An aerial view of the former Pfister Chemical site off Route 46 in Ridgefield.
By Joshua Burd
Local officials have approved plans to develop an industrial building at the site of a former chemical factory in Ridgefield, paving the way for a would-be buyer to tap into the booming warehouse and distribution market near the New Jersey Turnpike.
At a meeting earlier this week, the Ridgefield planning board approved an application to allow a 254,000-square-foot industrial building on the Pfister Chemical site off Route 46, according to the team marketing the project. The vote allows the property’s longtime owner, the Bedelius family, to move forward with selling the nearly 19-acre property to a developer.
The marketing and predevelopment team has touted it as the largest piece of developable land in Bergen County. The tract has been on the market since late last summer, as its owner was nearing completion of extensive environmental remediation.
William Procida, whose firm financed the remediation and other aspects of the predevelopment process, said the Bedelius family received several offers from developers who expressed interest in the property and urged the sellers to seek a larger footprint.
“The team of Boswell Engineering, Matrix Environmental Engineering, J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, Inc., Kaufman Semeraro & Leibman, LLP, and Environetics designers did a fantastic job preparing the plans for the site, and clearly the Ridgefield Planning Board embraced this opportunity to revive one of its most prized commercial properties,” said Procida, founder of Procida Funding in Englewood Cliffs. “We are gratified to see this project move forward and extend congratulations to the team.”
“(Now) that it provides greater density and is shovel-ready, we expect it will generate even more attention than ever.”
Located just off Route 46 on the eastern shore of Overpeck Creek, the Pfister site is less than seven miles from the Turnpike and two miles from the George Washington Bridge. The property was home to the Pfister Chemical factory from the 1930s through the 1990s.
A team from Newmark Knight Frank is now marketing the property. The owners were exploring several potential uses for the site, but saw the largest response from the industrial sector.
