"Our town and our neighbors are too important to allow irresponsible and ill-planned development. A project of this magnitude requires community engagement and consultation, and sober judgement to protect our town, our lakes, and our lives."
Michael Hollick, Mountain Lakes
"While this project is within the geographical boundaries of Mountain Lakes, it would detrimentally affect both Rainbow Lakes (Parsippany) and Denville. I am most concerned about contamination of our communities' lakes from polluted stormwater runoff. The aesthetic and traffic issues are also of regional concern. It's time for the governments of Parsippany and Denville to get involved and take a stand."
Don Jacobs, Denville
"We've heard it said that businesses have long been reluctant to come to Mountain Lakes because our ordinances were known to be hard to work around. That’s not a mistake. There’s a reason for that.
There’s a reason we're the only area of Rt 46 that isn’t home to box stores and 24/7 convenience stores and strip malls and chain restaurants. It’s because someone before us had the wisdom to know that wasn't what Mountain Lakes was about. We didn’t want that for ourselves, just like we didn’t want a bustling Main Street of sorts in the Midvale area or lake memberships for non-residents.
Now we’re ready to throw all that caution away, open up Pandora’s box, and let in that which we can’t undo. We are now officially for sale to the highest, or maybe more accurately, the most powerful, bidder.
This is how bucolic communities get undone. Little by little, one decision at a time, often made by well-intentioned people.
When we think of the Mountain Lakes we inherited from those who went before us and the one we're going to pass down to our kids and their kids, let's think hard about what we want our legacy to be. Is it huge lighted signs, increased traffic, more pollution running into our lakes and wellheads, the pushing out of smaller, independent businesses? Is it our town’s first open-all-night anything, when we all learned from our parents ages ago that nothing good happens after midnight? Or is it something better?
We’re on the verge of some pretty big decisions. It's our duty to work together to get them right."
Jennifer Lynch, Mountain Lakes
"Many of us in Rainbow Lakes have grave concerns about traffic, storm water pollution, and safety that seem to be ignored by both the Mt. Lakes planning board and our own mayor. In contrast to the corporate representatives from Highview Homes, our voices are deemed insignificant because we’re not expert witnesses: We don’t have a traffic study or a environmental impact study to challenge the testimonies from the for-profit experts who represent the corporations whose job it is to develop land and make money. What we do have is just two ways in and out of our neighborhood, a lake where our children swim and play, and a volunteer fire department immediately adjacent to the area of greatest traffic and greatest safety concern. The advantage is clearly with the developers who understand the laws. But legality isn't the issue; it is the responsibility to the greater community.
The Wawa and Hilton corporations want us to see them as the “good neighbor” who balance profit and community concern. It also appears that the Mt. Lakes Planning and Zoning Boards also want the residents of Rainbow Lakes to either put our trust in the Wawa/ Hilton developers to do the right thing (while they use loopholes in NJ DEP policy to claim exemptions) or simply mind our own business because it's not in our town! The land developers don’t live here and they won’t be affected by the negative impacts of their work. Our concerns are supposed to be soothed by comments like “I can’t say that stormwater runoff from fuel pumps won’t indirectly reach Rainbow Lake” and “our traffic study has determined that our plans are the preferred model.”
The majority of Mt. Lakes residents will also likely feel no impact from traffic and pollution, except for those living in the Great Bay neighborhood who apparently are an inconvenient and bothersome voice to the ears of their own planning board! If the bulk of Mt. Lakes residents see any significant tax relief at all from the ratables in this development, it will come at the expense of our quality of life in Rainbow Lakes and Great Bay. This Wawa/ Hilton project is another example of reckless and unchecked Morris County land development whose supporters are only interested in giving the green light to corporate expansion and profit and who put residents' concerns last. Haven’t we had enough?"
Ned Stroh, Parsippany
"I have lived in Mountain Lakes since the 1940s and raised my kids here. This has always been a residential town, and for its historic value it should stay that way. A large gas station and hotel, while on the 'other side of Rt 46', still affects residents, in three different towns. Our health and our safety, old and young alike, should drive these decisions. Not tax revenue that may affect only some in town. Our home values will go down while we just got hit with a tax increase."
Jennifer Ellison, Mountain Lakes