April 24, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 9 Midland Park The owners of Marlow Park, LLC in Midland Park are seeking to formalize the parking available for the three buildings they own at 445 Godwin Ave, and 59 and 80 Greenwood Ave. and asked the planning board last week for the variances necessary to accomplish the objective. Attorney Thomas Buonocore said the property has parking for 380 cars and trucks but would need 481 spaces to be compliant with current borough ordinances. This leaves a need for a variance for 101 spaces. The attorney said that when all the space was fully occupied three years ago, there were no parking issues and in fact there was a surplus of more than 150 open spaces. “We don’t want to get anything over on the town. We just want to make it right for the town and for my client. It’s important for the landlord to have enough parking; it keeps up the quality of the tenants,” Buonocore said. Buonocore explained that having on file a parking plan approved by the town will allow his client to lease out vacant space in any of the buildings and get zoning certificates right away as long as the new use is Marlow Park seeks to formalize its parking plan conforming and not more intense than the previous use. At present every prospective tenant must appear in front of the planning board for the zoning certificate. Buonocore said tenants are often anxious to move in and are unwilling to wait the several weeks needed to get the zoning certificates. Further complicating the application is that 59 Greenwood, with some 64,000 sq. ft. of space, has on-site parking for only 34 vehicles. The board considers each lot a separate entity, so a cross-parking easement designates spaces at 80 Greenwood for the use of 59 Greenwood tenants. The property is zoned I-1 and I-2, which allows offices, warehouses, storage and manufacturing. Bahman Izadmehr, the applicant’s traffic consultant, testified that based on on-site inspections and traffic counts performed throughout the year and at different times of the day, the site, while it lacks the parking requirements of the borough parking ordinance, will not require any additional parking spaces to accommodate the parking needs of the existing and potential future tenants. “The available existing parking spaces …have adequately served the existing facilities for decades and will serve the site with the proposed improvements for years to come,” Izadmehr said in his report. The buildings date to the early 1900s. The traffic consultant said borough parking requirements – four spaces for each 1,000 sq. ft. of available floor area are more stringent than Institute of Transportation Engineers standards, which require 2.84 spaces for each 1,000 sq. ft. of floor area. Board engineer Richard Wostbrock of LAN Associates, said that while he, too, had observed that the parking lot is underutilized, the applicant should consider the ongoing transition of the property from less intense to more intense uses. He noted that in 1995, when the property’s parking plans were last reviewed, the site had less than half of the office space it has today. Safety drill held at MPHS (continued from page 5) a safe, secure, and substance-free school environment. Our students, faculty, staff and community deserve no less,” Capuano added. According to Detective Gibbons, the building was evacuated at 1:10 p.m., with students led to the Church of the Nativity parking lot across the street, the designated staging area. K-9 dogs from the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department then swept the building for drugs, firearms and explosives. Nothing was found, he said. “It’s important for residents to know that school officials and the police department are working hard to make our schools as safe as possible. This is one step towards that,” Gibbons said. Capuano said the exercise is part of a continuing and evolving plan, which includes educational, preventative and enforcement activities. Both Capuano and Gibbons said this or similar endeavors would be repeated at various times for the remainder of the school year and in the future.