Politics & Government

Christian Health Care Center Expansion Needs Additional 'OK'

199-unit senior living facility on the township's border has already been approved in Wyckoff. However, it needs to be OK'd by a Hawthorne board before it can be built.

A controversial plan to expand the Christian Healthcare Center that has already been approved by the Wyckoff Zoning Board must seek a similar type of approval in Hawthorne.

According to a recent hearing notice, the Christian Healthcare Center’s planned expansion, called the “Vista” project, is split between the two towns. The senior living facility first proposed an expansion project in 2010 that required zoning variances and site plan approval. It has received those approvals in Wyckoff, where the bulk of the project lies, but not yet from Hawthorne.

According to township officials, the CHCC is proposing an additional senior living facility of 199 units – 148 of which are in Wyckoff. The rest are in Hawthorne. Of the Center’s 79 acres, about 16 are in Hawthorne.

Find out what's happening in Wyckoffwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Hawthorne Board of Adjustment is set to start its hearing on the proposed project during a meeting at 7:30 p.m. Monday night.

Representatives of a group of local residents that actively opposed the development’s approval in Wyckoff, said they plan to do the same in Hawthorne.

Find out what's happening in Wyckoffwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“I know I’m going to be there,” Stanley Goodman, who spearheaded the SAVE Wyckoff movement in the township, said.

“I hope others can be, too. SAVE the Woods [an activist group in Hawthorne], will take the lead, but we will be there.”

Goodman said representatives of his group attended the extended site plan approval hearings in Wyckoff that helped refine specific elements of the proposal.

“We all realize a benefit to continuing care retirement communities,” he said. “But there were issues with this one. [By attending the hearings in Wyckoff], we got the size reduced by about a third, cleared up the issues with the impact on the intersection at Sicomac and Cedar Hill. We feel quite successful.”

CHCC Attorney Jerome Vogel did not return a call for comment Friday on the upcoming hearing in Hawthorne.


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