BERKELEY – A boat yard that was operating without permission will have another hearing at 6:30 p.m. on April 28 at the municipal building located at 627 Pinewald-Keswick Road.
The Planning Board will hear the owner’s plan to move or construct new boat racks and to build a new 3,000-square-foot garage for boat repair.
Most Planning Board meetings are held on the first Thursday of the month. They set aside special meetings for situations like this when the public are more likely to have comments.
Neighbors have been upset about the boat yard, stating that the owners cleared trees to set up boat racks without warning.
The land is owned and operated by NJ Outboard, and they have been using it for boat storage throughout the last year. The land is zoned as residential, meaning that only homes are supposed to be built there.
The area is in the woods between Scott Drive and Browning Avenue, east of Route 9. They were using the intersection near the Wawa gas station and Sylvan Lakes Boulevard to move boats.
Neighbors living behind the property, in the Scott Estates neighborhood, had been coming to the Township Council meetings to protest it.
They said NJ Outboard cut down trees, buried some of them on the property, built unsteady racks over them, and used fill that hasn’t been tested. They were also accused of environmental issues such as spilling oil, leaving out open paint cans, and filling in wetlands. All of this was done without township or environmental permits.
The township fined them. NJ Outboard then applied to the Zoning Board to allow them to operate as they have been, just legally this time.
Residents had said the fines were a slap on the wrist after allowing them to profit off the land all season.
The storage of boats is not a violation now, Berkeley Business Administrator John Camera explained. The Zoning Board gave them a variance to allow that.
A variance in this case is when a property owner is granted the ability to use the property in a way that the township doesn’t normally allow (at least not in that location).
At a Zoning Board meeting last year, the owner of NJ Outboard said through his attorney that he had a reputable contractor who assured him that everything was being done legally. He also said he had a stroke earlier and did not remember what was done. NJ Outboard has never returned calls from this newspaper.
Ultimately, the Zoning Board allowed NJ Outboard to continue to use the land as a boat yard while they came up with a better plan to use the property. When the plan is finalized, they’ll have to have it approved, which is a public process. That’s what’s happening now with the Planning Board meeting on April 28.
Zoning Board officials had said back then that if they didn’t allow the storage, then the owner could appeal it to a court and the township would lose all jurisdiction.
