Plans for a Wawa and quick-serve restaurant off Route 70 in Brick. (Photo: Daniel Nee)
Months after being denied approval by the township’s zoning board to build a Wawa gas station, convenience store and separate restaurant at a Brick intersection, a developer will give it a second go, records showed.
Brick 70 Developers, LLC, the same company that was denied the variances required for its previously-proposed project at the intersection of Route 70 and Duquesne Boulevard, has applied to build in the same location. The company will return to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, seeking permission to build a 5,585 square foot Wawa convenience store with an associated 12 pump fueling station with overhead canopy. The development would also include a “quick-serve” restaurant with a drive-through lane.
The new application, scheduled to be heard by the board at its Dec. 6, meeting, does not appear to be different in size and scope of the one that was previously denied March 23, 2017. The previous plan also included a 5,585 square foot store, 12 pumps and an adjacent quick-serve restaurant. And like the previously plan, the proposal requires a variance from the board since a small portion of the land to be used for the stores falls in a residential zone. That was largely the basis for denying the request, after residents whose homes neighbor the project lobbied against its approval, saying the store would bring noise and traffic to their streets.
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A public announcement of the newly-submitted plan did not mention the previous denial.
The last time the complex was proposed for the location, its hearing spanned tens of hours over grueling monthly board meetings, to reach its terminus. There were hours of raucus testimony, mainly during the flamboyant cross-examination of witnesses by a North Jersey defense attorney whose mother owned one of the small residential parcels near the proposed store. The developer’s attorneys claimed the man was seeking to be overpaid for his lot by Wawa, and was only objecting because the company refused to do so.
The meeting for the new proposal will begin at 7 p.m., Dec. 6 at the township municipal complex.
