Lakewood Planning Board Approves New Duplex Development Along Route 9 Despite Traffic Concerns

The Lakewood Township Planning Board has approved a plan to build six duplex homes and set aside a future commercial lot at the corner of Oak, Elroy and Halsey streets, ending a months-long back-and-forth between the developer and the board over how close the project should sit to Route 9.

The board signed off on the application from Oak Vine Estates, LLC at its Tuesday hearing. The roughly 1.75-acre property, currently vacant and wooded, will be split into 13 lots. Twelve of those will hold the new duplex units, and the thirteenth will be reserved for a commercial building to be designed and approved later.

A resident at the hearing raised concerns that placing homes so close to Route 9 could get in the way if the state ever moves to widen the highway. The board said the developer’s revised plan, which drops one unit from the original proposal and pulls the closest building further back from the highway, takes care of that worry. The project’s engineer, Brian Flannery, told the board that even with the homes where they are now, there is still enough room within the state’s planned right-of-way to fit up to seven travel lanes on Route 9 if a widening ever happens.

As another condition of the approval, each duplex unit will be limited to one outside basement entrance instead of the two shown in the original plans. Board members had questioned whether the early drawings, which showed basements with two sets of doors, two laundry hookups and what looked like separate bedrooms, were quietly being designed as two rental apartments stacked under one home. The developer’s attorney, Adam Pfeffer, agreed at an earlier hearing that each home would have just one rentable basement unit reachable through a single outside door.

The duplexes themselves will come in three widths, ranging from 25 to 32 feet, and each unit will have four off-street parking spaces in a porous driveway designed to soak up rainwater.

To make the project work on the relatively tight site, the board granted several variances from the township’s zoning rules. Those include smaller-than-required side yards between the homes, smaller front yards on two corner lots, and reduced lot size and width for the future commercial parcel. An earlier version of the application appeared to exceed the zone’s eight-units-per-acre density limit, but the developer’s team said that was a math error on the plans. The corrected number, 6.85 units per acre, falls within what the zone allows.

The approval comes with a list of follow-up requirements. The developer still needs sign-offs from Ocean County, the state Department of Transportation and the Lakewood Department of Public Works, among others. A traffic study, an updated survey reflecting the new traffic signal recently installed at Oak Street and Route 9, and a homeowners’ association agreement covering shared maintenance also have to be submitted before construction can begin.

Because the site sits inside a designated transportation improvement district, the developer will pay a one-time impact fee of just over $20,000 to help cover road and traffic costs in the area. Sidewalks will be added along the Halsey and Elroy street frontages, and stormwater from the site will be managed underground through a system maintained by the future homeowners’ association.