Paramus zoning board meeting gets heated

The latest hearing at the Paramus Zoning Board of Adjustment on the construction of a Panera Bread and retail space at 770 Route 17 north was briefly interrupted following a heated exchanged between the applicant and objectors.

The outburst occurred while the objector's attorney was questioning the applicant's witnesses, and prompted objector Richard Cacciatore to leave the room. In response, zoning board vice chairman Gerald Rickelmann called for a short recess. He said that neither side of the debate wanted such a tense situation during proceedings.

"What happened here tonight cannot and will not happen again. I am going to give a warning on the record to the applicant, because I felt people were uncomfortable in here," Rickelmann said. "I don't think anybody should have to tolerate feeling that uncomfortable when there's tempers flaring."

The application's objectors consist of a group of residents who live near the property where the restaurant and retail are proposed, and are concerned that the restaurant could affect their quality of life. Members of the group have hired their own attorney to present their case before the board.

The current plan is related to the Equinox Health Club property next door, which was also opposed by neighbors but approved by the Planning Board in 2011. The new application shares a parking lot with the existing structure, creating a total of 453 parking spaces while 598 are required.

The site of the current application is home to an abandoned structure that will be demolished and replaced with a 15,000-square-foot undetermined retail space and a 4,500-square-foot restaurant with drive-through that will be used to house a Panera Bread.

At the end of the previous hearing, the board suggested traffic engineer Hal Simoff gather more data for determining traffic at the restaurant. During previous testimony he stated that he had not performed a full traffic study in Paramus, and was using observations from a similar-sized franchise in Edison.

Simoff presented a new report on the capability of the restaurant's drive-through to stack cars. He returned to the Edison restaurant, which also has a drive-through and is located next to a major highway, and conducted a traffic count from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., peak lunch hours.

The Edison location can queue nine cars at once, the same intensity planned for the Paramus facility, according to Simoff. Each half-hour segment saw 13 to 19 cars enter the queue, with an average time spent of eight minutes. The peak hour for the drive-through consisted of 34 cars, which was the approximate number put forth by the applicant when they designed the size of the queue.

"The actual studies indicate that with a peak hour count of 34 vehicles, the queue never exceeded eight vehicles," Simoff said. "Therefore, I would suggest the numbers are comparable to the Paramus Panera Bread site."

Here is the original post:
Paramus zoning board meeting gets heated