Morris Township official airs concerns about proposed Morristown daycare center

At the start of Wednesday’s hearing for a proposed daycare center, Morristown zoning board Chairman Cary Lloyd promised to let a Morris Township official testify early, to spare him from what promised to be a long evening.

Two hours later, Township Engineer Jim Slate finally got his chance.

His concern about potential U-turn problems from The Learning Experience center proposed for 170 Madison Ave. was the most newsworthy traffic tidbit on a night that was supposed to thoroughly examine traffic questions.

Project developer Sam Samman brought a traffic expert and so did the zoning board.  But the standing-room-only audience peppered Slate and two other witnesses with so many questions that both traffic guys must come back on Oct. 15, for the fourth hearing on this application.

At one point, a Morristown resident asked Slate if he could return, too.

“No, I think I’m going to be running away as soon as possible,” Slate shot back, injecting some welcome humor into a proceeding drier than the Mojave in July.

The other illuminating moment–literally–came when the board dimmed the room lights so Samman could demonstrate the brightness of a doorway lamp proposed for the daycare center.

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The applicant, 170 Madison Ave. LLC, seeks a variance to erect a 10,000-square-foot daycare center on just under one acre zoned for residential use. The heavily wooded tract, at the busy intersection of Madison Avenue and Normandy Parkway, is bordered by townhomes, an NJ Transit rail line and the Traction Line recreational trail.

It’s also one of the last undeveloped parcels in a town that just adopted a zoning master plan emphasizing residents’ desire to halt commercial encroachment on neighborhoods.

Plans call for a right-turn only entrance and exit.  The site is near the Morris Township line, prompting Slate’s concerns that motorists from various directions will be forced to use residential streets to turn around for access to the daycare center.

Other questions about traffic congestion and access by emergency vehicles will have to wait.  Traffic issues killed an unrelated daycare application earlier this year.

BUSINESS MODELS, HUGS AND KISSES

Much of Wednesday’s three-hour session was spent grilling  Sharon Steinhardt, a manager who oversees 11 Learning Experience venues, about how many children, employees and events would be on site in Morristown, as residents and board members tried to gauge how much traffic would be generated and whether 40  30 parking spaces would be sufficient.

Samman also was questioned extensively by residents about The Learning Experience’s business model, its prospects for success, and what might follow if the center fails.

One resident asserted that 15 daycare centers already exist within a few miles of the site; one is for sale in Morris Plains, the resident said.

Samman countered that some of those centers are tiny, serving only a dozen or so kids. The Learning Experience intends to serve 175 children, from infants to preschool.

“There is something like 15,000 children in a five-mile radius… so there is a very strong need,” Samman said.

Any subsequent use for the property, if The Learning Center wins approval, probably would require a new application to the board, said board Attorney David Brady.

Only a handful of events — open houses, back-to-school meetings and parents-nights-out — would be likely at The Learning Center. They tend to be sparsely attended at other franchise locations, Steinhardt said.

She also testified that on average, parents spend five minutes dropping off their children in the morning–special key fobs and computerized log-ins speed them to their goodbye hugs and kisses–and eight minutes collecting them in the afternoon.

Typically, parents come and go on staggered schedules, and siblings account for about 20 percent of the enrollment, reducing the number of cars competing for parking, she said.

Twenty-four employees would work in Morristown, also on staggered schedules; at other locations some employees commute by bus, Steinhardt said.

‘NEGLIGENT’ OR ‘STANDARD PRACTICE’?

Environmental issues remain a sore spot with residents. At least 145 mature trees are targeted for removal.  At a prior meeting, the project’s engineer acknowledged pressing the board to waive an environmental study, even though he lacks environmental certification.

Residents informed the engineer about an underground stream that floods basements, and Samantha Rothman, who holds degrees in forestry from Yale, testified that “98 percent” of the project’s proposed plantings are invasive species deemed unacceptable by the town.

Rothman, who spent nine years on the town environmental commission, told MorristownGreen.com that the zoning board was “negligent” in granting a waiver of the environmental impact statement.

Cary Lloyd, the board chairman, defended the waiver, saying that the board anticipated gleaning the details from the hearings.

“Although it’s a wooded site, we didn’t view any major environmental issues,” Lloyd told MG.

“There were no steep slopes, no waterways and, as far as we know, no endangered species.  It’s standard practice not to burden applicants, if there are other means of obtaining the information, from other reports or from questioning.  I don’t think anything [so far] has come out that a report would have established,” Lloyd said.

MORE ABOUT THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE APPLICATION