Montville residents plan to fight 4-story nursing site

Owners plan to raze ruined Hilltop Care to build new facility- When Doreen Helmke moved into her Sylvan Drive home nearly two years ago, she had no qualms about living in the shadow of the shuttered Hilltop Care Center in the upscale Pine Brook neighborhood.  Like her neighbors, Helmke, 42, said she was told the site of the vacant, multi-story nursing home off Hook Mountain Road was zoned for single-family dwellings.

That knowledge suited the young mother, as it did for other families who had moved to the growing Windsor Sylvan section of Pine Brook after Hilltop closed its doors in the mid '90's.  But now, Helmke and her fellow residents are fighting a proposal to build a new, four-story nursing home with 120 beds and a 60-unit residential health care facility at the site.  "I think that's a big concern, that a neighborhood was established while (the nursing home) was non-operational,"Helmke said. "(This plan) will change the neighborhood."

The 6.3 acre-tract houses the skeleton of the 114-bed Hilltop Care Center, which was destroyed by arson in August 2006 after standing abandoned for a decade. The center was built in 1925.  Hook Mountain Road Associates, which purchased the property from Hilltop for $1 million one year before the fire, plans to raze the structure and rebuild.  The proposal calls for a 75,538-square-foot facility in a four-story building, but the owner is seeking a variance to allow the facility in the residential district, as well as height and building coverage variances that exceed the maximums allowed by township law.  See Daily Record.