Hearing on MU arena could start on May 25

BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer

WEST LONG BRANCH - What promises to be a lengthy application for Monmouth University's plan to build an indoor sports arena is expected to start unfolding later this month.

In the meantime, the borough's Zoning Board of Adjustment, the entity that will ultimately decide whether or not the 152,400-square-foot facility gets built or not, has deemed the university's use variance application ready for its initial hearing, now scheduled for May 25.

Knowing that several applications are due to come before the board at that meeting, Marc Policastro, the university's legal representative, asked if a special meeting solely for the purpose of hearing Monmouth's plan could be scheduled for June.

Instead, board Chairman Rocco Christopher advised Policastro and the university officials present at last Thursday's meeting to return on May 25.

Depending upon how it long it takes to deal with any other applications on that night's agenda, the board could begin hearing testimony from the university's representatives that night, Christopher said.

The zoners have been working through the large volume of applications and are now catching up, Christopher noted.

The university is actually asking the board to grant numerous use variances in order to build the venue in the center of its campus next to the existing 40-year-old Boylan Gymnasium.

University officials have said that the arena, referred to in plans as "the multipurpose center" would be used for high-profile athletic events such as basketball championship games.

If constructed, the center would seat up to 5,000 patrons for a championship game, university officials have said. However, its seats could be folded down for smaller events such as indoor track meets that might not draw as large a crowd, building plans have shown.

Estimated to cost about $34 million, the arena would be located about 647 feet from Larchwood Avenue on the footprint of two existing parking lots near the Boylan building and in the middle of the south campus, university officials have said.

Hearings on the last use variance application put before the board by the university lasted slightly more than 18 months.

On Aug. 31, the board voted to approve Monmouth's controversial application to construct a three-story dormitory, a 126-stall parking lot on campus between Cedar and Beechwood avenues, and facing out to Pinewood Avenue.

In the same application, the university also received board approval to build six tennis courts, a 21-stall parking lot, and a detention basin on university-owned land in a residential, R-22 zone located between Beechwood and Hollywood avenues.

The board's approval as a whole is facing a court challenge from Pinewood Avenue residents Joseph and Pamela Hughes, who had hired an attorney during the hearing on the application to contest the plan.

In the suit filed by the Hugheses in state Superior Court, Freehold, last fall the couple charges that the board decision violates the borough master plan by allowing institutional facilities in a residential zone.

Subsequently, on Feb. 1, the West Long Branch Borough Council voted to file an appeal of the Zoning Board approval pertaining to the tennis courts, smaller parking lot and detention basin. All those facilities are to be built on a tract known locally as the former Kilkare Farm.

The council filed its challenge also on the basis that allowing the university to construct institutional facilities in the R-22 zone violated the master plan.

To date, no date has been set for the court to hear either legal challenge according to Hughes and Gregory Baxter, the council's attorney.