Morris Township Planning Board Votes to Craft a Development Deal With Honeywell

The Morris Township planning board Monday night voted 6-3 to direct the township’s TCC (Technical Coordinating Committee) to craft a mixed zone amendment to the township's master plan that would allow Honeywell International to develop its 147-acre property with a hotel, a retirement complex and town homes.

The board hopes that the members of the TCC will not only be able to come to a decision on the scope of the development, but address traffic and environmental concerns as well.

Honeywell came to the board last year with a plan that calls for tearing down some of the existing 11 buildings on the site at Columbia Turnpike and Park Avenue and replacing them with a mixed use development that includes a 250-room hotel, 311 stacked town home units and a 416 room retirement facility.

The hotel was the sticking point for the three board members - Kevin McNally, Franz Vintschger and Daniel Caffrey - who voted against the TCC directive.

“I just think that the traffic coming in and out of a hotel with restaurants and nightclubs will” be a “detriment to the property," said Caffrey after the Honeywell hearing took place. Building a hotel at the proposed corner  would also compete with several hotels heading toward Madison on Park Avenue, he said.

Voting to ask the TCC to write the amendment to the master plan were Leigh Doxsee, board chairman Rick Haan, Mayor H. Scott Rosenbush,  former Fire Chief Craig Goss, Jeremiah Loughman and Linda Murphy.

Haan said there would be several more working sessions so the TCC “could get more input from us. This is a very complicated issue. There are a number of issues to discuss,” adding that the property was “underutilized,” and that there was a “a trend away from office buildings and toward mixed use.”

The board’s general feeling was the development would occur and so it was best to get the TCC involved and also to get Honeywell to scale down the amount of development.

“Honeywell gave a nice proposal,” said Loughman. The corporation proposed “higher density than they actually expect to attain when they actually go to development. Mixed use could benefit the township in terms of keeping the traffic down to a more reasonable level. To have a million and a half square feet of office space built on that side is detrimental to Morris Township. They could leave or merge and all of the sudden we end up with a whole bunch of empty office buildings.”

While the board did not agree on including a hotel in the proposal, they all agreed without a vote that stacked townhouses would not be in character with the township’s aesthetic. They urged limiting the town homes to 35 feet high which would mean TH4 zoning designation rather than a higher TH number that would allow 50 foot high town homes.

They also agreed that a retirement facility would fit into a market where people are getting older and would be looking for a facility like a CCRC (continuing care retirement community) such as the one proposed but not built at the Delbarton Abbey a few years ago.

Honeywell will pay for independent studies on traffic and environmental impact, according to the planning board attorney Brian Burns who serves on the TCC along with township engineer, James Slate and Adrian Humbert, township planner.

The Citizens for Better Planning in Morris Townsip (CBPMT), a group organized in opposition to the Honeywell development, will also line up its own experts, according to spokeswoman Michele Demarest. The group has  hired Morristown-based environmental attorney Daniel Somers to help them oppose the site’s development.

Many of the opponents live in the Normandy Parkway area and about 40 of them came to listen to Monday night’s proceeding, even though the public was not allowed to speak. Demarest said she has an email list of about 400 people.

“I was pleased to see that three individuals said no,” said Demarest. “That’s progress.”