The Atlantic Builders Convention will take place March 19 to 21 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City.
By Joshua Burd
The Atlantic Builders Convention will kick off this week at a new venue for the first time in five years, bringing a crowd of thousands to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City.
That comes with new excitement, but organizers say the buzz is about more than just a change of scenery. They also point to growing membership, growing engagement and a more diverse slate of exhibitors, along with signs of progress on key public policy initiatives to streamline new construction and improve housing affordability in New Jersey.
“We’re still building out of the pandemic, but there’s noticeably even more energy and excitement,” said Jeff Kolakowski, CEO of the New Jersey Builders Association, the convention’s host. The organization is also expecting hundreds of exhibitors, he said, noting that the convention floor is sold out for the first time in more than five years and features many of the manufacturers and suppliers of building products that attendees had requested.
The three-day event begins Tuesday and comes as developers of both for-sale and rental properties — and their customers — continue to grapple with high housing costs. As noted by NJBA Chair Deb Tantleff, the founding principal of TANTUM Real Estate, that stems from not only a lack of inventory but the financial climate after a period in which the Federal Reserve raised interest rates 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023.
That lending environment has created “an interesting synergy and cycle that’s happening more so now between rental and for-sale than I think we used to experience,” Tantleff said.
“Both asset classes in the market are focused on the opportunities for redevelopment for building new housing,” she said. “Both the for-sale and rental ends of the market are looking forward to some streamlined affordable housing policy and the next round of obligations and the opportunity that opens up for new projects.
“But I think the difference this time is the impact of interest rates on our market and the ability for apartment developers to secure construction loans and put shovels in the ground,” she added.
“On the for-sale side, it’s the same financing ability and the impacts on the end user and on mortgage financing.”
It has only added to supply shortages in both single-family and multifamily product types, with would-be sellers opting to stay in place and would-be buyers needing to rent due to a lack of options, she said. That means the work of NJBA and its members is as important as ever in New Jersey, creating tailwinds for the industry despite the current hurdles.
It’s contributing to what Kolakowski and Tantleff say is not just an uptick in membership, but in engagement across the association and its local chapters. And the trend goes in hand in hand with interest in the public policy issues that are front and center for NJBA, including a new law that creates a state-level professional board to license and regulate contractors involved in home improvement and home elevation.
Importantly, the measure also creates new continuing education requirements for contractors, creating a greater opportunity for NJBA to engage with those in the home renovation business.
“We think it’s going to be a continually growing segment of the residential industry here in New Jersey, not only because of the high interest rates that are keeping people in their existing houses, but also because we’re running out of developable land here and we’re really constrained on where we’re going to build,” Kolakowski said.
“I think the elephant in the room that we fail to talk about is where we’re going to accommodate our future growth,” he added. “We know we have an extreme undersupply of housing units that we have to address, we know we have climate change and other issues that are going to further constrain the land here in New Jersey and we have to get really smart about where we develop and what we develop on the limited amount of land here.”
State officials have contemplated at least some of those questions in a closely watched bill that would revamp how New Jersey calculates each town’s affordable housing obligations. Passed by the Assembly last month, the measure is now slated for a full vote in the Senate this week and could land on Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk, aiming to streamline a process that has long been a source of controversy and uncertainty among builders and local governments.
Aside from abolishing the defunct Council on Affordable Housing, the bill would provide a new framework to give local governments greater flexibility and input.
Changes include requiring the state Department of Community Affairs to complete those calculations under a newly established statutory formula and publish them by Dec. 1, 2024, while giving municipalities a chance to offer their own plan as long as it adheres to the methodology established by the bill. The law would require a town to adopt its obligation by a binding resolution on or before Jan. 31, 2025, in order to shield itself from so-called builder’s remedy lawsuits that developers have long used to secure approvals for projects that included affordable housing.
To Tantleff, the simple idea of having “a process to be followed,” a timeline and a means of accountability is a major step forward.
“That’s the most important piece of this legislation — that they are streamlining a system and a process in the interest of eliminating time, cost and lawsuits,” she said. “The goal is that this bill will allow us to spend time building instead of litigating.”
Also important is the bill’s focus on redevelopment as a means of creating low- and moderate-income housing, rather than asking municipalities to continue searching for vacant land. That is “a slight yet incredibly important pivot and nuance in the way that these policies and these procedures need to be looked at,” Tantleff said, one that aligns with state planning goals.
It all figures to loom large at this week’s Atlantic Builders Convention, or ABC, which caters to all professionals involved in residential construction, from ground-up single- and multifamily builders to the growing segment of home improvement contractors. NJBA has made a point this year to bring more building products manufacturers and suppliers to the convention floor, Kolakowski said, responding to feedback from last year’s attendees.
The floor will also have its typical range of exhibitors, from local vendors to national distributors and manufacturers. Another notable addition will be what Tantleff described as a “healthy number” of students from both Ocean County Vocational Technical School and the Rutgers Center for Real Estate, where she serves as an executive committee member.
“We heard from our attendees last year they were ready to get out again after the pandemic and we have heard from other shows about better-than-expected attendance this year,” Kolakowski said. “Couple that with a new venue and added excitement that our convention may be starting on the eve of the affordable housing package going to the governor’s desk, it’s going to be a big year of us.”
He also pointed to “an absolutely packed schedule “to ensure there is something for everyone at ABC.” That includes the annual Sales and Marketing Awards on Tuesday night, the opening of the show floor on Wednesday and a series of panels and programs that run through Thursday, culminating in an economic forecast kicked off by IKEA Chief Operating Officer Rob Olson and a presentation by Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, the National Association of Home Builders’ assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis.
The forecast will follow a champagne brunch and panel discussion titled “Leadership, Confidence and the Opportunities for Women in Building,” which will be hosted by NJBA’s Professional Women Builders affiliate. As Tantleff noted, “we have a growing number of very engaged women at local level in a variety of disciplines in the industry, and this is an acknowledgment of an underlying need for a greater female network and recognizing that there is a growing number of women” in all corners of the industry.
The TANTUM Real Estate leader is participating in the panel alongside:
- Meryl A.G. Gonchar, land use practice group co-chair at Sills Cummis & Gross PC
- Kristin Marzarella-Amato, vice president of operations at All County Exteriors
- Cindy Cepko, a partner with Granite Homes and 2021 chair of the Pennsylvania Builders Association
- Esther Cirelli (moderator), SERVPRO, Team Majeski
“This forum is going to bring together a handful of recognized women leaders to talk about who they are and how they got here, but more so about what we’re doing as a result and (how) we we’re paying it forward to the industry,” Tantleff said. “It’s a concerted effort to groom the next generation of women leaders that are naturally entering our industry, both at the trade level and the professional level, and to let them understand that they’re not alone in this industry and there are people who have come up before them.”
