From what I can gather from reading the article, the meeting was an event to been seen. Middletown's courtroom was filled to capacity and overflowed out into the foyer with both pro-Trinity supporters and members of the Chapel Hill Neighborhood Group. And to me after reading the article, it would seem that the people from Chapel Hill came out on top during this round after Trinity Hall's engineer got caught in a little white-lie about an environmental impact report that he authored for the prior developer of the property in question. He first denied being the author of the report then later admitted that he was after being questioned by Ron Gasiorowski, the lawyer representing residents of Chapel Hill. Gasiorowski also pointed out that Trinity's engineer was not an environmental expert who based his report on only things that he had read, not what he investigated.
It will be interesting to see what happens next when the Middletown Planning Board reconvenes in April. I think Trinity Hall's dream of building it's new school over on Chapel Hill Rd. took a hit Wednesday night, we'll have to see if they can recover from it.
MIDDLETOWN - A standing room only crowd filled the township’s meeting room and lobby on Wednesday night for the continuation of the Planning Board hearing on the proposed construction of an all-girls secondary school.
Trinity Hall, a private all-girls high school that has been operating out of a temporary location on Leonardville Road since opening in September, is proposing to build a campus complete with three buildings, athletic fields, tennis courts and approximately 330 parking spaces on a 64-acre parcel off Chapel Hill Road.
The proposed campus would take up slightly less than 38 of those acres, therefore the applicant is requesting permission to subdivide the property. However, representatives for the applicant claimed Thursday night that there are no plans “at this time” to develop the remaining 26 acres.
Opponents of a proposal by Trinity Hall, a private all-girls high school, to build a campus off Chapel Hill Road in Middletown wore t-shirts calling for the application to be denied.
It was easy to tell who was for the development and who was against it at Thursday night’s meeting, as supporters donned the school color of orange and opponents wore pins displaying an image with Trinity Hall crossed out and/or off-white shirts with “Protect our SAFETY and our ENVIRONMENT” printed on one side and Trinity Hall crossed off on the other.
All of Thursday night’s nearly four-hour meeting was dedicated to the public cross examining the project’s engineer, Brian Decina, of French and Parrello Associates, on everything from traffic and environmental concerns to drainage and intensity of usage fears.
Most of the concerns voiced by opponents of the project Thursday night were of the perceived lack of knowledge, or concerns, the applicant's experts - and officials that have granted them conditional approval thus far - have of existing conditions on the property.
For example, Ron Gasiorowski, an attorney representing opponents of the project, read from township documents that emphasized the environmental and historical sensitivity of the property and McCreery’s Creek, which the document and residents alleged flows by the property.
However, Decina claimed that the state Department of Environmental Protection has determined on more than one occasion that a stream does not flow through the property.
“You can fish there!” someone in the crowd yelled out.
“How can you and the DEP say there isn’t a stream there? It’s there. Even Google knows its there,” another resident asked Decina.
Gasiorowski also took issue with an environmental impact report that Decina submitted for the project, which pulled a lot of information from a report Decina prepared for a previous applicant who was proposing to build 20 residential units on the 64-acre property.
At first Decina said he did not write the report and that he did not know who did. But then, only after Gasiorowski pointed out that he had signed the report as its author, he claimed that he was the author of the report.
“That’s incredulous testimony to me,” said Gasiorowski, who also took issue with Decina’s report because he was admittedly not an environmental expert but rather an engineer who made his determinations based on things he read....
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2 comments:
Shouldn't the supporters of Trinity School have worn the color green, rather than orange? After all, it's access to all those deep pockets that has the attention of our TC.
I guess orange is the new green, Anon, or, they knew the opposition would be wearing green. At least three of the Trins tried to break into our community meeting group, where we convene to come up with the strategies we are going to use to hopefully bring this development to a halt, and who knows what they learned in the few minutes they stayed before we kicked them to the curb.
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