ASSEMBLY, No. 329
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Introduced Pending Technical Review by Legislative Counsel
PRE-FILED FOR INTRODUCTION IN THE 1996 SESSION
By Assemblymen PASCRELL and ARNONE
An Act concerning certain nonconforming zoning uses and amending P.L.1975, c.291.
Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. Section 54 of P.L.1975, c.291 (C.40:55D-67) is amended to read as follows:
54. a. A zoning ordinance may provide for conditional uses as specified in the ordinance, which may include significant existing nonconforming uses or some particular class thereof, to be granted by the planning board according to definite specifications and standards which shall be clearly set forth with sufficient certainty and definiteness to enable the developer to know their limit and extent. The planning board shall grant or deny an application for a conditional use within 95 days of submission of a complete application by a developer to the administrative officer, or within such further time as may be consented to by the applicant.
b. The review by the planning board of a conditional use shall include any required site plan review pursuant to article 6 of this act. The time period for action by the planning board on conditional uses pursuant to subsection a. of this section shall apply to such site plan review. Failure of the planning board to act within the period prescribed shall constitute approval of the application and a certificate of the administrative officer as to the failure of the planning board to act shall be issued on request of the applicant, and it shall be sufficient in lieu of the written endorsement or other evidence of approval, herein required, and shall be so accepted by the county recording officer for purposes of filing subdivision plats.
Whenever review or approval of the application by the county planning board is required by section 5 of P.L.1968, c.285 (C.40:27-6.3), in the case of a subdivision, or section 8 of P.L.1968, c.285 (C.40:27-6.6), in the case of a site plan, the municipal planning board shall condition any approval that it grants upon timely receipt of a favorable report on the application by the county planning board or approval by the county planning board by its failure to report thereon within the required time period.
(cf: P.L.1975, c.291, s.54)
2. This act shall take effect immediately.
STATEMENT
This bill would permit a local governing body to specify in its zoning ordinance that significant existing nonconforming uses, or some particular class thereof, are conditional uses which may be granted by the planning board. Currently, the law does not provide that an existing nonconforming use may be considered a conditional use by a planning board. Therefore, if a nonconforming structure is completely destroyed, it cannot be rebuilt upon the site without a "d" variance granted by the zoning board of adjustment. The purpose of this bill is to provide a practical method for changing one nonconforming use to another since a conditional use application is generally approved more quickly than a "d" variance application. An advantage to this conditional use method of permitting nonconforming uses is that a municipality would adopt objective standards into its zoning ordinance with respect to items such as traffic, parking, maximum occupancy, employment, noise, light, smoke and emissions, aesthetics, drainage, neighborhood impact, and environmental impact, which would provide guidance to the planning board with respect to decisions which have traditionally been made without such objective standards.
This bill is not a mandate on municipalities to amend their zoning ordinances; it merely permits a municipality to adopt a process so that significant nonconforming uses can be classified as conditional uses. The requirements that a nonconforming use be significant and that the municipality adopt standards to determine if conditional use treatment is warranted for the nonconforming use are intended to prevent this type of conditional use treatment from being used as a form of spot zoning to benefit a few favored landowners.
Permits granting of zoning conditional use to include significant existing nonconforming use.