Two experts on medical buildings testified and offered their opinions on developments to replace the old nursing school with a modern medical office building at the Mountainside complex. The conversation touched upon drainage, noise buffers, parking spaces and other issues that concerned the neighbors.
GLEN RIDGE, NJ — A joint meeting of the Glen Ridge and Montclair planning boards was held at Montclair Fire Headquarters on Monday, March 26. The topic was the proposed medical office building across Bay Avenue from Mountainside Hospital and how to make it fit into a residential neighborhood. No vote was taken.
A key speaker was Allen Kopelson, of NK Architects, Morristown.
Kopelson, whose company specializes in designing educational and health-care facilities, was accepted as an expert in the field of design.
The current building across from the hospital was a nursing school. It is to be replaced by a medical office building, or MOB, surrounded by a parking lot. Kopelson noted that the proposed building, at 45,000 square feet, is considerably smaller than the school, at 64,000 square feet.
A visual display oriented the proposed building. It is to face south toward the front of the hospital building.
The rear of the proposal MOB is to face Roswell Terrace. Residents there have previously said they wanted trees as a barrier between their neighborhood and the medical building.
“Along Roswell Avenue,” Kopelson said, “we’ll save the large, established trees. Wherever growth is missing, evergreens will be planted to create a buffer.”
Six trees were to be removed, however.
The surface materials of the medical building were delineated by Kopelson. At ground level there will be brick; center area, cement; and top level, articulated brick.
Strip windows, which are long, horizontal windows, have been replaced in the design with punch windows, which are small rectangles.
“A lot of windows are strip windows,” Kopelson said. “They didn’t fit into the character of the residential.”
Kopelson said the building will be LEED-certified, at a minimum. This was to say the building would be environmental friendly and keep a lid on energy consumption. However, later in the discussion, it was noted that the building designers did not need to be granted the certification. It was only necessary for them to show the building owners how certification could be achieved.
“We’ll try to have a silver-certified rating,” Kopelman said. “We’ll be one point over and depending on how you play around with it, you could get more points.”
He said he would not apply for certification.
The proposed building would have three floors. On the roof, the machinery units that keep the building habitable and operational were to be hidden from view by a screen. There was some concern voiced by residents that the screening did in no way dampen the noise that working machines would make but only hide them. The resident was told the machines had their own sound buffers.
“There’s no absorbing material enclosing the equipment which has a low decibel rating,” Kopelson said. “You won’t hear it,”
From a visual, the machinery took up about 25 percent of the roof area. It will be seen from the front of the building.
Kopelson noted that an adjustment had been made on the canopy over the front entrance of the office building. It extended out too far and risked being torn off by an ambulance.
All sides of the building would look alike.
“There’s no clear front or back,” he said.
Entrances to the building would be on the south, east and west sides, with none on the north side. The north side faces away from the hospital and toward Roswell Terrace. It is the rear of the MOB.
An engineer for the redevelopment proposal, Bradford Bohler, also spoke and was admitted as an expert.
He said between Roswell and the MOB there will be a 40-foot buffer; facing the hospital, there will be an 86-foot buffer; on the east side, a 145-foot buffer; and on the west side, a 96-foot buffer.
There is only one driveway for the MOB parking lot. It is at the southwest corner of the site. Coming out of the hospital, it is to the left.
“There will be a traffic signal there,” Bohler said. “Crossing from the hospital to the medical building is at the signal light.”
The pedestrian crossing had been located closer to the hospital entrance, but Bohler said it had been moved to the signal area.
In the MOB parking lot, he said there would 229 parking spaces. This was the absolute minimum required for the project. One resident living contiguous to the parking lot asked if two spaces could be removed to provide him with more buffer. Bohler told him no, the parking lot needed 229 spaces.
Of these parking spaces, 18 are for valet parking; 64 are for compacts and 24 for the disabled or ADA. Altogether, the hospital and MOB will have 1,050 parking spaces.
The MOB will have a loading dock at its northeast corner in the rear, on the same side as the entrance to the parking lot. Garbage will also be picked up here. It was said that the loading dock and trash area will be used early in the morning when the trucks can use some of the vacant ADA and valet parking spaces to maneuver.
Overall, the ground surface of the MOB site and parking lot will be 67 percent impermeable, an increase from the current 49 percent. A catch basin will be installed to handle the water runoff.
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