Controversy Swirls over Site of Proposed Mosque

Mountaintop Road entrance to Redwood Inn,  left of the sign.

Monday evening, February 28, at 7 PM, Bridgewater Township’s Planning Board will meet in the Performing Arts Auditorium of the Somerset County Vocational & Technical School on 14 Vogt Drive, in Bridgewater.

Auto on Mountaintop Road passes by Redwood Inn entrance.

Heavy attendance is expected, because this meeting was rescheduled from a prior one at the Bridgewater Municipal Complex, due to an over-capacity audience which was so large, that the meeting never got off the ground. 

Two related items appear On Monday’s Planning Board agenda: 

1) An application for land development on the site of the no-longer-operating Redwood Inn on Mountaintop Road, submitted by the Chughtai Foundation for the construction of a mosque.

Traffic lights at 202-206/Brown Road control all traffic near Hindu Temple

2) The referral of an ordinance proposed by the Bridgewater Township Council to the Municipal Code “so as to amend the principal site access to certain public streets for country clubs, open air clubs, houses of worship and schools, and to amend off-street parking requirements for particular uses.”  This amendment is not expected to include Mountaintop Road as one of those streets.

Wide entry/egress, with traffic control to Sri Venkateswara Temple

In this post are photos of the road characteristics near the Redwood Inn on Mountaintop Road, as well as those of the Hindu Temple off Route 202-206, which was the last big house of worship built in Bridgewater.

The images show the differences in the current entry and egress capacity and flow of the two sites.  They also give you an idea of the nature of the roads immediately feeding into those two locations.

I have included these images, because challenges voiced by residents to the construction of a mosque on Mountaintop Road have all been related to their claims that this road, because of its nature and location, cannot handle any permanent, significantly increased volume of traffic. 

Thanks for reading.

(Click on any photo for an enhanced view.)