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8 SEPTEMBER 2024
HARTZ SCRAPS PLAN FOR LOGISTICS HUB, OPEN SPACE AT HERCULES SITE
commercial buildings that are 45 feet high but not visible from surrounding roads due to the site’s topography, the firm said in 2022. The design would allow all vehicles to access the property via Howard Boulevard, but trucks would only be able to exit by right turns onto the northbound lanes toward Interstate 80, aiming
to minimize the impact on local roadways.
The company added that the plan
complies with guidelines recently published by the State Planning Commission for warehouse development. It would also bring new life to a site where dynamite and other explosives were manufactured as far back as the 1870s, leaving decades of contamination before Hercules closed the site in 1996 and spent several years demolishing more than 325 buildings and more than 1 million square feet of foundations.
Hartz Mountain Industries has dropped its plan to build a 2.5 million-square-foot industrial park in Roxbury — one that also called for hundreds of acres of open space — following considerable pushback from a contingent of local officials, residents and others.
A firm executive confirmed that it was not moving forward with the redevelopment of the long-dormant, former site of the Hercules Inc. munitions plant along Interstate 80. Additional details about the decision were not immediately clear, as reported by TAPintoRoxbury, but the move came after more than a year of hearings and a series of contentious exchanges between the project team and the town’s representatives.
Hartz, which is based in Secaucus, had proposed five buildings that would occupy only a quarter of the 820-acre development area. Its pitch for the property also called for some 500 acres to be preserved as parks, athletic fields and undeveloped land, while another 13 acres would be
used to satisfy the town’s affordable housing obligations.
The company was under contract to purchase the land pending approvals, but Vice President of Land Use and Development Jay Rhatican said it had terminated that agreement.
“It did surprise us,” Roxbury Councilman Robert DeFillippo, who is also a planning board member, told the Daily Record in late July. “It seemed pretty abrupt and sudden.”
Other township officials had a
similar reaction, the report said, although observers in recent months had noted what seemed to be an impasse and sustained frustration over the project. Steve Mlenak of Greenbaum Rowe Smith & Davis LLP, a land use attorney for Hartz, told
the Daily Record that the developer had concerns about whether it was receiving due process from the planning board, one of several red flags recently that the project was in jeopardy.
Hartz’s plan called for five speculative
Hartz Mountain Industries’ proposal for the former Hercules Inc. munitions plant property in Roxbury included a five-building, 2.5 million-square-foot industrial campus and some 500 acres of open space.
Courtesy: Hartz Mountain