species that can't really exist just in the edges or little strips of forest, they need a core forest area there. So this does have core forest estimated to be about 49 acres.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 23 Impervious surface created is about 12, I forgot to put it in the slide here, about 12 acres. From the engineering that was done so far, and that does not include sidewalks. So impervious surface may be more than the 12.1 acres and it is a resource of being the headwaters. It's the actual headwater of the Canoe Brook. And, again, what's your grade in your report card here? So finally, Growth Trajectory. This project consumes 100 acres plus of land remaining and when you look at this, and this is what I'll show, I'm going to pop out to NJ Map right now. Again, NJ-map.com, that's the easiest way to get to it. And what I'm showing here, we have animated maps showing development over the last 30 years. This is -- I'm focused in on West Orange because West Orange was largely built out by 1986, there was a little bit of development happening here, just to give you an idea of how we can create a sense of the story what's been happening with New Jersey's landscape, how it's been developing over time. And so we have these animated maps and what I want to show you, I want to show you a layer and this how you're -- you're going to kind of absorb here how to use NJ Map. I'll got to the layer called Remaining Lands. Okay. We did a model

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 24 that said, everything that's protected, let's make that green. Everything that's already built, let's make that red and anything that's left over, that's remaining that could possibly be developed, is either purple or blue. Okay. And so let me show you the legend for that. This is how you get to the legend. Right. So here's Essex County and we can kind of zoom in here to the parcel. Now, I can see it right away. Here is the tract, it's purple and it's blue. Blue meaning it's restricted, it has some wetlands, steep slopes or something like that. Purple meaning unrestricted. When we look at the parcel here, and then we can see that mapped out, right. All these little bits and pieces of purple are not really that available. They might be peoples backyards but there's not very many large tracts of open space left in Essex County. In fact this is the last largest undeveloped lot in the entire county. This is just a little bit down here, but that's not along the highway here. So it's definitely one of the most significant remaining parcels of land. Okay. So that's how this works. Gives you an idea. There's so many different layers that are available that you can open this up and see special flood hazards, but here's the really nice thing that most planning boards really give us a lot of compliments, we can go to the boundary layers and click

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 25 on parcels. Right. And this will draw all the parcels and then you can click on any particular parcel and it will give you a link to our parcel mapping and this is, we do this at Rowan, this is not the state, we use state data, but we add a lot more stuff to it. So you can see the tax records from the state here, but you can also see measurements, you can see things like wastewater service area. You can see things like public community water service area, and this is interesting, actually it is not in the development water service area which is interesting to find. But anyway, this is the parcel mapping that is very, very useful to planning boards. So I wanted to bring that your attention. All right. When we look at this, go back here to the remaining lands, I think you get a sense of why I brought this up and I will go back to the slide presentation for this question of growth trajectory. Right. So our -- this proposal is very significant in its impacts in growth trajectory for this. You're using up the last large lot of undeveloped open space. You're going to be adding, I'm just estimating using the census averages for West Orange, 1300 new people, that's 496 x 2.7. And estimated auto trips, somewhere between 2700 and possibly much more than that. I went on the conservative side here to be much more consistent. So

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 -- and it is the last -- so what happens, right. When this is developed then West Orange along with many other municipalities will be in a mode of redevelopment. Redevelop is the future. That's not something to be worried about, that's really exciting. You can actually recreate things that are not done very well in the past and that are abandoned and whatnot. The question is, do you use up all the land first before you start to really start to focus on redevelopment. Okay. So that is the -- did everybody keep their score card. You have you report card here. I'll put this up again and I'll show you mine, I'm not trying to grade this, this is just what I shared with my students. There it is. Let me know -- all right, there it is. All right. So what if the land were put into conservation, right. Again, I just, this is Google Earth with a 3D sketch up there. It doesn't really show the whole plan, I just wanted to give you a sense of that -- of the geography of that. We can do the same thing and, on this, I appreciate it, I'm taking a lot of time here, so I'll go a little faster through the smart conservation goals here. Again, this is in context of New Jersey development. We've been monitoring this and tracking this since 1986, when we really had the first GIS data coming out and New Jersey has developed since

