A five-story apartment project approved for Morris Street in 2018 looks like it may never get off the ground.
Morristown’s planning board on Thursday unanimously denied a third extension for the 38-unit proposal — again.
The board shot down the BAKOD Holding Corporation’s same request last year. BAKOD appealed, and a judge sent it back to the board…which rejected the extension for pretty much the same reasons as before.
“Very little was accomplished to perfect the application,” Chairman Joe Stanley said.
Just like last time, there was no mention of Bakod’s president, former planning board Attorney Matt O’Donnell. He (still) awaits sentencing after pleading guilty in 2021 in a corruption scandal.
Nor was there much discussion about the reason Superior Court Judge Michael Gaus shipped the spiked project back to the board: Affordable housing.
When the board nixed Bakod’s extension in October 2022, members were unaware that Morristown officials had earmarked six Bakod apartments for affordable housing, in a summer agreement with the Fair Share Housing Center.
Gaus wanted the board to take that into account this time around, according to board Attorney John Inglesino.
Stanley defended the board’s record on affordable housing, but said the matter was moot because the applicant has done virtually nothing in five years to ensure the project gets built.
The M Station office development and traffic roundabout at Morris and Spring streets, among other things, have dramatically altered the area since 2018. Yet Bakod has not adjusted its plans and secured parking and loading spaces it will need to move forward, board members concluded during a three hour-plus virtual meeting that grew testy at times.
“Calm down,” Stanley admonished Bakod attorney Thomas Scrivo at one point.
Scrivo bristled when Inglesino repeatedly interrupted his lone witness, engineer Patrick McClellan.
“This is one of the greatest examples of an attempt by a professional to taint the consideration of the board that I’ve seen in 34 years of practice. But I’m not surprised,” Scrivo said.
Inglesino questioned McClellan’s standing as an expert witness for this application. The engineer was hired just two months ago–by Scrivo, not by the applicant.
“You’re getting another bite at the apple here,” the board attorney told Scrivo. “And it seems to me that if you want the board to overturn itself…you have a burden here to provide factual testimony, from fact witnesses who can outline to the board the efforts that have been made to satisfy the conditions. And you haven’t done any of that this evening.”
The proposed development is for a vacant lot at 45 Morris St., next to the Grasshopper Off the Green Tavern. The board granted two prior extensions. Inglesino and Scrivo differed over whether a five-year statute of limitations applies.
It’s worth noting that O’Donnell probably had other things on his mind over this period. In 2018, he agreed to don a wire to implicate others in Morris and Hudson counties in a bribery sting.
Delivery- and loading requirements consumed much of Thursday’s hearing. The traffic roundabout has eliminated a Morris Street parking space that Bakod intended to use for deliveries to its planned ground-floor retail.
Apartment tenants moving in and out will need loading spaces, too. McClellan suggested both purposes can be served by parking spaces on nearby Wilmot Street, where Bakod has an easement from the Morristown Parking Authority.
But when pressed, McClellan acknowledged that Bakod has no contract with the MPA for any actual spaces. He insisted such details could be worked out with a year’s extension. Board members were skeptical.
“Any reasonable developer who needs to provide offsite parking is going to get approvals for offsite parking long before they spend tens of thousands of dollars on their other professionals, because if they don’t get it, everything’s just a waste of time and money,” said Stefan Armington, the town council liaison to the board.
“I feel like we had the same meeting a year ago. Things have not been addressed,” added board member Joe Kane.
Inglesino will prepare a resolution formally denying the extension for next week’s board meeting, and then the matter will return to Judge Gaus.
Mayor Tim Dougherty, a voting member of the board, has recused himself.
