A PNC branch bank planned for a spit of land between Province Line Road and the Mercer Mall — a spot most West Windsor residents would think is in Lawrence Township — got a negative review at the West Windsor Site Plan Review Advisory Board (SPRAB) on November 26.
In 2008 the Zoning Board had approved a use variance for a 2,915-square-foot bank at the site, near the Quakerbridge Road overpass and accessible from the drive leading into Mercer Mall from Province Line Road. That project was never completed. Now PNC hopes to consolidate two existing branches — at Quakerbridge Road and Franklin Corner Road in Lawrence, next to Mercer Mall.
This amended application called for a 4,020-square-foot building with three drive-through lanes and an increase in the number of parking spaces from 17 to 25. At the November 26 meeting the new application initially raised concerns about the traffic it would add to the congested entrance to Mercer Mall. But PNC’s engineers and traffic experts allayed the concerns by citing traffic studies that showed that around 50 cars per hour would access the site, fewer than one per minute, and that the access road would have a left turn only lane that could accommodate two to three cars.
The board was also concerned about the request for signs on each of the four sides of the proposed building, in addition to a monument sign facing Province Line Road at the intersection of the mall access road. A bank spokesperson indicated he could probably get his “retail folks” to give up their request for one of the sides.
But the PNC team was less successful in meeting the objections to the size of the planned structure. West Windsor landscape architect Dan Dobromilsky had outlined a series of concerns to the bank, including how buffering, detention basins, and other elements could be squeezed onto the less than two-acre lot. “You have amped this up from the first application,” Dobromilsky said.
Dobromilsky told the board he was willing to work with the bank to address his concerns but wondered if the board “was comfortable” with the square footage being requested.
“No,” was the response from both chairman Allen Schectel and board member Susan Abbey.
Another SPRAB member, Jessica Kates Galatro, asked if PNC online banking initiatives such as the “virtual wallet” were causing the bank to require smaller physical branches. The PNC representative said that preliminary information suggests that online banking is not yet “affecting visits to the point where we would reduce the size” of a typical branch bank.
The PNC representative replied that it was a different bank that made the application in 2008 and that PNC was working with a “prototype” design for its branches that presented a similar architectural appearance wherever they are located. That prototype design, he said, required the 4,020 square feet. “There’s not a whole lot of variation in what we can do.”
