Residents wary of plans for Gerber property
Company dumped plumbing products on land for years
BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer

COLLEEN LUTOLF Above, Woodbridge Sanitary Pottery, which has operated in the township since the 1920s, may become a site for an age-restricted, upscale, gated community.

Like most suburban women, when Woodbridge resident Roberta Martin looks out the back window of her Lyman Street home, she sees trees.

Unlike most suburban women, when Martin looks out her back window she also sees something else — toilet bowls.

“It’s a little hill of toilets,” Martin said. “It’s about five or six properties wide. You can see them when you look out the window. We’ve kind of gotten used to it.”

COURTESY OF ROBERTA MARTIN Discarded toilets and other plumbing fixtures can be found dumped throughout wetlands bordering the Gerber property in Woodbridge.

Although the 10-foot-high ridge of toilets, urinals, bidets and sinks Martin and her neighbors have gotten used to may sound like something you’d read about in a Weird NJ magazine; why it’s there is no mystery, nor is it new.

Martin has lived behind the Woodbridge Sanitary Pottery property for over 20 years.

The ceramic manufacturing plant, owned by Gerber Plumbing Fixtures, used its own property as a dumping ground for any imperfect pottery products the company produced.

“I don’t know when they started dumping them,” Martin said. “My neighbors down the street remember it from the 1960s and 1970s. Toward the Gerber property you just notice this slope going upwards that’s a combination of leaves and tree branches. It might just be the actual elevation, but the rest is a ridge of broken pottery.”

Gerber, which began operations in Woodbridge during the 1930s, is hoping to sell its 22.22-acre property to Continental Properties, Woodbridge, said Thomas Parro, Gerber’s mergers and acquisitions director at the Feb. 3 Board of Adjustment meeting.

Continental Properties wants to clean up the toilets, demolish all the buildings on-site and construct six four-story age-restricted upscale apartment buildings, according to the site plans.

Each building would contain 52 apartments, along with a gatehouse, clubhouse, pool, putting green, bocce court and underground and aboveground parking lots.

Units would be sold to buyers for prices ranging between $230,000 to $270,000, said Howard Rappaport, Continental Properties vice president.

Although Martin and many of her neighbors whose properties abut the Gerber site say they’re not opposed to Continental redeveloping the former porcelain manufacturing plant with senior housing, they do have reservations about Continental’s plans.

“From my perspective and from speaking with residents, a lot of them are not opposed to senior housing per se,” Martin said after the meeting. “But there are some issues.”

Building height, groundwater runoff produced from the site, and traffic generated by the residents living within the proposed 312 units Continental intends to construct, have some residents concerned.

Martin also wants to know what is buried in a landfill on the Gerber property.

“They’re going to be digging up I don’t know what,” she said.

At last week’s board meeting, board planning consultant Henry Bignell, of Sheehan Consulting Group, South Amboy, said he would also like to hear more about the landfill.

“There was a lot of dumping, and there’s monitoring wells. What’s that all about?” Bignell asked Parro.

“Over the years, a lot of clay was used and we ended up putting the clay in a landfill,” Parro said.

“I’m sitting here surprised you have a permitted landfill I never heard of in this community,” Bignell said.

He asked if Gerber started dumping the wares on their property illegally, and questioned the landfill’s toxicity.

The site is not a toxic waste area, but Parro said he couldn’t address why the monitoring wells were on the site.

“The DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] has jurisdiction over this and is going to be reviewing everything,” Continental attorney Steven J. Tripp said. “In effect, there is nothing significantly toxic. There is one area of contamination, and the wells were put in as part of remediation.”

If plans are approved, Continental Properties would remove the clay products and cap the landfill, Tripp said. He said the area would be safe for residents.

“It would easily be remediated for residents,” Tripp said. “It’s an industrial site. There are some issues, but it is not what would be called a dirty site.”

“The product is clay,” Parro said. “There was no need to make it a landfill, but we decided to make it a landfill and went through normal procedures to do that.”

The board would be provided environmental studies, Tripp said.

Originally, Continental had planned to construct the buildings 64 feet high. But Continental Properties Vice President Susan Berninger said the building height would be reduced to 48 feet.

“The height and mass of the proposed projects shall tower over the adjacent single-family dwellings located along the eastern property line,” according to the Sheehan report.

“They would still be 60 feet higher than residents homes,” Bignell said.

“Yeah, but they’d be 350 feet away,” Berninger replied.

Board member John C. Ligouri asked Berninger if the four-story buildings could be reduced to three stories.

“This is a very predominant theme in Sheehan’s report,” Tripp responded. “We don’t want to be in the position to deal with this in a vacuum. I think I’d like to continue with the presentation and go back and make a decision on how best to address these concerns.”

Parking was also a concern for the board.

Continental’s application provides for two spaces for each unit. One in the heated, underground garage, the other, outside the buildings in a parking lot.

Although the parking plan complies with the law by providing 624 spaces, board attorney Alfred F. Russo said the amount of parking does not allow for any visitors to the apartment complex.

“If I were to have somebody coming over for dinner, do I have to rent a space from my neighbor?” he said.

The hearing on the plans was continued to the next meeting on March 31.

Continental’s planner and traffic expert must still testify.

Continental Properties held a question-and-answer session for residents back in December. Many who attended were at the Feb. 3 board meeting.

Greg Schmidt, a lifelong Lyman Avenue resident, said he saw improvements in the plan since the December meeting.

“They reduced the height of the buildings,” he said. “That was my biggest concern. As for whether it’s enough of a reduction, it’s a step in the right direction.”

Resident Judith Linden said she was not pleased with Continental’s presentation.

“Not at all,” she said. “Nothing surprised me. I read the engineer’s report. I read the fire report and the police report, all of whom have a lot of questions.”

“I’m more confused now than I was,” Willry Avenue resident Joanne Galuppo said. “I think a few things have changed that are not necessarily for the better.”