Page 26 - RE-NJ

24 JANUARY 2024
Berkeley Heights Mayor Angie Devanney (left) and David Checchio, general counsel for Elite Properties, visited the firm’s new 53-unit Berkeley Crossing II apartment building on Springfield Avenue. The property is part of a surge of new investment that is bringing hundreds of new homes to the municipality’s downtown.
CENTRAL FOCUS
Multifamily projects, public investments setting the stage for new-look downtown in Berkeley Heights
Aspate of public and private investment is transforming the area around the train station in Berkeley Heights and allowing this small township on the western edge of Union County to reimagine a walkable and commuter-friendly downtown.
More than new 450 apartments have opened recently or are planned within a few blocks of the station on Sherman Avenue, which runs parallel to the main commercial corridor of Springfield Avenue. Nearly 200 units for renters age 55 and older have opened just outside the downtown near the community pool and a new YMCA on Locust Avenue, while Toll Bros. is completing 67 luxury for- sale townhomes and condominiums known as Carriages at Berkeley.
In all, the projects will add more than 725 new households to the core of Berkeley Heights, in a surge of new investment that looks beyond the high-profile redevelopment underway at the former Connell Corporate Park, the 185-acre campus just south of Interstate 78.
“There hasn’t been a lot of development or change in Berkeley Heights in probably a generation,
so this is a big change,” Mayor
Angie Devanney said. The township, consisting of mostly single-family homes, has about 13,000 residents. The building boom will add nearly 1,000 housing units and substantially change the downtown, where officials also are courting new retailers and sprucing up public spaces.
Much of the construction was spurred
by the court-mandated obligation
for affordable housing. However, those set-asides — about 15 percent of each project — are contained within developments that will bring hundreds of market-rate homes, with one-bedroom rentals starting at about $2,500 a month and townhouses for sale starting at $1.14 million.
Township Administrator Liza Viana said efforts were
made to manage
the growth as
“It was not necessarily our choice to build all these residential units, but what we can do is exert the most control with developers,” Viana said. “We’re maintaining a balance of fulfilling our obligation for housing but doing what’s best for Berkeley Heights.”
The state Supreme Court’s so-called Mount Laurel decision nearly 50 years ago constitutionally required more affluent municipalities to provide
a “realistic opportunity” for a fair share of low- and moderate-income housing. In Berkeley Heights and most towns statewide, those efforts stalled amid years of legal and political wrangling.
Berkeley Heights’ obligation was negotiated to 389 affordable units after builders sued. The set-asides
By Patricia Alex
best as possible and use parks, walkways and other public investments
to make a “cohesive” and walkable downtown.
Liza Viana
Photo by Aaron Houston for Real Estate NJ