By Elaine Van Develde

Before long, Fair Haven’s Church Street will no longer be true to its namesake.

The borough’s Planning Board unanimously approved a three-home subdivision — of one 3,000- and two 2,000-square-feet, roof-porched homes with garages and decks — on the .54-acre parcel of land at the corner of River Road and Church Street, which long into the borough’s history has housed the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion.

The subdivision takes up “890-square-feet less than what (currently) exists,” said Elizabeth Waterbury, the planner who testified for the applicant, Rumson-based Kolarsick Builders Inc., at Wednesday night’s Planning Board meeting. “We’re staying within FAR (floor-area ratio) we’re staying within maximum habitable (space) … looking to create a conforming subdivision.”

Board members called the coming subdivision an aesthetic and traffic-stabilizing boon to the area, citing that, among other things, another house of worship would have likely brought an onslaught of parking on Church Street.

While no one in the audience spoke against the development, several present and former residents of the area, including Church Street itself, told Rumson-Fair Haven Retrospect that they hated to see the street’s namesake church go. Some said they felt the area was overrun with McMansions.

But the board deemed the use offered the best fit for the area, replete with the new subdivision houses of similar character to those in the area, and backed by what members called thorough testimony.

The church, last renovated as a “do-it-yourself project by a very adventurous (group of) builder(s)” in the late 1960s, said applicant attorney Brooks Von Arx, has been disbanded and shuttered for roughly six years.

The location, however, has housed a church since  the late 1800s — thus the apt name of its intersecting street.

What Von Arx said was determined to be a church structure in disrepair, with no historic or architectural integrity to warrant preservation, will now be razed, as will a former nursery school, sanctuary and two-story rectory dwelling that sit on the site.

The board approval of the zoning-compliant application came after hearing the testimony by Waterbury and that of Episcopal Diocese of NJ CFO Phyllis Jones.

Jones, who said she has worked for the diocese for about five years, told the board that the subdivision project contract offered by Kolarsick was the only viable one since the property was originally put on the market in October of 2010.

“There was one offer for another house of worship that didn’t work” and never made it to the board, because it needed too many variances, Jones said.

Between 2011 and 2014, “the property was shown 43 times for everything from a convenience store to a laundromat,” including the the house of worship, she added.

The myriad unviable offers led to the contract with Kolarsick, which was contingent upon the approval of the project by the board.

Only one member of the audience questioned Jones, asking her to clear up the specifics of the transfer of the church’s memorial garden in April of 2010, which held the cremated remains of 45 parishioners, mostly locals.

Jones explained that “a couple of the remains had been interred in small boxes or urns in the dirt (of the garden), but by and large mostly just the ashes themselves go into the dirt,” Jones said. “The entire area was mapped out for (where) the memorial garden (was); and we went down three feet took all that soil and reinterred it consecrated ground by the Stone Church (All Saints’ Memorial Church) in Navesink. There is plaque there.”