Tamarack Hollow land to be preserved
County, town buy properties slated for 56-home development
BY VINCENT TODARO
Staff Writer

Fought by residents, denied by East Brunswick and ultimately approved in court, the Tamarack Hollow development will never be built after all.

Township officials and Middlesex County will purchase the roughly 230 acres located on four separate parcels off Fresh Ponds Road and Church Lane, where developer Matzel & Mumford sought to build 56 single-family homes.

The county is expected to pay $13 million for the land, which it will own, and the township will pitch in $500,000.

Starting in 2002, the developer went through a lengthy and contentious process to gain approval for the development. The East Brunswick Planning Board voted 7-2 to deny the application in May 2003, but a Superior Court judge later ruled that the construction be allowed if certain environmental conditions were met. The builder has since been working to receive state and county approvals to build the development.

Officials speculated that a slow housing market, as compared to the boom being experienced during the application process, contributed to the developer's sale of the property.

Council President Nancy Pinkin said she is "ecstatic" the township will be able to prevent the land from being developed.

"This will help preserve that rural nature," she said.

"I think it's great, I think it's beautiful," Mayor William Neary said of the ability to preserve the land.

The area includes farmland, wooded areas, vernal pools and wetlands, and is considered environmentally sensitive, which was one of the reasons many residents opposed Matzel & Mumford's development plan, which included a sewage treatment plant.

Neary said he is also happy the township will be spared from the development of more housing, and the avoidance of increased traffic on the winding roads in that section of town.

"I'm very happy about it," Neary said. "I'm glad the Freeholders agreed to do it."

The Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders was expected to meet tonight to formally agree to pay the $13 million sum.

During Monday night's Township Council meeting, Planing Board Attorney Lawrence Sachs said the land purchase is one of the most important in East Brunswick over the past 10 to 12 years. He said the Planning Board had always been uncomfortable with the application because the plan just "didn't past the smell test."

It certainly didn't please local residents, who complained the project would ruin the nature of the area, bring too much traffic, add crowding to the school system and create environmental problems. One of the biggest points of contention was the sewer system.

"Tamarack Hollow is a destructive proposal presented under the guise of saving developable land in the fragile, environmentally sensitive (rural preservation) zone," wrote Michael Shakarjian of the Lawrence Brook Watershed Partnership in a 2005 letter to the Sentinel. "It will fragment open spaces, allow construction of a sewage treatment plant and cause traffic and water quality concerns."

Sachs said the nearby street intersections would not have been able to handle the increased traffic flow, and the density of the project would have changed the character of the zone.

"We now have pristine forest land," he said.

"It's like another world there," Pinkin noted. "It's beautiful, pristine trails."

The purchase is what Neary was referring to during his State of the Township address in January when he said a significant purchase was in the works. At the time, he would not give a location.

Neary said Monday that the Tamarack Hollow area has been on township officials' wish list "since the beginning." He said officials did not ask Matzel & Mumford why it wanted to sell the land.

Neary expects the land to be kept as open space, noting he could see no reason why the county would do anything else with it.

Neary was especially pleased because the land will border other open space parcels that include farmland, township-owned property and the county-owned Tamarack Golf Course.

Matzel & Mumford had worked closely with the township in crafting the Tamarack Hollow application, and in fact it was the first and only major developer to take advantage of the township's Rural Preservation zone guidelines, which were later voided in court based on an unrelated lawsuit from property owners.

Matzel & Mumford sought to use a cluster option that allowed it to build one home per 3.5 acres so long as 75 percent of the entire acreage remained as open space.