When Renderings Clash With Reality
By ANTOINETTE MARTIN
MONTCLAIR
AS the first of 10 huge homes being built on the site of the former
Marlboro Inn began to rise last fall toward its full height and
breadth, so did the hue and cry.
"Montclair monstrosities!" thundered resident critics on a blog
called the Montclair Watercooler. "Monster houses," moaned one
writer in a letter to The Montclair Times, the weekly
newspaper. "Homes on steroids," added a Baristanet blogger, after a
look last month at the finished frame of the first 5,000-square-foot
house standing cheek by jowl to the emerging frames of three others.
The 2.36-acre Marlboro Inn tract is bordered on three sides by
streets Watchung Avenue, Grove Street and Christopher Street and
the houses, which have no yards to speak of, are a mere six feet
from curbside on Watchung. Some are closer than that to a new street
cut down the middle of the property going from Christopher to Grove.
Steven Plofker, the original developer, who has sold the project to
American Properties of Iselin, had described the plan as a type
of "New Urbanism" in presentations to the local planning and zoning
boards. The developer emphasized that front porches would all face
the interior street and be set congenially close to one another.
But on Watchung, the backs of four massive houses now under
construction, set about 12 feet apart, create a barricade effect in
the eyes of many onlookers. The houses tower over the sidewalk, and
stand taller than any surrounding homes, several of which were
recently placed on the market.
The new houses at the Hempstead at Montclair, as the development is
called, are just going on the market now, at a price of $1.7 million
each.
Mayor Ed Remsen, assailed in many blog entries and letters for
having supported demolition of the history-laden former inn building
last year and for voting to give final approval to the dense
residential development, assailed the Hempstead houses himself
recently in a Baristanet note: "For the record, I HATE the
McMansions."
So, all around town residents are asking how and why the project was
approved and if there is a way to stop it from happening again.
The angry blogsters heave their invective in two general directions:
at greedy developers and at politicians and appointees they see as
too craven to stand up to greedy developers.
But another sort of subdemon has bubbled up from the cauldron of
public opinion: the lovely renderings of the buildings that were
distributed during the planning stages. They were so pretty they
disguised the truth, in the eyes of Kevin Lee Allen, a design
consultant, and Mark Porter, the editor of The Montclair Times,
among others who have complained in the last couple of months.
Mr. Porter wrote an editorial in February calling the architectural
renderings of the Hempstead produced by the firm of Zampolin &
Associates of Westwood, "fantasies that could not possibly exist in
2005."
"The illustrations display houses on wooded tracts with bucolic
layers of trees vanishing to the horizon," the editorial
observed. "Some overhanging branches appear subtropical. Despite the
existing houses built on Christopher and Grove Streets, the
renderings show no other nearby abodes." Zampolin did not respond to
phone messages seeking comment.
Mr. Allen, meanwhile, did a "reverse perspective" analysis of the
site plan drawings, posting on Baristanet his conclusion that the
drawings implied homes about half as big as those being built. Mr.
Plofker himself noted when he appeared before the planning board
that the existing zoning allowed as many as 12 houses to be built on
the site, although they would have had to be smaller in size.
Mr. Allen noted that the drawings submitted for the 10-home plan
were "pictures," not the technical drawings that developers are also
required to submit to planners.
But reading technical drawings takes some skill, Mr. Allen observed.
Michael Gorman, the director of project development for NK
Architects of Morristown and also the chairman of the planning board
in Millburn, said the responsibility for acquiring that skill rests
with planning board members.
"The issue in Montclair, or anywhere else," Mr. Gorman said, "is
whether the planning board members asked the right questions. If
they did not, then shame on them."
A new state law was recently passed, Mr. Gorman said, that requires
all members of planning boards to pass a basic skills test within 18
months of being named. The Department of Community Affairs is
currently developing the test and a course of instruction.
There are no laws covering artful illusion, of course.
The Montclair Times editorial called for planners to come up with
new regulations requiring developers of significantly sized projects
to provide "proof" of what their projects will look like in context,
suggesting that three-dimensional scale models including adjacent
structures, open areas and roadways would be most appropriate.
But several planners and developers more or less shrugged or
laughed when asked about how to ensure that what is rendered is
built.
"Look at this!" Wasseem Boraie of Boraie Development fairly crowed,
showing off a scale model of the 125-unit condo building his
family's company has just completed in downtown New Brunswick. "Look
at the model, and look out the window at the building. They're the
same, right? How often do you see that? Almost never." As for the
reason, Mr. Boraie said it comes down to builders' desire to cut
costs.
Paul Sionas, an architect who has worked with Mr. Plofker on past
projects in Montclair, said architects often lose control of the
finished product. "Probably 90 percent of what we design winds up
not looking like what we drew," he said.
The reasons for that , according to Mr. Sionas, "range from 'real
budget constraints,' to 'perceived budget constraints,' a contractor
knowing better, a developer knowing better." He said, "It's pretty
upsetting."
Meanwhile, members of the Montclair boards are not laying claim to
having been duped by drawings. Mostly, they have remained silent on
the issue of the Hempstead at Montclair. But one, the town planner,
Karen Kadus, a municipal employee who also sits on the planning
board, said she has observed both agencies becoming more diligent
about determining how closely builders intend to hew to plans they
present, and more insistent about getting "realistic depictions" of
how a proposed structure would fit into the general environment at a
site.
"The Hempstead developer took the buildings to the legal maximum
size," Ms. Kadus said. "It's entirely legal, but it is kind of
shocking to see what the maximum looks like."
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