Save Melick's Farm: Why Bridgewater's Zoning Board Should Reject the Route 22 Storage Warehouse

On July 14, the Bridgewater Zoning Board of Adjustment will hold its final public hearing on Application #24-027-ZB, a proposal to bulldoze Melick's Town Farm and the old Tectonic building on Route 22 and put a 106,000-square-foot, multi-story self-storage warehouse in their place.

I'm asking my neighbors to show up and say no. Here's why.

This isn't a close call. Self-storage isn't even a permitted use on this land. The property is zoned C-3, Office and Service, a zone the Township deliberately built for medical offices, and professional suites, not warehouses. To build anyway, the applicant needs the Board to grant a use variance most New Jersey applicants never get, because state law sets a genuinely high bar: the applicant has to prove this exact site is "particularly suited" to self-storage. Not profitable. Not convenient. Particularly suited.

They can't prove that, because it isn't true. This is 5.47 flat, cleared acres with premium highway frontage, exactly the kind of site that attracts the offices the zone was written for. The only thing this site is particularly suited to is maximizing a developer's return.

The math doesn't support it either. Bridgewater already has Chimney Rock Self Storage, Public Storage, Extra Space Storage, Prime Storage, and Affordable Storage LLC, and a sixth application is already pending on Milltown Road. Existing facilities are running "$1 first month" promotions because they can't fill the units they already have. There is no shortage of storage space in this town. There's a glut of it, and this application would only make it worse.

And to make the building fit, the applicant needs to cut the required Route 22 setback in half, from 200 feet down to 100, along with a Floor Area Ratio variance and the removal of 166 mature trees. That's not a hardship of the land. The lot is flat and buildable. It's a hardship the applicant created by designing a building too large for what the zone allows, and then asking the Board to bend the rules to make it fit.

Bridgewater's own Master Plan calls for protecting residential neighborhoods "without undue intrusion from traffic, noise, light and degraded air quality." The homes on Bogart Drive and Kiser Lane sit directly across Route 28 from this site. A three-story industrial warehouse looming over their backyards, screened by little more than a handful of new saplings, is not what that Master Plan promises them.

Zoning boards exist to enforce the rules a community already agreed to, not to make exceptions whenever a developer finds an underused property and a use it wasn't zoned for. If this Board approves this application, it won't be interpreting Bridgewater's zoning code. It will be rewriting it, one variance at a time, for every developer who comes next.

The hearing is Tuesday, July 14, at 7:00 p.m., at the Bridgewater Municipal Building, 100 Commons Way. Public comment is open to Bridgewater residents, three minutes per speaker. If you live here, your voice is part of the record the Board has to weigh. Come and use it.

Inderpreet Banga is the organizer of Bridgewater Residents United, a group of Bridgewater residents opposing Application #24-027-ZB.