New Jersey town takes public route to NU

Washington Town Center has overcome bureaucratic entanglements and developer opposition to benefit from a hot real estate market and become the object of high expectations. Like many suburban communities, Washington Township, New Jer-sey, has gone through rapid growth and does not have a true urban center. Rather than wait for developers to completely build out the municipality’s 22 square miles in conventional subdivisions and shopping centers, local officials created a specific plan for how they want the township to look in the 21st Century. Officials hired Nelessen Associates, a Princeton, New Jersey, firm, to spearhead a visioning process and master plan the 400-acre town center — a task that was completed in 1997. The Nelessen plan has been refined and altered significantly over the last three years by township planner Robert Melvin and consultants in cooperation with developers, who are now carrying it forward. Washington Township is the first suburban municipality in New Jersey to fully address the smart growth and livable community concepts promoted by Gov. Christine Whitman and the state Planning Commission. Whitman has called for compact, walkable, mixed-use centers developed in coordination with open space preservation efforts. As such, the project is considered by state planners to be of critical importance. Builders are watching it closely, and are likely to claim the New Urbanism is impractical if the project fails. If the Washington Town Center succeeds, however, it will be widely touted as a model of smart growth and livability. Washington Town Center consists of a main street district with 250,000 to 300,000 square feet of commercial space. This will be within walking distance of 1,000 new homes with garages on alleys, an assisted care facility, civic uses, and parks. The plan also includes a 500-acre greenbelt, which connects to a 6,000-acre open space system. “Most municipalities rely on developers to shape the community planning, and the planners are in a reactionary mode,” says Martin Bierbaum, special assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs. “Washington Township officials have created a vision and their own design and solicited developers to come in with a turnkey approach and build what the community wants. We think that is laudable.” The plan, a traditional neighborhood development (TND), is also noteworthy because it involves a parcel with more than 20 landowners. This is not the first such effort in the US — others include Sunnyside Village in Portland, Oregon, and Wildwood Town Center in Wildwood, Missouri. But the built results of these projects have been mixed. Sunnyside is a hybrid TND with a largely suburban appearance. The Wildwood plan was approved, but the enabling zoning has not been enacted. So Washington Town Center has a chance to become the best example of its type in the immediate future. Benefits of publicly sponsored TND The advantages of publicly sponsored TND is that it allows officials to address issues outside of the control of most developers. Private developers work under constraints that don’t allow them to combine a town center plan with large-scale open space preservation or influence surrounding land uses, Melvin says. As a result, “Many new urbanist plans are great on the inside, but on the edge are surrounded by highways, and are almost treated like isolated PUDs (planned unit developments),” he says. By contrast, Melvin has tried hard to make the Washington Town Center “porous” on its edges, by minimizing pedestrian barriers and allowing flow-through traffic. The center of the plan is unusual, also. Many TNDs are forced to create town centers away from historical traffic routes. The heart of Washington Town Center takes up both sides of an existing state highway (Route 33), the site of the tiny historic settlement of Robbinsville. Route 33 will be narrowed to two lanes, with on-street parking and 16-foot sidewalks lined by buildings to create the main street. The downside to this plan is that it has been costly, time-consuming, and enormously difficult. Melvin estimates that the cost to the municipality has been at least $600,000 and perhaps as high as a million dollars. Much of this expense has been due to the fact that no one has ever tried a project like this in New Jersey. “Certainly we spent a lot of time and money on approvals with the state DOT (Department of Transportation) and DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) because they had never seen anything like this before. “It cost me 36 months and a lot of money to get approvals for the main street. At any one time I had three traffic consultants on the payroll to get people in state agencies to think differently,” Melvin says. Overall, the town has been working with landowners on this project for 15 years, and trying to get approvals for the last six years. But Melvin says it has been worth the effort. “It might be difficult, but we believe it is our job,” he explains. “The problem with the American landscape since the 1950s is that municipalities have abdicated the responsibility to design the landscape. We’ve blocked off huge chunks of land and said to developers ‘fill in the blanks.’ “ Prior to creating the town center, Washington Township was already spending just as much in court fees trying to stop unwanted development. “We believe that you can spend a little in zoning, and then spend a lot in court fees — or, you can spend the money up front in better planning,” explains Melvin. “The truth is that towns are going to spend the money one way or the other.” Rather than taking a reactive approach, Melvin contends that Washington Township is adding value — “Just like a golf course adds value to a golf course community.” The total value of Washington Town Center is estimated at $300 million. Wrangling with state agencies The battles with state agencies centered on roads. “I fought hard to keep everything two lanes, with no streets wider than 40 feet,” Melvin says. “The only exception is Route 130 on one side of the project, and I am working very hard to make that more pedestrian friendly.” In order to allow the two-lane main street with on-street parking and buildings abutting the sidewalk, DOT required that the town build another road as a “release valve.” The only place that other road could go was through wetlands, which is how Washington Township ran into trouble with DEP. Officials sought permits to fill 12 acres, arguing that the overall greenbelt plan would save 1,200 acres of wetlands. DEP opposed the plan. The town later offered to fill only five acres, and a compromise was reached with Bierbaum’s assistance (see sidebar on page 7 for more details on this process). Coming to terms with developers But state officials are not the only players who have balked at Washington Township’s plan. When the plan was unveiled, developers argued that it wouldn’t work. They contended that some streets in the plan had too little housing to justify infrastructure costs, and that some lots were difficult to develop. They complained that the design requirements were excessive. Township officials worked with developers, redoing about 50 percent of the streets in the original Nelessen plan. The main street district was rearranged to bring the retail closer to Route 33. Open space in residential areas was consolidated to allow for better pedestrian flow. Additionally, township officials worked on educating prospective developers — taking them to visit well-known examples of the New Urbanism like Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Celebration in Osceola County, Florida. In addition, the primary developer — Sharbell Development Corp. of Hamilton, New Jersey — conducted research and built a small neotraditional project to test the market, a project which sold well. Also, Sharbell hired an engineer to compare costs of alleys versus driveways. Sharbell was convinced the project is cost-effective and feasible. Zoning and design regulations were enacted by the township to govern streets, landscaping, and buildings. The regulations are not as tight as many privately sponsored TNDs. But the municipality has retained Brown & Keener, a Philadelphia architecture firm, and is actively providing design input and revisions. Designing the public realm The municipality also hired the landscape designer March Associates to plan all the interior parks and open spaces. Such an active municipal involvement in design of the public realm has been rare in New Jersey since at least World War II, according to Carlos Rodrigues, special projects manager with the Office of State Planning. The developer agreed to pay a lump sum fee for park development. The remainder of the landscaping costs will be picked up through a special assessment of lot owners. Sharbell has already started construction on a 30,000 square foot office building and a 72-unit assisted care facility. The firm is scheduled to begin construction of the main part of the town center in the spring of 2000. Sharbell will build a total of 565 residential units (including a mix of types), and 170,000 square feet of commercial and retail. Another developer, Kushner, based in northern New Jersey, is interested in building 225 units of residential and a small amount of retail, Melvin adds. When and if both of these segments get completed, more than 75 percent of the town center will be built.