Despite Lighting Concern, Restaurant to Close Late

The developer of a retail area on Route 22 East and Tracy Road, owned by Gen III, is looking to bring in a fine dining restaurant as a tenant—but the late hour it is expected to close concerned residents attending the Dec. 13 planning board meeting.

John Ament, president of Gen III, came before the board to request an amendment to its previously approved , asking for a modification to the required hour the lights in the parking lot will be turned off.

According to Ament, a fine dining restaurant—that also has a location in New York—is looking to open on the property, and it might be open later than was already approved in the previously designed plans for the property.

“We’ve got a class A restaurant that we’re going to bring in, and we’re ready to go to lease, but the problem is that the hours of operation are not commensurate with a restaurant of that nature,” he said.

As was previously approved by the planning board, the hours for the retail properties would be 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., with lights in the parking lot turning off 30 minutes after that 10 p.m. closing time.

But the restaurateur looking to open in Bridgewater, Ament said, plans to close his kitchen at 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on the weekends, which means the lights, particularly on the weekends, would be off before workers had left the property.

In addition, Ament said, the restaurant sometimes, though rarely, hosts special events, especially on New Year’s Eve, and he would like an exception for that day and any other special events like weddings or others.

For the modification, Ament said, he would like the application to be changed to allow for the restaurant to have its lights turn off one hour after closing time—although he could not give a precise closing time.

Several planning board members said they would prefer to have the lights turned off one hour after the kitchen closes, but Ament said some people may still be eating after the kitchen closes, so the lights might turn off too early.

“The standard operation that this gentleman envisions is closing the kitchen at 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends,” he said. “But if someone is having a fine dining experience and they go to the restaurant, I don’t envision it being open at 12 a.m., but I would want it to be commensurate with other restaurants in the area.”

Ament said the restaurant will also be looking to apply for a liquor license—which, according to the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, allows liquor to be sold in an establishment until 2 a.m. on any given night.

But the planning board, and several residents, expressed concerns about allowing the lights to be on so late into the evening, particularly with the lights being close to residents, albeit hidden by the building and a required berm on the property.

“I don’t expect the restaurant to be open until 2 a.m. like the liquor license allows, except on the rare occasion,” Ament said. “This is a fine dining establishment, not a club or bar. Probably 11 p.m. would be his norm.”

Ament said the restaurateur does not want to keep the restaurant open until late in the evening, but that he also does want to have to tell people to leave if they are not finished with their meals. For that reason, he said, he did not want to give an exact time of closing for the restaurant.

“If you go out for a late supper, and 12 a.m. was the time you had to be out of the restaurant and you ordered your meal at 11 p.m., we are talking about only a handful of people in the restaurant,” he said. “I don’t know how to handle that.”

For Marsillo Court resident George Randall, he said the windows of his condo directly face the property off Tracy Road, and he is concerned about the lights shining so late in the evening, particularly with his four children trying to sleep.

“I am wrestling with the hours of operation, additional noise, traffic and odor to our homes,” he said.

Discussions began to center around having all lights off by 1 a.m., just to allow for the extra time for people to eat.

“But 1 a.m. seems awfully late in a residential neighborhood,” Randall said.

For some residents, and board members, concerns also centered around the ideas of the special events, because they said those could not necessarily be counted.

“The bigger issue is the special events because they could be every weekend, and I know the residents would be upset,” said Jessica Court resident John Iannitto.

Board member Janine Dickey said she would not want to tie the tenant’s hand to a specific number of events, but understands that there need to be some parameters. She said she would be OK with keeping it to a required five events only.

“I would like to say they would be allowed five special events, and they can close at 2 a.m. for those,” she said.

But board member Glenn Petillo said he is concerned about how to track those.

“I don’t want it to be a situation where it’s a late night, and the response is just, well this will be one of our special nights,” he said. “Someone has to be monitoring it, and I think that would be more problematic.”

Board member Robert Albano said he would recommend only allowing the restaurant to be open late on New Year’s Eve.

“That makes it easy to enforce,” he said.

The final concern was whether to outline a hard closing time for the restaurant as being what time the lights go out, or if that would be when the kitchen closes.

Mayor Patricia Flannery said she would be in favor of a bit more restriction, namely requiring a hard closing by 1 a.m. at the latest, regardless of the fact that a liquor license allows a restaurant to be open until 2 a.m. The decision by the township would supercede the liquor license requirement.

And Flannery said she was concerned about what could happen if the restaurant changes hands one day and the property is allowed to be open until 2 a.m.

“If this restaurant one day becomes more of a teenager-type place, we could have a completely different scenario [than the current fine dining tenant],” she said. “That’s what we want to protect against. We have to put parameters to protect against what could happen.”

Albano made a motion to amend the application to allow for a 12 a.m. hard close—all lights go out in the parking lot and restaurant—on Sunday through Thursday, with a hard close of 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. The motion also says that the only special event when the restaurant could close at 2 a.m. would be New Year’s Eve.

Aside from a nay vote from Dickey—who preferred to allow for about five special events—the board approved the amendment.