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The concerns, he said, would be taken to the planning board by the township committee’s two representatives that sit on it, Raftery and Committeeman Ron Heston.

“It is upsetting,” Hall retorted. “We worked really hard, and our two acres of a slice of heaven is being overrun by commercial properties. It is very upsetting.”

As residents continued to sound off on the plan for nearly an hour-and-a-half, maintaining “trucks are not going to want to go onto Route 206” from Allentown Road, the road is “a hazard and you are adding to it,” the “road is already so tight,” pedestrians of the road “have to climb on people’s properties” as it is now to avoid being hit, the “plan is not improving anything, but only making more of a burden to people,” and “what you are dumping on our road is something that it can’t take,” Mikulski, on a number of occasions reiterated “this is not even close to a final design” and what is being put out is merely a “concept.”

“Do you know how absurd that is?” asked one woman of the Southampton committee voting to approve something without having the final plan in front of it for review. “We are all affected, and if you pass it, it could then be totally different.”

Mikulski again replied a final plan would go to the planning board “at some point in the future,” and “since we have a redevelopment plan, this modifies the plan to have this road come off Route 70 and come out to Allentown Road,” but acknowledged that the no right turn and truck traffic modifications being added to the ordinance are subject to state approval.

“How can you approve something when you don’t have a plan?” the woman asked, to which Mikulski contended the proposed access road is again the demand of the state.

“I don’t want to hear about New Jersey!” the woman quipped. “I want to hear about Southampton! How can you approve something when you don’t know what is going on?”

Mikulski ultimately replied, in part, that the Southampton committee “doesn’t vote on Wawa, Dunkin Donuts or Dollar General,” but rather such approvals are given by the planning board. However, he would soon be reminded by LeisureTowne resident and former trustee of the retirement community, Thomas Haluszczak, an attorney, that the township committee is the public body that set the redevelopment plan in motion.

“Can we amend the redevelopment plan?” asked Haluszczak twice of Mikulski, also an attorney, to which the mayor seemingly grudgingly acknowledged, “Any decision can be revisited if a township committeeperson seconds a motion, and it gets three votes.”

“So, we are not bound, or shackled to a redevelopment plan if don’t want it,” asserted Haluszczak in response, pointing out there might be a “backdoor solution” to the matter, to which the mayor replied, “that is a whole different discussion.”

LeisureTowne political activist Evelyn “Evie” Doherty also weighed in on the situation, declaring, “personally I think this is very unfair to the people,” adding “we do not need three gas stations in such a short distance.”

She then proposed what she maintained is a “good name for the road,” or “No Trespassing Here,” which the mayor notably used on a couple of occasions to refer to it throughout the rest of the proceedings.

Cutts, meanwhile, put a question to the township committee: “What happened to getting rid of the circle?”

“How would that change this whole project, if they said, ‘Let’s get rid of the circle, now?’” he asked in a second question.

After Mikulski replied that he has “no idea,” Cutts retorted, “Well, that is something that has to be found out, because if the state takes out the circle after this thing (the access road) is built, how is that going to change all the roads?”

“Entrances to and from that Wawa then may change, and you may not need access onto Allentown Road,” Cutts said.

Mikulski replied that he “doesn’t think the state is planning to, or is ready to remove the circle yet,” and that the “State of New Jersey is going to make those engineering decisions based upon whatever exists at the time they make those decisions.”

Heston then recounted an encounter he had with a New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) official around 1964, who he claimed had a “set of blueprints on the hood of his car” that showed Route 206 “at ground level,” while Route 70 “was going to be an overpass” at the circle. The plan, according to Heston, was going to remove the circle and replace it with “cloverleaves.”

Years later, Heston recounted, when he was appointed to the Route 206 Steering Committee, he maintained a state engineer told him “‘the trouble with the Red Lion Circle is it is too big’” and one needs to “make it small so you can just barely turn your wheel on the circle.”

“I had a bird at that meeting!” Heston quipped. “I said, ‘Has anybody ever been to Medford (where a small circle once existed at the intersection of County Route 541 and Route 70)?’ That was a small circle and it was ten times worse than this one.”

The Southampton committeeman maintained the state decided against taking out the Red Lion Circle because putting in the necessary underpass and overpass would “take up too much ground,” potentially as much as 4 acres.

“There are a lot of issues involved with the circle and what they can do about it,” Heston declared.

Prior to Heston taking a look back, however, Mikulski said he would presume that if the Red Lion Circle is removed one day, it would be replaced by a traffic light.

Once the public hearing was closed, Young declared, “I feel this is not our problem!”

“I feel the developer should work it out with the state,” Young asserted. “We should not get involved in this. Because if you look at Allentown Road and Route 206, you can’t get out there now. It is just going to be a nightmare.

If the township committee approves this here, it goes to the planning board, and if the planning board rejects it – the road – then the developer’s attorney is going to sue township for approval. Then their attorney will say the township committee gave approval and the judge is going to say, ‘the township committee approved it.’”

Mikulski and Young then got into another heated exchange with the mayor stating, “the planning board absolutely has autonomy on approving the project” and “it is their job to ask specific questions when a plan is presented,” pointing out that all but one of the board’s appointees were also appointed/ reappointed by Young.

“And if we don’t have a planning board that we trust, we should abolish the planning board altogether!” Mikulski declared.

The exchange turned particularly lively when Young retorted, “All the ratables in the world – it is not worth it to inconvenience the residents,” to which the current mayor hit back, “Any project we have done in this township has inconvenienced a resident!”

“I am talking about this one,” clarified Young, to which Mikulski responded, “That is not what you said.”

The latest amendment to the redevelopment plan passed on second reading, 4-1, with Young casting the lone opposing vote.

Just before the roll call vote, Heston, who offered that he “came to this meeting very open minded,” stated that he believed “if the number of people who are in the room wrote letters to the NJDOT, and stated their case that this (adding an access road) is the wrong decision to make, it will carry more weight than this committee does.” An outstanding question that needs to be answered, Heston noted, is whether the state will allow a second current entrance to the diner to remain open, and if that would be actually a “better option.”

Also to come out of the meeting, based on attendees concerns, is a “commitment” from the current mayor to investigate whether speed bumps would be feasible (per resident requests) on Allentown and Old Red Lion roads, as well as lowering the speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph, the latter something Heston “suggested” be done. Heston also recommended that the governing body look into making Allentown Road a one-way street.

Mikulski opened the April 18 meeting by stating “when we are looking at things like the Dollar General store, or the Dunkin Donuts going in, or what we call ratables, we are doing so because we are trying to keep property taxes low,” and that the township is trying offset heavy expenses such as a recent purchase of a fire engine and two more that are needed, as well as recent losses of houses (that had generated revenue for the town) due to a state flooding buy-out (Blue Acres) program.

“I assure you everybody on this township committee enjoys our rural community,” Mikulski declared. “Nobody is trying to turn this into anything else. But there has been a plan in place for decades trying to find ‘smart development.’ And smart development, meaning places that impact the fewest people possible. And I know everyone in this room is impacted, or you wouldn’t be here. …”

Paul Tsiknakis, owner of the Red Lion Diner, who previously told this newspaper that the redevelopment plan would make better use of the ‘oversized,’ 20-Acre restaurant parcel, creating a ‘centerpiece’ of Southampton, and allow for a “new, stateof-the-art restaurant to be built,” and that the redevelopment plan presents “basically the only opportunity we had where we were able to continue the greatness of the Red Lion Diner,” did not return a message seeking comment on this story as of press time. Tsiknakis had made a point previously that the new center would provide for added convenience to township residents.