Relief is found for owners of undersized property
West Milford. A change in the Township of West Milford Code will give owners of existing small lots an opportunity to develop their property.
| 03 Mar 2021 | 08:26
This advertisement in the Upper Greenwood Lake News of 1935 brought vacation home owners to Upper Greenwood Lake. Small lots that sold for $97.50 each created problems later.
Members of the Township of West Milford Council at their meeting on Wednesday were expected to adopt an ordinance addressing bulk standards for residential development on existing lots of less than one acre.
The code contains development standards for properties within the township residential zones. The ordinance said a review of the code demonstrated there had been no existing standards with regard to existing lots less than one acre in size.
Amendments to Chapter 500 of the zoning code
The current council members determined that it is necessary to amend the code to establish the needed standards. They planned to amend Chapter 500 Zoning to add the new section. It sets bulk standards for single residential development on the existing lots of less than one acre.
The lot area, frontage, width and depth will be permitted if existing bulk standards can be met.
For a principal structure this calls for 20 feet in the front yard and five feet for each side yard and 20 feet for the rear yard. Building coverage allowed is 25 percent.
For accessory use building in the front yard is not permitted. The side and rear area requirements are five feet. There is to be a ten-foot distance to another building. The approximate auxiliary building size allowed is for 1,000 square feet.
The ordinance was introduced on Feb. 3 with public hearing scheduled on March 2.
Back in the day
In the early days the township was mainly populated by farm families who usually had many acres of property with their homesteads.
In the 1920s, 30s and 40s, vacation homes became popular and log cabins for seasonal use were built on small lots in lake areas.
When people started converting those homes for year-round use in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s problems with the conversion to suburbia caused officials of that time to limit additional building on small lots.
They were addressing septic and water supply problems and inadequate unpaved roads that were without owners to provide the maintenance and upgrades that were needed.
Officials banned any building on lots below one acre in size.
Fast forward to 2021 when need for new rules were seen with the local governing body taking appropriate action.