Brick Zoning Interpretation Sought On Marijuana Farm

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township Board of Adjustment was scheduled for a special meeting Thursday night for an interpretation of whether growing cannabis or hemp is permitted under the town's zoning ordinances.

The interpretation was to decide whether the zoning board or the Planning Board should be hearing a proposal to put a marijuana farm on an Adamston Road property that had been proposed as a medical marijuana dispensary.

That changed, however, when the attorney for the applicant, 385 Adamston Road LLC, notified the town's attorneys in the case that it has instead decided to pursue approval to operate a farm that grows lettuce. A copy of the letter was shared with Patch by a member of the group opposing any use involving marijuana at the site.

The notice on the hearing, which will be held at 7 p.m. the township's Civic Plaza meeting room, 270 Chambers Bridge Road, was still posted at the municipal building on Wednesday night.

The change to growing lettuce is the latest wrinkle in what has been a controversial application from the moment it was presented last fall, when 385 Adamston Road LLC was seeking to turn the property — a former bank sitting on a large parcel — into a medical marijuana dispensary.

The proposal for Jersey Shore Therapeutic Health Care, which would have grown its own marijuana on site to then convert and sell to medical marijuana patients, sparked outrage among neighbors who raised significant safety concerns. But in March, following a meeting canceled due to an overflow crowd and the cancellation of a January hearing just hours beforehand due to issues with the delivery of certified letter notifications, the attorney for the applicant said 385 Adamston was rescinding its proposal for the dispensary in favor of farming marijuana.

The Planning Board then sent the application to the zoning board, because township ordinances are not clear whether a marijuana farm is a conforming use, Township Attorney Kevin Starkey said.

Among the reasons cited by opponents, who expressed significant fears about their safety and potential crimes, was that the property is not zoned for commercial use. The site is zoned rural-residential.

Dennis Galvin, who replaced John Paul Doyle as the attorney on the application, said in the March letter to the zoning board announcing the decision to remove the dispensary and that 385 Adamston Road would "limit its request to cultivating and manufacturing marijuana which is a permitted agricultural use."

That happened just before the Township Council approved an ordinance banning the sale, cultivation and manufacturing of recreational marijuana in the township.

Residents and members of the Facebook group Brick Residents Say No To Rezoning, the group vehemently opposing the dispensary, have since been urging the council to go further and ban medical marijuana sales, cultivation and manufacturing as well.

They also have asked the council to consider changing the township's rural residential zone to require a 1,000-foot buffer between a property where marijuana is being grown, manufactured or sold and any schools, churches, commercial or residential properties.

A 1,000-foot buffer would effectively ban any marijuana farming in the township, one of the residents noted at the May 14 council meeting.

A zoning change might not have been sufficient to prevent the growing of marijuana at the site, however. Brick Township officials tried that in 1992, when they were seeking to force sexually oriented businesses out of the township.

An ordinance barring sexually oriented businesses from operating within 1,500 feet of schools, parks, bus stops and residential zones was passed in August that year, in an attempt close down the Pleasure Zone adult video shop on Chambers Bridge Road.

At the time, the building now occupied by Warren H. Wolf Elementary School was a privately owned recreation facility. The closest school was Brick Township High School, which was 1,497 feet from Pleasure Zone, according to news reports from the time.

Pleasure Zone, which opened in a former mattress store, had received its certificate of occupancy a month before the township passed its ordinance.

After the store opened, the township issued violations to Pleasure Zone's owner, Shay Varone, for operating in violation of the ordinance. Varone responded by suing the township.

State Superior Court Judge William H. Huber ruled in June 1993 that the township's ordinance was illegal because it effectively banned the operation of sexually oriented businesses, which had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Zoning changes after an application has been submitted to a planning or zoning board can result in lawsuits; Toms River currently is being sued after changing the zoning on 60 acres of land in the North Dover section after the owners submitted plans to build homes on the properties.

Brick has been sued in the recent past, over its zoning decision in connection with New Beginnings church on Brick Boulevard, and ended up paying $237,500 in a settlement with the church.

Often ordinance changes targeting a type of business result in an already operating business being grandfathered in. That happened in Brick when the township banned the retail sale of dogs and cats within the town in 2012 after persistent controversies with a pet store. But Breeders Association of America, which had opened in 2007, remained in operation because it was grandfathered. Brick changed its ordinance requiring pet stores to sell only rescue animals in 2017 after puppies purchased from Breeders Association died after contracting parvo in the store. The owners of the store, which was shut by the Ocean County Health Department under a quarantine, never reopened as the ordinance change coincided with their need to renew their operating permits.

With the change by 385 Adamston Road to a plan to grow lettuce instead of marijuana — which makes the issue of whether marijuana cultivation is a permitted use a moot point in connection with the application — the zoning board is left to decide whether it will address the issue at all.

Note: This article has been updated to reflect information in the letter opponents received regarding the plan to grow lettuce at the site.

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