Route 70 Wawa Proposal Goes Before Brick Zoning Board Again Wednesday

BRICK, NJ — A proposal to build a Wawa with gas pumps and a drive-through fast food restaurant will be back before the Brick Township Board of Adjustment on Wednesday night.

The zoning board began hearing the application by Brick 70 Developers on Nov. 9. At that meeting, there was more than two hours of testimony on the proposal for the site at the corner of Route 70 and Duquesne and Lake Shore drives.

Five lots would be consolidated for the site, and a 24-hour Wawa convenience store with 12 gasoline/diesel fuel pumps and a fast food restaurant with a drive-through, possibly a Panera, would be built on the site, according to attorney John Jackson, who represents Brick 70 Developers.

The site, across from the Target shopping center, would offer 125 parking spaces for both the Wawa and the fast food restaurant, according to the application.

The parking lot would be connected to the parking lot of a building currently used as medical offices, as well as to the Market Place at Brick, the shopping center farther to the west of the site that is home to Costco, Dick's Sporting Goods and several other stores, according to the testimony. The connection of the shopping centers would allow shoppers to travel the entire group of sites without having to get on Route 70 to move from site to site, according Jeremy Lang of Maser Consulting, the engineer on the project.

Lang said the access arrangement is a much safer condition as a result.

There will be three access points to the Wawa, Lang said, but the one on North Lake Shore Drive will allow only left turns onto North Lake Shore Drive, with a triangular driveway and signs installed to reinforce that.

Some of the variances sought are related to the number of signs, size and height of signs. But the site also requires variances for:

• Minimum side setback; the developer has proposed a setback of 66.4 feet where 150 feet is required
• Minimum lot width; the proposal is for 178 feet where 300 feet are required
• Minimum buffer adjacent to a residential area; the proposal is for plus or minus 50 feet where 150 feet is required.

The lot is slightly undersized, at 4,967 acres where 5 acres is required, and the developer is proposing a smaller floor area for the store, 10,000 square feet where 30,000 square feet is the minimum.

There were about a dozen residents in the audience at the Nov. 9 hearing, many of them from nearby homes as the property backs up to two homes that are on the west side of North Lake Shore Drive and would be directly affected by the buffer zone variance.

At Wednesday's meeting, which begin at 7 p.m. in the court chambers at the municipal building where the Township Council also meets, more testimony is expected and public comment is possible.

Earth view and map view of the site of a proposed 24-hour Wawa with fuel pumps and a fast food restaurant, via Google Maps; photos by Karen Wall