Split Down Party Lines: Council Approves One Westfield Place Changes

WESTFIELD, NJ — It came down to a party-line vote but the Town Council ultimately approved an ordinance to amend the controversial One Westfield Place project on Tuesday night.

Just as with the introduction on Oct. 22, Mayor Shelley Brindle, Councilpeople Linda Habgood, David Contract, Michael Dardia, and James Hely voted in favor of the ordinance. Councilmen Todd Saunders, Michael Armento, Michael Domogala, and David Kiefer voted against it.

"A less bad project is still a bad project," said Armento prior to his vote.

"This is an enormous financial opportunity for this Town to bring new ratables in, bring significant new revenue dollars in, and significant investment in, things that we cannot afford without projects like this," said Habgood before her vote. "I'm a realist about this. We can sit up here and fight about what happened and when and why and how we’re going to go forward with this but at the end of the day we have a developer who is under contract to do a deal with us and has asked for some reductions in what was originally proposed. .. It still makes a ton of sense to me. You will never have $156 million of revenue coming in over 30 years in addition to the new sequencing, and the new public improvements."

The ordinance claimed to reduce the size and scope of the project by 25 percent. However, there was some discussion on how accurate that was.

"This amendment actually increases the entire scope of the project by 16 percent," said resident Bob Mc Namara. "Going from 155,000 square feet of above-grade parking and changing it to 421,000 feet of above-grade parking - you are obviously going to increase the size of the building."

Town Planner Donald Sammet explained how the 25 percent reduction number was calculated and measured by the residential and nonresidential square footage.

"Does the above-grade massing of structures increase? I haven’t verified the numbers. Even if it does what I am saying is there are specific standards in the plan that will mitigate any appearance of that massing. And I think in particular in this amendment with the lower heights we will not see that impact of scale or massing that we would under the original plan," said Sammet.

Armento countered Sammet's testimony saying, "Just along the Mayor’s lines of being honest and open when I hear 25 percent reduction in scope I think of 25 percent smaller everything so that’s not true. Because maybe it looks smaller because it's lower and flatter but the amount of building space is not smaller."

"I think overall the amount of building space including below grade and above grade will certainly be lower. Will above grade be different? I think it will be. But I think a 25 percent reduction in scope is an accurate statement," said Sammet.

Domogala also shared his concerns with the project's size.

"The density is pretty much the same if not larger so I don’t quite get the visual concept because it looks smaller it is smaller. So I do have a big problem with that," said Domogala.

Healy countered the size arguments saying,"It’s a slight reduction in the actual occupied space, not parking spaces, not the parking decks but the actual residential or commercial space. A 25 percent reduction. That’s not in dispute, let’s not pretend it is."

"I think we need to focus on what the choice is in front of the council and not the what-ifs. The choice in front of us tonight is do we like the revisions to the amended plan or not? To me lowering building heights, reducing traffic on the south side, reducing the massing on the west zone against the neighborhood, the decrease in occupied square footage... I think those are benefits to the town and it makes the plan better. No plans perfect," said Contract.

The next steps for the amended ordinance include:

• Dec. 3: The Town Council will vote on ordinances to adopt amended financial agreements.
• Once these documents have been adopted and approved, Streetworks will then present their site plan application to the Planning Board for approval next year.

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