Ewing Town Center’s Witherspoon neighborhood offers a mix of two-bedroom apartments and townhomes, with detached garages and high-end design. — Courtesy: Ewing Town Center
By Joshua Burd
A developer has unveiled the first piece of a project to bring more than 1,000 apartments and commercial space to the former site of a General Motors plant in Mercer County.
The 80-acre project, known was Ewing Town Center, is taking shape along Parkway Avenue in Ewing with the opening of roughly 164 luxury apartments and townhome rentals. The complex is the first of five components to be built by affiliates of Atlantic Realty Development Corp., the Woodbridge-based firm that is overseeing the plan.
“Nothing like this has ever been built in Ewing,” said Robert Gelbard, a managing partner of the Ewing Town Center project. “We are very excited to create this new and invigorating address.”
Some 15 years in the making, the redevelopment will feature a combination of Main Street-style retail space along Parkway Avenue and a mix of restaurants and commercial space lining the town center’s entrance. All told, the site will feature more than 90,000 square feet of retail space and more than 14,000 square feet of office space across four mixed-use buildings.
The spaces will serve more than 1,000 rental units across the residential portion, which also will feature a 10,000-square-foot clubhouse, as well as visitors from around the region, according to a news release. Other plans include bike and walking paths that fan out from a center green to interconnect the property’s various sections.
The Ewing Town Center development team also touted the site’s proximity to the Trenton-Mercer Airport, mass transit options and major highways. According to Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann and Planner Chuck Latini, the municipality is already feeling the ripple effects of the development — as other smaller improvement projects are now being planned for the surrounding area.
The site dates back to 1938 as the former home of General Motors’ Inland Fisher Guide Plant, which produced parts for some of the most popular cars of the day, the news release said. Ewing’s role as a local employer evolved in World War II when the plant was converted to produce aircraft in the support of the U.S. Navy.
After the war, the plant returned to its roots as an automobile manufacturer.
