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in the new developments bring the township near its total.
Officials and developers have jumpstarted the projects by negotiating tax incentives such as payments in lieu of taxes or PILOT agreements, while officials have leveraged state and federal grants to incorporate green space and pedestrian paths that help link the housing to the train station.
Along the way, a new $32 million, 60,000-square-foot municipal complex, which includes the police station and library, opened on Park Avenue near the train station in 2020. It provides an anchor of sorts and, most critically, additional commuter parking. The train — on NJ Transit’s Gladstone branch — does not offer
a one-seat ride to Manhattan, but commuters can switch at the nearby Summit station.
Some of the new residential projects are helping to fill voids left by the departure of commercial staples along Springfield Avenue, a busy county road. The Terrace at Berkeley Heights consists of 20 apartments and 4,000 square feet of retail at a former movie theater property at 450 Springfield Ave., while Clarus, slated for completion in 2024, replaces the former Kings supermarket at the intersection of Lone Pine Drive.
The latter project, by JMF Properties, is the largest of the developments
in town with 221 units, 32 of which are set aside for affordable housing. A few blocks south on Lone Pine Drive, 170 rental units are under construction at Modera Berkeley Heights by Mill Creek Residential, which advertises the complex as “near Summit.”
Township officials hope the critical mass of apartments will allow Berkeley Heights to attract new
retail and restaurants and brand its downtown on its own, without relying on proximity to its more mature neighbor to the Northeast.
“We’re working to build cohesively, so it’s not a piecemeal downtown,” Viana said.
For years, redevelopment efforts in Berkeley Heights had focused on the Connell Corporate Park off I-78, long home to 1.5 million square feet of office space and, more recently, a LifeTime Athletic facility and an Embassy Suites. Its owner, The Connell Co., initiated plans around
2018 to modernize those buildings while diversifying the campus with more than 325 residential units and 190,000 square feet of entertainment, dining and retail space. Work on that reinvention is scheduled to begin shortly, officials said.
Local officials also learned recently that another iconic office park in town would be vacated with the announcement that Nokia Bell Labs was leaving its longtime headquarters in Murray Hill, which straddles New Providence and Berkeley Heights,
for a new building in downtown New Brunswick. But officials insist that
Berkeley Heights opened a new $32 million, 60,000-square-foot municipal complex on Park Avenue in 2020 that provides an anchor of sorts for the downtown and additional commuter parking for the nearby train station.
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Photo by Aaron Houston for Real Estate NJ