A development that would bring a new four-story apartment building with retail space to a site near the intersection of Summerfield Avenue and Bond Street in downtown Asbury Park was recently pushed back to May after the city’s planning board voiced its concerns over insufficient parking on-site.
The board opted to carry the application to its May 18 monthly meeting after deliberating for more than two hours on March 2 on the merits of the proposed building at 702 Summerfield Avenue.
Plans submitted to the board earlier this year show that the applicant, 702 Summerfield AP Group LLC, intends to replace the L-shaped building on the 0.3-acre lot with a new 30-unit apartment building that includes ground-level retail and space for 27 parking spaces. The proposal calls for a basement level that includes a gym, an amenity room, a business center, a lobby bathroom, and 25 storage units, with pedestrian and vehicular access off Summerfield Avenue.
Although the board told professionals working on behalf of the applicant that it wanted to expand certain portions of the resident amenities proposed, including the trash room, and bike and storage rooms, in addition to an update for street and roof lighting as well as the proposed stormwater management system, the board spent most of the meeting going over the capacity of the off-street parking component of the project.
The proposal is 14 parking spaces short of the district’s statutory requirement of 45 spaces. Jason Tuvel, an attorney working on behalf of the applicant, noted that the developer would pay the city a parking impact fee to offset the missing spots, but this did not deter members of the board, who insisted the proposal should include a parking ratio of at least 1-to-1 (that is, one parking space per apartment).
Barbara Krzak, the chairwoman of the board, even said it would be okay if the applicant reduced the retail component’s square footage to make room for additional parking. However, this opinion was not universally shared by the other members of the board, who suggested that the developer should consider adding mechanical parking lifts and using parking spots in the Bangs Avenue garage, located one block from the development site.
The board did find consensus that the proposed apartment building should have as many off-street parking stalls as possible.
Members of the board also voiced concerns about reducing the total number of stormwater discharges, working with the city administration to tweak the plans for street and roof lighting, and adding five additional storage units to raise the total number of storage units in the building to 30.
Records filed with the planning board show that 702 Summerfield AP Group LLC is a collective partly owned by individuals residing in Englewood, North Arlington, New York, and Lakewood. The property itself, according to the Monmouth County Clerk’s office, last sold for $1,900,000 in July and has an assessed value of $864,400.
The planning board is scheduled to review the updated site plan application on May 18.
