OCEAN — Thursday night the Ocean Township Council voted 5-0 to close a deal to purchase a 3-acre stretch of property on Logan Road that a Lakewood developer wanted to use to open an Orthodox yeshiva and dormitory, according to a report.

“This wasn’t about religion,” Mayor Christopher Siciliano is quoted as saying in the report. “It was about preventing the overuse of a property in a residential neighborhood.”

The vote Thursday night came after a January council vote that authorized issuing $ 2 million in bonds to finance the purchase, according to the report.

According to the report, Siciliano said the average Ocean taxpayer would have to pay about $30 a year to repay the bonds.

Yeshiva Gedolah Na’os Yaakov wanted to renovate a building that once housed a Jewish day school at 1515 Logan Road into an academy with dormitories for 96 men between the ages 18 and 22, the Press reported last summer.

More:Ocean Township mayor: Should we buy controversial yeshiva building?

The township is considering leasing a 1958 school building that is currently on the site to the school district, or selling the property for development of single family homes, as the video above notes. The township is also considering developing a handicap-accessible park.

For more, read the report here on NJ.com.