Page 4 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • August 28, 2013 Franklin Lakes Borough closes on temple property purchase by Frank J. McMahon The Borough of Franklin Lakes has closed on its $2 million purchase of the 14.4-acre property at the corner of Colonial and McCoy roads that had been owned by Temple Emanuel of North Jersey. The borough previously committed $2 million from its municipal affordable housing trust fund for the purchase of the temple property and $622,820 to pay down the $1,350,000 debt it owes for transferring some of its afford- able housing obligation to the City of Garfield in 2002. Mayor Frank Bivona and the borough council will now decide on a developer for the site, where special needs hous- ing will be built. The council has received two bids from developers inter- ested in constructing the special needs housing. According to Franklin Lakes Borough Administrator Gregory Hart, the council is expected to award a contract to one of those developers at its public work session in September. One developer’s plan would use the contours of the land to create a distributed network of nine structures that repre- sent a single-family home development in a semi-rural set- ting while maintaining the character of the neighborhood. That plan treats the site as two separate developments with their own entrances and exits and diverse housing styles all reflecting the characteristics of a neighborhood of single- family homes. It would include a mix of home ownership, rental apartments, and rental group homes creating a vari- ety of desirable housing for 40 individuals with special needs and different supportive service needs including six buildings, with two being for-sale homes for veterans and four buildings for special needs rentals. The other plan would create affordable, permanent, and supportive rental housing for low-income persons with dis- abilities in which every apartment would have a private unit with one bedroom and a complete kitchen and bath. In this plan each resident would have a lease for his or her apartment and there would be no time limit for residency. Prior to agreeing to sell the property to the borough in 2012, Temple Emanuel had spent several years seeking an approval of the borough’s zoning board of adjustment to build a new temple on the site. That application was denied by the zoning board after 31 meetings of a public hearing, but that denial was reversed in Superior Court and a revised plan was ultimately approved by the zoning board. Ground was never broken for the project, however, and in June 2008 the temple congregation purchased the Union Reformed Church property on High Mountain Road after that church merged with a Wyckoff Christian congregation. The temple is now located at the High Mountain Road site. In July 2012, the borough signed the contract with the (continued on page 6)