Residents call on council to block warehouse plan
BY CHRIS GAETANO
Staff Writer

South Brunswick residents, concerned about a new warehouse being proposed, contended that there is already an abundance of vacant warehouse space available.

SOUTH BRUNSWICK - The newly formed Friends of Southern Middlesex County showed up in force during Tuesday's Township Council meeting, imploring the council to do what it can to block the controversial Matrix warehouse application.

Residents speaking during the public portion of the meeting mostly came from the Four Seasons age-restricted community, located next to the site of the proposed 744,000-square-foot warehouse. Pollution from diesel-fueled trucks coming in and out of the facility was a prime concern among those who spoke.

Gale Klein, who lives on Stony Path Drive, said that there had been studies done attributing about 126,000 deaths annually to diesel soot.

"And we are being asked to live with diesel haven right behind our homes," Klein said. "No matter what Matrix puts up, you cannot keep diesel soot out of your lungs. … No one in this community will escape it."

Neighbor Jack McConnay, a cancer survivor, said he lived near a similar facility in Staten Island, N.Y., for 60 years.

"I am living proof of what that lady spoke of," McConnay said.

He implied that pollution from the trucks there was at least partially responsible for his diagnosis with Hodgkin's lymphoma and, later, the rarest form of skin cancer in the world. He also said that trucks will, in all likelihood, use local roads to get around because many drivers are private owners and thus try to avoid toll roads at all costs. He said he knows this because his son is a trucker.

Robert DeCicco said that there was already an abundance of available warehouse space in South Brunswick and wondered why it was felt that there was a need for more. He said that he understood the township's need for ratables to keep the tax rate under control, but wondered where people should draw the line. He suggested it should be drawn with this warehouse.

"Not this warehouse, not there, wrong building, wrong place. Warehouse sprawl affects us all," said DeCicco.

To emphasize his point, he held up a poster he made with photos of all the signs in South Brunswick advertising extra space available for rent in warehouses and said that it would be preferable if Matrix could reclaim an already developed site rather than go into virgin territory.

Residents also suggested rezoning the tract in question to age-restricted communities, putting it more in conformity with its surrounding lots, or convincing Matrix to sell the land to the township.

Four Seasons residents also said that they had been assured by housing developer K. Hovnanian in its offering statement that industrial development would not be built due to the tract's proximity to wetlands.

Four Seasons resident Brian Hopkins concurred in an e-mail, saying that the sales reps had told them not to worry about industrial development.

"The sales reps stated that nothing could be built back there because it was wetlands. Many other people in the community were told something similar," Hopkins said.