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 1986, 377,000 acres of formally undeveloped land that became urbanized. Okay. That's a third of a million acres and we're only a five million acre state. That's a tremendous amount of development in only 30 years. And that rate has slowed down with, guess what, the state plan which helped make development be a smaller footprint. The density of housing has increased tremendously since the state plan has gone into effect and Rowan has done an analysis showing that. The impact analysis for the new state plan coming out really documents that. So smart growth does make a difference. But we still have a long way to go where development will change the landscape irreparably. Right. It doesn't go backwards, it doesn't go from natural to urbanized and then back to natural again without it being really diversely landscaped. So the decision we make today really will be important for many years to come. So with the conservation groups that we work with there's something called New Jersey Conservation Blueprint and the blueprint is led by a team of three, and we're just kind of the custodians of this idea, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, Rowan University and major conservancies, but it actually consists of a steering committee of state nonprofit local and private

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 28 organizations that come together and say what are the goals of conservation. Can't preserve everything, that's unrealistic. What are the things that are highest priority. And so same thing, we can create a series of smart conservation priorities. Right. Wouldn't it be good to prioritize larger tracts, because you get a lot more open space with 100 acres than you do with a five acre lot, which is the minimum. You can't do just a bunch of five acre lots without it being a lot of work. So prioritize the larger tracts. Near Other Open Space. It's really good to make clusters of open space, particularly in conservation. This isn't an issue here but it is also important for habitat and for connecting human elements, right. Protect Habitats as a Goal. Promote Connectivity Both for Wildlife and Humans. Protect Forest Core. Water quality, flood risk, steep slopes and important soils and create community green space. Q. Professor Hasse, I have no problem, you don't have to talk that fast. We have time and I want to make sure the reporter doesn't have to go so fast. You can slow down. A. Okay. Thank you. I thought you were going to

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 29 say we're going to have to cut it short. That's a much better answer. Q. The time is yours for the presentation, subject to the Chairs ruling. Thank you. A. Okay. Then I will go through this and I will go not quite as fast but I am not trying to drag it on. We have other experts. Okay. So these are the priorities that we are looking for in the conservation community. And let me -- let's go through this here and, again, you can keep score on whether this proposed site would be ringing a bell or, you know, it's a gradient. It's not like, you know, this site is perfect for conservation and this site is perfect for -- it's all these factors are, it's complicated, but you can get a sense by having priorities that you have mapped out that have scientific measurements to it that give you a sense. It's not just how you feel because it's in your own backyard. There are real metrics to go by here. So if you look, again, this is the remaining lands map, I already showed you that live, so I don't need to go on that again. Again, I want to give you an idea that it is the last large remaining parcel in the entire county and is it near other open space. Okay. So this one is pretty good, it's not adjacent

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 30 specifically to a park, but it is pretty close to three different golf courses and it does, as you can see, and we're going to see the other metrics here, create a network of open spaces. It's not that far from other open space, which is good. You want to have things which will be able to be potentially connected. So near other open space. Okay. Protected Habitat. Now, protected habitat is for all species. This is the DEP landscape project which is a major species. And there haven't been endangered species found on this site, but the yellow indicates that it is the type of habitat where many species, including endangered species could go, so it is ranked one in the yellow area there and the -- CHAIRMAN BAGOFF: I'm going to stop you. I have to stop you. Mr. Afran, we are getting off track here. This is, again, you're quoting information that we have. There are no endangered species, we understand this. We heard from many experts, you're recounting testimony of other experts. You're doing it again and again and again, it is not providing another layer of information for the Planning Board. Right now we heard all of this from different experts. Doing this again is not helping us get more information that we didn't have to help us