Planning Board to hear plan for 115 units

A plan for the former Savoy site downtown is scheduled to be heard by the Planning Board Tuesday night, with five fewer units than originally proposed to the Redevelopment Agency early this year.

Meridia Lafayette Village Urban Renewal, Rahway, LLC, is seeking minor site plan approval for a 115-unit rental complex. The four-story Lafayette Village would have two floors of parking below. The Planning Board meeting begins at 7 p.m. in City Hall.

The first inklings of a plan from Capodagli Property Company were presented to the Redevelopment Agency in February as a 120-unit rental property (216 units per acre), after several months of talk that Capodagli would acquire the property from Wells Fargo. The city later countered with suggestions for a lower-density project of 92 units (167/acre) with ground-floor retail. The 115-unit proposal works out to 209 units per acre on the 0.55-acre parcel at Maine and Monroe streets, and is 4 percent smaller than the original plan, while the city’s suggestion had 23 percent fewer units.

Meridia Lafayette Village Urban Renewal, Rahway, LLC acquired the site (Block 320, Lot 1.02) in June, according to property records, from Dornoch. The Hillside-based developer had begun construction on the 36-unit Savoy condos four years ago only to see it come to a standstill after the housing market collapsed. Work on the site in the recent months has included dismantling steel that had been erected years and removing the beginnings of a foundation that had been started.

Capodagli Property Company broke ground earlier this year on Meridia Water’s Edge, a 108-unit rental development located adjacent to Rahway Public Library, Center Circle and Rahway Plaza Apartments. The Pompton Plains-based developer also built the 88-unit Meridia Grand on East Grand Avenue, which was completed two years ago and sold last year for $19 million.

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2 thoughts on “Planning Board to hear plan for 115 units”

  1. 115 units on a 0.55 acre lot sounds like a blivit to me. I think Rahway's suggestion of 92 units was still overly generous.

  2. Mystery,Great job on blivit. I love learning something new after all these years. I never heard that before and had to look it up.From dictionary.com (for others who may have thought it initially was a typo, like me):Slang1. something annoying, ridiculous, or useless.2. something for which one cannot find a word; something difficult to name.3. an unpleasant or unsolvable situation or problem.

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