TOMS RIVER – Residents living near the land where a hotel is proposed have been asking the governing body to fight it on their behalf.
LRE TR LLC is the developer behind the 125-room hotel plan. The hotel’s entrance would be on the southbound side of Hooper Avenue just north of Walnut Street. It would be across from where all the county office buildings are being constructed.
The hotel itself, though, would be in a currently wooded area overlooking homes on Walnut and Vauxhall Road. Nearby residents spoke at two recent Township Council meetings asking for help.
The hotel was planned since 2009, and was approved by the Planning Board in 2019, Vauxhall resident Robert Gallucci said. This year, it was before a land use board again to ask for a change in the signage that is allowed.
“The building got bigger. The design changed,” he said. Therefore, it should have to go before the land use board to get another approval. For example, there weren’t any windows facing Vauxhall in an older plan but now there are, and they will be looking “in our back yards.”
The developer is using traffic studies from 2009, he said, questioning how they could still be accurate since the town has become more congested since then.
Maria McGowan, who also lives on Vauxhall, said that 62 families have signed a petition against the hotel.
“We can’t believe there is no expiration date on a variance,” she said.
Gallucci and McGowan’s concerns are the same as the ones they brought up at a meeting three weeks prior, and they were still looking for help. At that meeting they spoke about the volume of police reports that get generated by a hotel.
Dennis McGowan said that a jughandle would serve residents better in that spot than a hotel. He also asked if there was a reforestation plan to make up for the trees taken down.
Another Vauxhall resident, John Green, said that if the hotel has a liquor license, it is too close to Westminster Nursery School (run out of the Presbyterian Church) by state statute.
He noted that the area has a lot of kids who walk to Walnut Street Elementary School, and others who wait at bus stops in the area. There are too many kids near the street to have a high-traffic hotel, particularly if liquor is served.
“We are looking at it,” Township Attorney Greg McGuckin said at the most recent meeting. At the previous meeting, he suggested the timelines of the paperwork that was filed could be checked to see if the developer is in violation.
“The administration is looking at it and if there’s anything that can be done,” Township Attorney Peter Pascarella said at the most recent meeting.
