Nursing Home Sues to Overturn Competitor's Zoning Approval

The owner of a township nursing home has filed a civil suit that argues the Zoning Board of Adjustment wrongly approved a use variance needed to construct a new nursing home a half-mile away.

Regency Gardens Nursing Home filed the complaint Nov. 29, 2012, against the Wayne Zoning Board of Adjustment and Health Resources of NJ LLC in November, objecting to the board's Oct. 2, 2012, memorialization of a resolution granting relief for Health Resources' application to build a 124-bed nursing home at 438 Pompton Road.

The lot is located at the corner of Pompton Road and Hamburg Turnpike next to William Paterson University.

The three-story facility will be located a half-mile from the Regency Gardens Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a 120-bed facility, on Hamburg Turnpike directly behind where a new Quick Check will be constructed. A parking deck will be constructed underneath the facility.

A. Michael Rubin, the attorney representing Regency Gardens, said in the complaint that the board abused its authority by granting a use variance. The Health Resources facility would be placed in a business zone, necessitating zoning relief. The township’s zoning ordinance and master plan only permit a nursing home to be built in a highway commercial zone, Rubin stated in the complaint.

"The action taken was in all regards arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable and otherwise wrongful," the suit states.

Rubin states in the complaint that the board failed to properly analyze and apply a three-part test to judge whether the application was "inherently beneficial" to the community:

A zoning board must: (1) identify the proposed use and delineate its function; (2) establish how the proposed use is integrated into the core function of the inherently beneficial use, and (3) establish why the specific location of the pro­ posed use is necessary to advance the purpose of the inherently beneficial use. 

However, the board concluded that the facility would be “inherently beneficial” to the township, furthers the goals of the master plan, and maintains “the viability of the community tax base.” 

Regency Gardens wants the board’s decision reversed and the costs of the suit paid.

Patrick Anderson, the board’s attorney, would not comment on the pending litigation.