Credit: (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)

Piscataway has already had one challenge by residents to a proposed warehouse, now it is being sued again by the same group, claiming officials violated their own master plan by rezoning a parcel to allow construction of two warehouses.

Ten citizens and three community groups say local officials ignored the town’s master plan when they changed the zoning on an undeveloped 25-acre site from rural/residential to industrial. The plaintiffs also accuse the township of “spot” zoning, giving a specific parcel a new designation inconsistent with neighboring property.

The new lawsuit, filed in Middlesex County Superior Court on Jan. 28, follows a similar action by many of the same plaintiffs last summer. At that time they alleged the town’s zoning board was wrong to approve development of the site and asked the court to invalidate a variance that would allow the warehouses to be built. The new suit is asking the court to strike down an ordinance that does the same thing.

The first lawsuit has not yet been heard in court. Meanwhile, the new plaintiffs are setting out different grounds for seeking the same outcome: to invalidate the township’s zoning change and stop the warehouses from being built.

“Now, without waiting for the court’s decision in the prior action, the Township Council of Piscataway has rezoned the 25-acre property to expedite the warehouse project. This rezoning is not consistent with the township’s master plan,” the 24-page complaint says.

Pioneering Piscataway

Piscataway is among the first communities seeing these legal challenges by residents as construction of warehouses across New Jersey has ballooned in the past few years. Opponents of warehouses across the state say proliferation of the giant buildings snarls traffic, worsens air pollution and eats up dwindling open space. But they note that many towns approve the projects because they raise tax revenue, and even those towns that don’t want them may be powerless to stop them because their lands are appropriately zoned.

Warehouse sprawl, fueled by online shopping, continues to surge in New Jersey, driving up rents and pushing vacancy rates to record lows, according to industry data. In one snapshot, almost 10 million square feet of new warehouses are under construction in just four South Jersey counties.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys, Cynthia Hadjiyannis and Renee Steinhagen, said the rezoning may reflect an attempt to evade the first lawsuit, but in fact violates New Jersey’s Municipal Land Use Law.

“It is not clear why the council and planning board took this action while litigation against the zoning board is active,” they said in a statement. “It could be that the council is trying to make an end-run around the other lawsuit, but their action here is contrary to New Jersey law.”

The latest lawsuit accuses the council and the planning board of failing to acknowledge that the zoning change is inconsistent with the town’s master plan, and of seeking to accommodate the developer, M&M Realty.

Gene Wilk, a spokesman for the town, said that stopping the warehouses would probably result in the revival of an earlier plan — which is still approved by the town — to build 249 apartments and 100,000 square feet of retail space on the site, adding to traffic congestion and straining local services.

‘Frivolous lawsuit?’

“If this group were to succeed in its lawsuit, the likely result is 249 high-density apartments and 100,000 square feet of retail space that would clog our residential streets and add even more strain to the school system,” Wilk said in a statement. “The logistics center will be a net positive for township taxpayers and it’s a shame that tax dollars have to be wasted on a frivolous lawsuit.”

M&M Realty did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Kamuela Tillman, one of the plaintiffs, said both lawsuits seek to force the council to pay more attention to community demands. “You have a body of government that set up rules but don’t really want to follow them,” she said. “When questions are asked about what the plan is and how they seek to benefit the entire community, you get a silent hush.”

She accused the town of accommodating developers whose plans don’t benefit the whole community.

“Warehouse sprawl is not a secret, we’re not immune to it. We’re just saying, ‘If you’ve got to do these things, where is the benefit to the community?’” she said. “If you ask these questions, they just go through back doors and change the zoning, and that’s not a part of the master plan.”

School daze

The proposed Piscataway warehouses, covering some 900,000 square feet, would be built next to an elementary school with about 500 students who are already exposed to traffic fumes from existing warehouses, the plaintiffs said. If the new development was built, the school would be “encircled” with truck bays, they said.

Micah Rasmussen, a Rider University professor who led a rare, successful campaign against a warehouse in Upper Freehold, Monmouth County, said it’s unfortunate if citizens sue their own officials over warehouse development but that’s the result of the town’s leaders being dazzled by the prospect of more tax receipts.

“No one who cares about their own community takes lightly the step of suing themselves,” he said. “They do it because they see the damage in other communities when industrial settings are brought into residential areas, and because no official will do anything to stop it.”

In the new lawsuit, plaintiffs are asking the court to strike down the ordinance that changes the zoning, partly on the grounds that it does not conform with the town’s master plan. They also claim that the change amounts to “fiscal zoning” in which officials sought to stabilize tax revenues, control population growth and prevent school overcrowding by allowing industrial rather than residential development. That policy exceeds the township’s authority and is “arbitrary and capricious,” the suit said.