AVALON – Borough Council Jan. 12 approved a settlement agreement with Andrew Buchanan, long-time Avalon business owner of Circle Pizza and other venues.
The settlement will result in the borough striping the street on Dune Drive to add five parking spaces in front of Circle Pizza. There is currently a driveway cutout, creating no legal parking in this section of 21st Street, even though there is no serviceable driveway created by the cutout.
The borough also agreed to a plan for a loading zone location on 21st Street.
The approval by the council was part of a process that also included site approval for alteration to five lots on Dune Drive and around the corner, on 21st Street. Approval of those plans by the Planning Board came in December.
Buchanan is a party to the settlement because he is the one who brought the litigation in Superior Court. He is no longer the owner of the lots in question, having sold them in 2021.
At the council meeting, Assistant Business Administrator James Waldron explained that the Buchanan litigation, which dates to May 2019, led the borough to reorganize its Zoning Office, splitting the functions of permitting and enforcement.
“We saw that certain functions could be done better,” Waldron said, adding, “The new system has been working well for the last two years.”
