The Planning Board accepted a draft master plan re-examination — the first comprehensive one in 20 years — identifying potential areas of the city for future redevelopment and presenting recommendations.

After about 40 minutes of presentation and discussion during the June 12 special meeting, there was no public comment before the Planning Board unanimously accepted the draft plan. City Council ultimately will have the authority to approve or implement any of the plan’s recommendations.

Editor’s note: To keep this post from getting too lengthy, I focused on the presentation and some of the discussion at the June 12 Planning Board. Future posts might go into more specific aspects of the draft master plan.

The Planning Board’s consultant, Paul Phillips of Hoboken-based Phillips Preiss Grygiel Leheny Hughes, LLC, reviewed the 46-page draft re-examination report before members weighed in.

Phillips described the master plan as “a snapshot of the city…at a point in time,” with emphasis on land development and how the city has been planned. State land use law requires that towns re-examine the plan at least once every 10 years, which used to be required every six years, he said. Rahway’s master plan was last completed in 1997 and has been updated or amended a number of times since, including 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2010, according to Phillips. The master plan most recently added a green building sustainability master plan element in 2010, prepared by the Environmental Commission with New Brunswick-based Greener By Design.

The master plan makes recommendations to key geographic areas and reviews significant redevelopment in the intervening years since the last plan. Many of the objectives and goals of the master plan (Pages 4-5) remain valid, Phillips said, including protecting neighborhoods from commerce and encouraging a variety of housing opportunities.

The draft master plan identified four potential redevelopment areas, three of which were among six identified as areas for potential redevelopment in 2016:

• Elizabeth Avenue from Rahway River to Grand Avenue;
• Elizabeth Avenue from West Scott Avenue to the Linden border;
• West Grand Avenue from St. Georges Avenue to Irving and Whittier streets; and,
• Seminary Avenue/St. Mark’s Church.

Investigations of some of these areas currently are being undertaken, according to the draft plan, while three other areas previously identified would no longer qualify. A redevelopment study of the Seminary Avenue/St. Mark’s Church area was approved by the Planning Board at the same meeting, following the master plan presentation. Most of the discussion during the June 12 meeting centered around the West Grand Avenue corridor.

Board member Alex Shipley said he could see why some of the areas identified might be redevelopment areas but others likely are never going to happen.

The best possibility for redevelopment may be West Grand Avenue, Phillips said, the bulk of which is zoned R-2 for single-family homes but most are businesses or two-family homes. There are several issues impacting the area, including generally small sizes and shallow depths of the lots and diverse ownership of properties, he said,

West Grand is a heavily traveled gateway to downtown, developed with a mix of commercial, residential, institutional and public uses. Overall, the area could qualify as an “area in need of rehabilitation”based on the age of the housing stock and water and sewer infrastructure, but only a portion likely would qualify as “area in need of redevelopment,” according to the draft plan.

City Council in December 2016 authorized redevelopment studies of six areas, including West Grand Avenue, but later amended the resolution (AR-219-16) from condemnation redevelopment to non-condemnation redevelopment.

Shipley asked what body is responsible for communicating with properties owners. The last time West Grand Avenue was broached for potential redevelopment, it was “totally misread and that was the fault of the city, by far. You read this, it doesn’t seem that bad of a decision.”

Another section of the report identified areas that “may be viable for reuse or redevelopment,” with recommendations as to zoning changes, including:

• West Grand Avenue from St. Georges Avenue to Irving and Whittier streets
• Essex Street, north of East Milton Avenue: Rezone Block 321, Lots 3 and 4 on the west side of Essex Street an the south side of Monroe Street from R-2 (single-family residential) to B-4 (business service zone), to reflect the properties’ existing conditions.
• I-L Zone Flanking East Hazelwood Avenue, modify the industrial zone in the southeast area to focus on port-related/logistics uses. Potential changes could include expanding the list of permitted uses and increasing maximum building height at least 45 feet, which is needed for new industrial buildings.
• I-L Zone from West Scott Avenue to the Linden border
• Motor Vehicle Commission property on Woodbridge Road; rezone from R-2 to I-L (industrial) or a new Port-related zone, although it’s “not anticipated the use will change anytime soon.”
• New Brunswick Avenue
• Certain B-1 zones, rezoned to R-2, including Block 283, Lots 6-8, on New Brunswick Avenue, and Block 187, Lots 1-3, at Madison and Westfield avenues.

The report also identifies the potential for a federal Opportunity Zone designated based on Census tracts, in Rahway’s case, Tract 360, which is bounded by Elizabeth Avenue, Main Street, East Hazelwood Avenue and the Rahway River, and the Carteret and Linden borders.