A 46 unit site plan reaches the Mantua board,
and the hearing is September 15.

Mantua Township's Municipal Land Use Board meets at 7:00 p.m. on September 15, and the agenda it posted carries five new applications. The one that reaches the most homes is 2026-016, filed by Royal Oaks LIHTC, LLC for a property on Jackson Road, listed as Block 37, Lot 6 on Tax Map 10 in the township's PRC zone.

The ask is major site plan approval, and the work is spelled out in the application. A 1,595 square foot community building would go up. A tot lot would be installed. The parking lot would be modified and the dumpster enclosures rebuilt. Inside, all 46 residential units would be renovated. Everything on that list is existing housing being kept in service rather than ground being opened, which is a different kind of application from the subdivisions that usually fill these agendas.

Two other applications on the same night are worth a landowner's attention, because they run into the same rule from opposite ends of the township. At 760 Heritage Road, an owner wants a 45 by 56 foot pole barn, 2,520 square feet, on 5.89 acres in the Agricultural Residential zone. At 420 Barnsboro Road, another owner wants a 36 by 60 foot pole barn with a 360 square foot overhang, also on 5.89 acres in the same zone. Both need relief from the township's 2,500 square foot maximum on an accessory structure, and both need side yard setback relief where the ordinance requires 30 feet. The last two items on the list are sign variances at an office building on Mantua Boulevard.

None of this is decided. An agenda is a list of what will be heard, and a board can approve an application, carry it to another month, or send it back for more information. The value of reading one early is that it is the only stage where the public record is still open to a neighbor who wants to say something.

For anyone holding acreage in Mantua, the pole barn pair is the more portable lesson. Neither of those owners is short of land at 5.89 acres. What they ran into was the size cap on the building itself and the distance to the side line, and both of those numbers sit in the ordinance long before a builder is called.

An agenda item is an application, not an approval. The September 15 meeting had not been held when this was written, and applications can be carried, amended or withdrawn. Written by Justin Kelly, NJ Real Estate Broker-Salesperson, from the Mantua Township Land Use Board agenda.