Route 70 Wawa Application Changing Again, Hearing Continued In Brick

BRICK, NJ — The hearing on an application to add access to the Route 70 Wawa and Panera site from North Lake Shore Drive is scheduled to be continued in September.

The Board of Adjustment spent two hours Monday night hearing the proposal by Brick 70 Developers LLC for a full entrance and right-turn-only exit onto North Lake Shore Drive, picking up where testimony was paused in May.

That included extensive questioning of the developer's traffic engineer, Nicholas Verderese, by members of the zoning board and the township's professionals about the potential impact of adding the driveway on traffic at that particular spot.

Brick 70 Developers is seeking to add a driveway that allows access to the Wawa and Panera from North Lake Shore Drive to draw more customers into the stores.

Verderese, of Dynamic Traffic, said the traffic volumes at the stores were low, which the developers believe is because of the lack of access from North Lake Shore Drive.

The Dynamic Traffic study looked at the number of anticipated cars per hour turning left onto Duquesne Boulevard from Route 70 west, along with the effect of vehicles from eastbound Route 70 turning onto North Lake Shore to enter the Wawa.

While Verderese said his analysis projects a relatively low effect with additional traffic, board members and the township's traffic engineer from Brightview Engineering expressed concerns about whether the projections accurately reflected what will happen if the new driveway is approved.

"I am concerned about that egress point," one board member said, referring to the potential right-turn-only exit onto North Lake Shore, a sentiment that summed up the focus of much of the discussion.

After a short recess, Verderese and John Jackson, the attorney for Brick 70 Developers, apparently sensing the pushback from the board in particular to the exit, offered to remove the exit portion of the driveway from the proposal and to instead create access only for people to pull into the site.

The proposal, which was complete with copies of drawings showing it without the exit, caught the board off-guard.

"Are you saying you're amending the application right now?" board chairman David Chadwick said, drawing an affirmative response.

Jackson said the suggestion of eliminating the exit at this stage of testimony was no different than when the board grants approvals with certain conditions.

Verderese said the change should not dramatically affect the traffic impact except for removing the volume of cars leaving the Wawa and Panera.

The hearing is scheduled to continue at 7 p.m. Sept. 7 in the courtroom of the Brick Township municipal building, 401 Chambers Bridge Road.

The original application for the Wawa and a quick-service restaurant was rejected in March 2017, with proposed access to North Lake Shore Drive the major sticking point. After some revisions, the amended application by Brick 70 Developers that removed the North Lake Shore Drive access was approved in December 2017.