Hare Krishna temple plan back before board

OLD BRIDGE — Controversial plans to build a Hare Krishna religious center were back before the township Planning Board on Feb. 7, this time with one question in mind:

Should the board even be hearing the application?

Attorney R. Bruce Freeman, who is representing about 75 local families opposed to the project, argued from the outset of last week’s hearing that the proposed 23,300- square-foot International Society for Krishna Consciousness temple and priest quarters did not satisfy certain land-use conditions set forth by township ordinance. As such, Freeman said, it would need use variances that could only be granted by the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

At issue was the traffic impact that the ISCKON temple, proposed for a site on Route 34 between Highview Terrace and Sheila Court, would have on the surrounding area and whether this impact would require a variance.

Frank Miskovich, a traffic engineer for ISCKON, said that calculating for 100 percent attendance and traffic coming in and out of the center at the same hour, the proposed facility’s traffic impact is far less than the threshold amounts for side streets and intersections. He also said that the traffic impact would comply with a requirement stating that vehicles generated by the proposed use cannot increase peak volume traffic, or traffic during the busiest hours on a roadway each day, by 10 percent or more. Miskovich said that services for the temple would avoid these peak hours and there would be either no impact or a minimal impact during these times.

Miskovich noted that Sunday volumes exceed the 10 percent peak roadway volumes, but that it is still 70 percent less than the average weekday volumes, which he said is allowed under his interpretation of township ordinance.

“In my opinion, we comply totally with that conditional use section of the ordinance,” he said.

Freeman raised issues with this assessment, stating that Miskovich interpreted the intent of the ordinance and not the precise wording of the requirement to make his judgment regarding peak hours.

“My whole point to this board has been that that is not, with all due respect, your role,” Freeman told Miskovich. “That is the role of the board, and the correct board is the [Zoning] Board of Adjustment.”

Freeman and ISCKON professionals also clashed over interpretations of floor-area ratio, the definition of structures, and even what constituted a school during the just over 90-minute-long hearing. All of those factors could lead to an increase in minimum lot size and potentially the need for variances on the project.

ISCKON planner James Higgins testified that no school is included in the proposal, and stated that two classrooms originally included in the plan were revised to become multi-purpose rooms.

“On Sunday, during the period of worship … it’s a place where the children of devotees gather with an instructor to talk about religion, what’s going on upstairs,” added Jonathan Heilbrunn, the attorney for ISCKON. “It’s not a school, it’s not a classroom. It’s a multi-purpose room.”

But Freeman said that township ordinance includes classrooms in its definition of schools and that these proposed rooms would affect the lot size. He said that when the classrooms became an issue in the application, ISCKON changed the nomenclature to describe them as multi-purpose rooms.

“That seems a little transparent to me,” Freeman said.

However, Planning Board Chairman Larry Redmond said that he didn’t think the question over whether there was a school was a jurisdictional issue. He said, for example, that at his work at the sewer authority, there are classrooms used for training. That didn’t make the sewer authority a school, he said.

“The testimony is that there is no school,” Redmond said. “The fact that it says that this particular room inside a house of worship is used as a classroom, I don’t think makes it a school.”

Board members expressed some concern with the ISCKON testimony, with Barbara Cannon questioning the use of older data in the traffic analysis. Board member Arthur Carullo also questioned how the parking and traffic impact were calculated in relation to the potential number of people who could be coming to the religious center.

Heilbrunn said that these questions would be answered and clarified once the application is heard and the jurisdiction is settled.

The question of jurisdiction was unresolved, and discussion on the matter is to be continued at a meeting on April 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the township courtroom.

Contact Chris Zawistowski at czawistowski@gmnews.com.