Board OKs five homes for Brooklyn Avenue
BY VINCENT TODARO
Staff Writer

SPOTSWOOD - Brooklyn Avenue will soon accommodate five new single-family homes and become a through-street traversing what is now a wooded area.

The Planning Board approved the application recently, allowing DeStefano Contracting, North Brunswick, to build the new housing on Brooklyn Avenue between Burlington and New York avenues.

The property, located in an R-10 zone, now has three undeveloped lots on its westerly side totaling 18,000 square feet, and 10 vacant lots on the easterly side comprising 32,000 square feet.

The small lots must be added together in order to be developed, said Borough Council President Curtis Stollen, who also sits on the Planning Board.

"You have all these 20-by-40 small lots doled out to people long ago," he said. "They're not developable in that state, they need to be together."

Three homes will be built on the west side of Brooklyn Avenue, and two will be built on the eastern side. The homes on the west side will sit on 100-by-90-foot lots, while those on the east side will be on 100-by-100-foot lots. One additional lot on the eastern side, at 100-by-20 feet, will become the property of an adjacent landowner.

The development means the road will no longer be a dead end; it will instead function as a through-street from Burlington to New York avenues. The area is two blocks east of Adirondack Avenue, several blocks south of Old Stage Road.

Some of the utility and roadway improvements needed to accommodate the new homes were approved in 2004 and have already been completed, Stollen said.

"Brooklyn is slowly being extended into this wooded area," Stollen said. "This is the final piece to connect Brooklyn as a through-street from New York Avenue to Burlington Avenue."

The board, which voted unanimously to approve the project, had no legal way to deny the application, Stollen said.

"We just tried to have the best possible results," he said. "The board does not have jurisdiction to deny a plan like this. We can't deny from the standpoint of not wanting development."