Recent NJ Opinion Favors Run-Down Health Care Facility

A New Jersey Superior Court judge recently authored an opinion favoring the continued operation of a run-down health care facility, which serves as a great primer on the law surrounding zoning challenges and State preemption of local zoning ordinances. In Mazel, LLC, et al., v. Township of Toms River, Dover Woods Healthcare Center, et al¹, The plaintiffs, owners of a Ramada Inn in Toms River, New Jersey, filed a complaint in lieu of prerogative writs asserting that the conditional use giving rise to the original zoning approval of a neighboring facility known as Dover Woods no longer existed, that the facility operated as a non-permitted use within the zone, and that the owners must be restrained from continuing its current use until they obtained the necessary approval as a permitted use. The plaintiffs also sought to compel the defendant Township to require Dover Woods to comply with all, applicable Township land use ordinances and the terms and conditions of the original Planning Board approving resolution, issued in 1983.

The facts are essentially as follows: Dover Woods is located in the Rural Highway Business (RHB) zone. Dover Woods, initially known as the Dover Retirement Hotel, was built approximately thirty years ago and was designed with hotel specifications. Hotels were permitted in the RHB zone as a conditional use in 1983 when the Planning Board approved the development as a hotel and a state-licensed, residential health care facility (RHCF). Dover Woods continues to be licensed by New Jersey and is subject to the regulations of the Department of Community Affairs.

The 1983 Planning Board resolution recited the facts that: the developer proposed to construct a 136 unit hotel containing 240 beds on approximately six acres; the hotel was to provide dining and kitchen facilities not open to the general public, with additional indoor and outdoor recreational facilities and transportation amenities; and, the typical hotel guests were anticipated to be elderly, non-working, living on a fixed income, spouseless and, in many instances, with no family or with few visitors. The facility was not constructed under hospital or nursing home specifications, but rather was built to hotel specifications, although licensed by New Jersey at all times since its construction as an RHCF.

In 1991, the Township amended its zoning ordinance to expand the permitted uses in the RHB zone to include both "medical services facilities" and "hotels." As...