Furniture store wants to subdivide building

Planning Board members last week decided to hold off on an application to carve up a St. Georges Avenue site into four stores until they get more information.

Adidan Properties, LLC, of West New York, which owns 1713-1727 St. Georges Ave. (Block 210/Lot 9), is seeking to subdivide the space into a total of four commercial spaces. The one current tenant, Budget Furniture, would be among the four future tenants. Primarily for financial reasons, the owner and tenant compromised to relieve a hardship and subdivide the site, the applicant’s attorney told the Planning Board last week.

The applicant is seeking approval for a minor site plan with bulk variances, including a parking variance because the property only has 22 spaces in the rear, off Union Street. Depending on the interpretation of the city code, the site would be required to provide anywhere from 29 to 49 spaces.

The building is about 9,700 square feet and among its neighbors are a hair salon, pizzeria and Chinese restaurant. The existing site does not meet parking requirements and does not have room to add more. The applicant’s attorney argued that parking is a practical hardship and can be made an exception because it’s not a substantial detriment to the area.

Planning Board members, however, raised concerns about parking, truck traffic and delivery areas and questioned the wisdom of subdividing into four commercial spaces, creating stores that are less than 13 feet wide. City Engineer James Housten had requested various documents and surveys for which the applicant sought waivers. Officials also reminded the board that the city has been to court multiple times about issues relating to the store’s signage.

“This really needs to go back to the drawing board,” said Planning Board Vice Chairman William Hering, with too many questions and unknowns. The attorney asked that the board consider the application and respect the landlord’s judgment on the type of market that exists. The application is expected to come back to the board at its next meeting, July 28.

The property, at the corner of St. Georges and Union Street, is almost a half-acre, or almost 20,000 square feet, and is assessed at $490,000. Property taxes were about $23,300 last year and the property was acquired for $1.025 million in February 2004, according to Propertyshark.com.

Two-way traffic a year later: love it or hate it?

Not the sexiest of poll questions, but it’ll give you something to do while you’re visiting the site. Check out the new poll on the right side of the page (which was submitted by a reader!).

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Station Bar & Grill slated for Irving Street

Ever been to the Station Bar and Grill in downtown Garwood? Another one’s coming to downtown Rahway.

The Planning Board last night unanimously approved a minor site plan for a vacant, one-story office building at 1530 Irving St., across from Park Square.

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Riverview Manor taking shape

Excuse the recent hiatus, there have been a few things going on, between a side project, computer issues and fighting crime. It’s officially summer too, so it’s been a little slow, but there should be some new posts this week — stay tuned.

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Our coffee cup runneth over

So the “Coming Soon” sign at Mr. G’s a couple months ago wasn’t an exaggeration. It’s been open for more than a week, with an “official” grand opening planned on Monday. Last year we could barely find a cafe or coffee shop and now we can expect three by summer’s end (Kataluma Chai and Inthemix).

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Summer work: Irving-Central signalization

Work is expected to begin next month to reconfigure the intersection of Central Avenue and Hamilton, Irving and West Main streets.

The project will add a traffic signal to the intersection to coordinate traffic coming from five different directions and address the no-left turn from West Main to Irving streets, according to City Administrator and Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier.

Work also will include creating a triangular traffic island between Hamilton and Central and widening Irving opposite the Union County Arts Center.

City Council on Wednesday night approved a $224,000 contract with Piscataway-based Fai-Gon Electric for signalization.

Meters to return along Irving and Main

Parking meters will return to the downtown area this summer.

Two-hour metered parking will stretch from East Milton to Central Avenue along Main Street while one-hour metered parking will be on Irving Street. The cost will be 50 cents an hour, purchased in half-hour intervals.

Some will replace meters that were taken out when the change to two-way traffic downtown was made last summer and some will replace meters taken off the streets about 15 years ago. Approval has been received from the County of Union and the Rahway Police Department’s Traffic Bureau to replace them, Parking Authority Executive Director Donald Andersen told the City Council last week.

Agency pulls property from redevelopment area

To head off a potential lawsuit, the Redevelopment Agency last month removed a property from the redevelopment area for the Renaissance at Rahway project.

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