Mini golf would replace a run-down building
on Barrington's Gloucester Pike.

Royal Green Miniature Golf went before Barrington's Planning/Zoning Board on August 24. The application is for 60 E. Gloucester Pike, block 13 lot 1.08, and asks for a use variance and for preliminary and final site plan approval. Royal Fitness, the club next door, has the same owner.

The building at the front of the property has sat with holes in the roof and a crumbling rear wall since a second building on the lot was demolished about five years ago. It runs about 10,000 square feet and was most recently the Kids Castle daycare, before that a Tupperware distributor, and originally built as the Merrill Engineering hangars, part of the long-gone Barrington Airport. Under the plan it would come down and almost all of the roughly 63,000 square foot property would be laid out again: the course at the front, parking behind it at about 35 spaces on the plans, and stormwater management at the far rear. The only building proposed is a small clubhouse where people pay for rounds and buy concessions.

A use variance is a specific kind of ask. It comes up when the use itself, not just the layout of the site, is not allowed in that zone as written. The board is asked to approve the use first, then weigh the site plan under it. That is usually a higher bar than a site plan application on its own. An owner of an aging commercial building elsewhere in South Jersey would expect to go through the same step first if the use they have in mind is not already allowed where the building sits.

Nothing is decided. The board has not posted its minutes or its written decision from the August 24 meeting, and the application could still be approved, held for a later meeting, or turned down. The plans on file do not show a course theme or individual hole designs.

A proposal, not an approval, and plans can change. The application went on the Barrington Planning/Zoning Board's Aug. 24 agenda; the board's minutes and resolution for that meeting are not posted, so the outcome is not on the public record yet. Reported by 42Freeway.com. This is a summary in our own words; the full report is theirs.