Dear Editor:
Last evening, Monday, August 3, Parsippany-Troy Hills Planning Board approved the UPS Office complex, while vacant office space rules the landscapes. (Editors Note: The UPS Office complex will be located in Morris Corporate Center)
In 2014 Parsippany after 8-years of allegedly being in a regional Master Plan Conformance process suddenly decided to end the process. In eight years Parsippany improved its Master Plan not at all. They have though changed the meaning of the term “redevelopment” in favor of re-use and even that term, Re-use has lost its meaning.
One definite reason perhaps conveniently dismissed for not conforming to regional plan was Parsippany’s so-called “redevelopment” or the deal between Parsippany & UPS to construct their office complex on Block 136 Lot 43. Private property rights take preference over good land use, and the balance between large development and protection of natural resources.
From our Master Plan: To protect and conserve the water supply serving the Parsippany-Troy Hills community. To ensure that any prospective development is responsive to the Township’s environmental features, and can be accommodated while preserving these physical characteristics.
Anyone reviewing the interactive maps provided by the Highlands Council would have seen, this landscape has wellhead protection area, almost all of it is a Ground water Recharge Area, harbors a small mature forest, wetlands, borders on a Flood prone area, and could be considered a Community Environmentally Constrained Sub-zone.
The legal argument last night by UPS vs Morris Corporate was traffic and how the 1000 new employees at UPS and the upcoming removal of trees; (no mention of replacing them elsewhere) and 4200 loads of soil, should be allowed to proceed before the Interface Parkway, Upper Pond Road to Cherry Hill Roads extension are constructed. The argument quite ridiculous and ironic was that a portion of the Ordinance requires “vacant parking spaces” to be included in the formula. Instead what this should have triggered was the complete lack of need for more office space and potential vacant spaces of impervious surface.
Look-up how redevelopment is defined by the State. It is land already developed, Brown and Grey fields, not new land development. Block 136 Lot 43 has no infrastructure, sewers and needed roads and safety devices to accompany the new traffic volume. PARSIPPANY SO-CALLED REDEVELOPMENT PLAN IS A SMOKE SCREEN, NEGLECTING PROPER LANDUSE OR STEWARDSHIP IN FAVOR OF PROPERTY OWNERSHIP RIGHTS THAT DO-NOT CONSIDER CONFLICTS BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND PROTECTION OF NATURAL RESOURCES. The so-called redevelopment plan also provided a loophole for Parsippany to evade its own traffic ordinance. This redevelopment scheme was “secretly’ conceived with no public encouragement; or participation. Who would think redevelopment would be anything other than its defined meaning?
Mayor Barberio seems to think all is just a matter of opinion, to him there is no facts. The fact that the Planning Board does not themselves review landscapes using provided for “interactive maps” is telling. In fact when in my experience they are presented they are shunned. They are neutral, simply providing scientifically known land characteristics. OUR MASTER PLAN IS NOT WORTH THE PAPER IT IS WRITTEN ON. In a County with abundant vacant office space, we make another for a tax rateable; while we erase an important remaining natural resource that will surely affect our water supply. Over 15 acres of a 20.9 acre landscape in a ground water recharge area will become an impervious surface. How long will UPS’s office complex remain is use; adding to the inventory of vacant office space.
We will find in the long-term & short that Parsippany the UPS will bring and does not promote the standard of living or health for resident s of Parsippany; only more money to spend on more needless spending for spending’s sake.
Regional Planning would have solved all these problems and UPS would still have their complex but not at the price of natural resource destruction surely to have an accumulative effect on our water and quality of life here, costly tax-payers in the future. Without the Regional Management Plan no balance can be had with corporate wants ignoring the needs of protecting our natural resources of which the future generations depend.
UPS is not an environmentally friendly corporation being selfish in their property rights ignoring the fact that they property they choose to purchase had “natural resource value” all to be erased by a NJDEP that is not doing their job, but favoring so-called short-term economic interest over long-term sustainability. Will the trees on this landscape be replaced? Most cases no tree inventory even exist despite Parsipanny’s claim to be tree conscience and caring. Under Home Rule our Master Plan is a joke an instrument of propaganda, not in the best interest of Parsippany but the large corporate land owners that surround us. Without leadership this trend will continue.
Nick Homyak
Lake Hiawatha
