Joint Glen Ridge-Montclair Planning Boards Open Hearing on 45,000-Square-Foot Mountainside Medical Office Building, Residents Raise Traffic and Noise Concerns

The Glen Ridge and Montclair Planning Boards opened a joint hearing, chaired by Montclair's Wynn, on companion applications from One Bay Urban Renewal, LLC (311 Bay Avenue) and Montclair Hospital, LLC to build a 3-story, roughly 45,000-square-foot medical office building on the site of the hospital's former nursing school, along with a new hospital parking area. HUMC Mountainside CEO John Fromhold and Hampshire Companies principal Don Engels testified to the project's benefits, while architect Allen Kopelson described a 42-foot-tall brick building targeting LEED silver certification, and engineer Brad Bohler detailed 229 medical-office parking spaces plus a separate 134-space emergency-department lot, a new traffic signal at Bay Avenue and Walnut Crescent, and extensive buffer plantings (52 shade trees, 16 ornamental trees, 57 evergreens, 687 shrubs, and 364 grasses) along Roswell Terrace.

Several residents raised pointed concerns. Carmel Loughman of 26 Walnut Street said the borough had not adequately consulted residents since the redevelopment plan was adopted, and asked about noise from rooftop mechanical equipment and how lead and asbestos would be handled during demolition of the hospital-owned houses on the site. Lenore Kirk of 41 Hawthorne Place asked why the project targeted LEED silver rather than platinum. Janelle Santos of George Street worried that a proposed public plaza at George and Sherwood Streets could draw loitering and threaten neighborhood safety; Chair Wynn suggested less street furniture and more vegetation to discourage that. The Board's parking consultant, Gerard Giosa, warned that valet-stacked cars in the medical-office lot could be hard to retrieve at peak times and could conflict with truck traffic, and recommended barring self-parking in the valet area.

The hearing was continued to the April 23, 2018 meeting, also to be held at the firehouse, with no further public notice required.