Wawa opponent says canopy is a building
Planning board to decide if a canopy must count as floor space
BY JAY BODAS
Staff Writer

The deceptively simple question of what constitutes a building came under serious debate at a recent Edison Township Planning Board meeting, when the board voted to continue an application on whether to build a Wawa at the corner of Division Street and Route 27 on Jan. 16.

The site proposed for development is a 14.3-acre plot located on the north side of Route 27 at Division Street. The site contains two strip mall-type buildings and one vacant restaurant building. The site also has 965 parking spaces, according to the board planners report on the application.

The applicant proposes to remove the existing Sizzler restaurant building, now closed, and construct a Wawa convenience store and gas station on the eastern corner of the property. No improvements are planned for the existing strip mall buildings.

Ira Wiener, attorney for neighbor Stelio Stoupas, argued against the application saying that the canopy extending over the proposed Wawas accompanying gas station qualified as a "building," according to township ordinance.

Proposed Wawa

He said that municipal code defined a building as a "roof with supports," and as a result, the applicant should have calculated the "floor space" below the gas stations canopy and included it with the application.

"There is nothing in this ordinance that says you don't count the area under the canopy," Wiener said. "I would understand the normal, rational way of looking at things in terms of a layman. I would argue that you cannot make a finding that this land is outside the building, because the ordinance says it is within. It may offend our notion of what is a building, but for zoning purposes, this town says this is a building."

Board planner Henry Bignell disputed Wieners claim.

"I am a responsible person, and you cannot say the paved asphalt outside of a building is a floor," Bignell said. "I have never seen that anywhere, and that is why we do not include that. It does not say the area under a canopy has to be calculated."

As an example, he said they would classify a car wash business as a building, but not a simpler gas station canopy.

"A car wash has walls," Bignell said. "You can secure the buildings at night. You can close down the building, and pull down the garage walls. With a gas station, you can come right up to it at night."

There is nothing in the ordinance that says it has to be a structure that can be secured, responded Wiener.

"To suggest that a building has to have walls or have to be secured is not in this ordinance," he said. "That would be taking normal layman's language and logic and applying that. That would be an error on the part of this board to put that in. The [township] council made this a building, and you have to accept that fact."

Board Attorney Ed Schmierer, who sits with the rest of the board, shook his head.

"With the last three sentences you really went off," Schmierer said. "A clear reading of the statute says that if this is a building, if this went to a court, there are plenty of experts who would distinguish a car wash from a canopy of a gas station. You're taking a definition of a building and stretching it, that is your job."

Following this discussion, Wiener rattled off a list of technical issues the applicant had with the application, ranging from the types of variances requested to whether the applicant needed to apply for subdivisions of the property.

The board attorney and the office of planning and zoning for the township will make a determination as to whether the issues raised by Wiener have merit in time for the applications discussion at the Jan. 16 meeting.