At the Thursday, January 5, meeting of the West Windsor Zoning Board, a family that decided to stay in town after their kids left for college will seek approval to construct a new home at 248 North Post Road, replacing the existing house on the property.
Dr. Puthenmadam Radhakrishnan, a pediatrician with an office at 666 Plainsboro Road, has lived in West Windsor with his wife and two sons since 1999. The boys are at college, with the younger son Arvind, a 2010 High School South graduate, now at Drexel University. The empty nesters decided to sell their original home and buy a smaller, bi-level home. But they knew going in that the home they purchased would need significant work if not a complete overhaul. And it came with a zoning issue as rural-residential conservation (RR/C).
Originally Radhakrishnan was seeking a variance for a horseshoe-shaped driveway leading to a three-car garage, and a four-bedroom home with a large octagonal foyer. Members of the zoning board raised questions at the December 1 hearing and expressed concerns over the design of the home and that it would be out of place in the immediate neighborhood. Radhakrishnan’s architect, Thomas Baio of Metuchen, presented pictures of larger homes in the Princeton Junction area as evidence of the new design’s compatability. However the board noted that many of those newly built homes are situated within developments and not along a main street like North Post Road.
Impervious coverage became a chief concern for the zoning board of appeals as the proposed home would have exceeded the maximum percentage. J. Daniel Sheehey, owner of West Windsor Chiropractic at 244 North Post Road, attended the hearing to object to his new neighbor’s proposed plans.
“Water is my problem,” Sheehey said. He spoke about stormwater runoff onto his property during rain events such as last August’s drenching, even ahead of Hurricane Irene, and his need to cope with flooding by using two sub-pumps on his property. Sheehey says that a larger home adjacent to his location will only cause more runoff.
Radhakrishanan’s team will present evidence that despite building a larger home at 248 North Post, improvements would be on the way for Sheehey’s flooding situation. The horseshoe driveway idea has been scrapped in favor of a conventional one-way lane but plans for the three-car garage remains. In a telephone interview this week project manager Josh Thompson of Thomas Baio Architects said that the amount of impervious surface area would be reduced from 21 percent of existing coverage to 16 percent.
According to Thompson, original plans for an upstairs loft were also thrown out, as were corridors and a design for a “grand, two-story foyer.” The house will now be a three-bedroom with smaller bathrooms than initially planned — roughly 3,500 square feet scaled back to less than 2,500 square feet.
