Sayreville Planning Board continues Masjid Sadar review after traffic, parking and safety concerns; applicant to seek parking variance

Sayreville94The Borough of Sayreville Planning Board continued its hearing on the Masjid Sadar Community Center preliminary and final major site plan for 2129216 Ernston Road on April 16, 2025, after hearing testimony on revised occupancy, parking and traffic controls and receiving extensive public comment about safety and neighborhood impacts.

The applicant told the board it reduced the planned worship occupancy and eliminated a mechanical stacked-parking system while offering an operations manual and off-site parking. Lauren Sachs, attorney for the applicant, said the plan now sets a combined occupancy of 321 worshipers and "we reduced it by approximately 30%, and now we have an occupancy of 321," with marked prayer mats and aisles to fix how people will be arranged inside the prayer halls. Sachs also said the applicant removed the stacked parking lifts and would provide 107 on-site spaces required under the borough99s parking calculation for the prayer mats.

The reduction in capacity and other conditions were offered as mitigation for what board professionals and residents called a tight site and a high-risk traffic location. Traffic engineer William Stimmel (testifying for the applicant) described multiple traffic-counts and driveway analyses and said those analyses showed driveway operations at the proposed site would be "level of service D or better" during the busiest periods, and that with police directing traffic Fridays the driveway LOS would improve further. Stimmel also testified that counts at the congregation's current location at Madison Park Volunteer Fire Company showed roughly 2639270 persons at both Friday services combined on the dates measured.

Why it matters: the project replaces a smaller, existing house of worship with a…