The suburbs of New Jersey are gettin’ citified.
The downtown of Cranford, around two dozen miles southwest of Manhattan, is seeing new development — part of a growing focus on redeveloping the downtowns of Jersey’s older suburbs that are close to Manhattan.
Cranford Crossing, currently under construction by Westminster Communities, consists of 50 condominiums, 22,000 square feet of retail space and a large parking deck. After being proposed by a former mayor in 1999, the project is slated to open in the spring of 2007.
Kathleen Miller Prunty, director of the Cranford Downtown Management Corporation, said the long-awaited and at times controversial project adjacent to the train station is an important part of the town’s designation as a Transit Village.
Grand and central stations
A joint program of New Jersey Transit and the state’s Department of Transportation, the Transit Village concept promotes the creation of mixed-use projects adjacent to mass transit hubs in downtown areas.
Currently 17 communities have been designated as Transit Villages by the state. In addition to Cranford, they are Pleasantville, Morristown, Rutherford, South Amboy, South Orange, Riverside, Rahway, Metuchen, Belmar, Bloomfield, Bound Brook, Collingswood, Matawan, New Brunswick, Jersey City’s Journal Square neighborhood and Netcong.
The Transit Village initiative provides grants, planning assistance and priority state funding for communities that adhere to the project’s goals.
“It will help restore a downtown,” Sam Gershwin, president of Westminster Communities, said of the Transit Village concept. “It eliminates a need for a dependence on cars. The experience in New Jersey is that the mass transit systems are being upgraded.”
In order to be considered as a Transit Village, a community must demonstrate several things to the state. The community needs to have a mass transit hub, show existing mixed-use development in the downtown, have vacant land near the transit hub that can be redeveloped and demonstrate that it is a pedestrian-friendly area.
“For us it was a huge benefit,” said Miller Prunty. “Being one of a handful of Transit Villages around the state, we are able to get our voice heard in Trenton.”
Cranford’s growth
Gershwin said Cranford Crossing is a good example of Transit Villages statewide and that there has been high interest in the residential and retail offerings.
The 7,000 square feet of the Cranford Crossing retail space have been leased out to the coffee chain Java’s Brewin’ and to the upscale sandwich chain Cosi. Gershwin said he expects to sign leases in the next eight weeks with other upscale service industry stores. In addition, 1,300 inquiries have been received for the condo space, primarily from young professionals and empty nesters from Cranford and surrounding communities.
Cranford has been focusing on downtown issues for two decades, following the creation of the state’s first special downtown improvement district in the late 1980s. After a redesign of the streetscape to reflect a Victorian theme, the community began looking at redevelopment and business recruitment in the late 1990s.
Since then, Cranford, a community of 22,000, has focused primarily on restaurants and smaller stores, in contrast to neighboring Westfield, which has focused primarily on recruiting national chains to create an outdoor mall.
Since it was designated a Transit Village, Miller Prunty said her town has passed on some of the state grants for planning purposes but has focused on using the money to implement plans that have already been developed. She indicated pedestrian safety initiatives top the list for the community.
The Cranford Crossing project is not the only redevelopment project the town has in the area surrounding the station on New Jersey Transit’s Raritan Valley line.
Miller Prunty said the town is currently redeveloping several acres across the street from the train station, abutting the Rahway River, in a redevelopment project dubbed Riverfront. This project, which the town is currently reviewing development proposals for, is slated to have retail, condo and office space on a site currently consisting of a warehouse, an abandoned gas station, unused land and an occupied house.
The Pegasus project
Not every transit-centered mixed-use project is a part of a Transit Village community. Pegasus Group is currently working on a 37-acre mixed-use project next to the PATH station in Harrison. Located across the Passaic River from downtown Newark, the project will eventually consist of 3,000 residential units and 100,000 square feet of retail space, along with more parking for PATH commuters.
Michael Richman, a partner with the Pegasus Group, said the new development is being used to change the face of the southern part of the small Hudson County community. The area north of Route 280 is mostly residential, while the area south of the highway contains many former factories and parking lots to support PATH commuters.
The first phase of the Pegasus project is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2007. Its aim is to redevelop the streetscape around the PATH station for aesthetic reasons and also to make the community pedestrian-friendly. Retail space will target the needs of both commuters and residents. Richman envisions the residents being primarily people who relocate from the Hudson County Gold Coast communities of Jersey City and Hoboken seeking lower rents.
“This project will integrate the two parts of Harrison as well as connect in the Ironbound section of Newark,” Richman said.