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Tri-State

NJ town split on how to redevelop downtown

Objection to mixed-use could be way to avoid affordable housing

Ringwood Deputy Mayor Jaime Matteo-Landis with 130 Skyline Drive
Ringwood Deputy Mayor Jaime Matteo-Landis with 130 Skyline Drive (Ringwood Republicans United, Google Maps, Getty)

Affordable housing or a thriving downtown?

That’s how some officials in Ringwood, New Jersey, are framing the debate over a pair of prominent downtown properties whose redevelopment has pitted state housing requirements against the revival of the Passaic County town’s business community.  

Members of the Ringwood Planning Board are set to review redevelopment proposals for the Fieldstone Park Shopping Center on Skyline Drive and a former convent property a few miles north, NorthJersey.com reported. If approved by the board, projects on both sites could be eligible for incentives.

What that redevelopment could look like remains unclear. Six years ago, borough officials pitched a mixed-use redevelopment of the shopping center, which could have permitted housing despite strict development restrictions enacted across New Jersey’s Highlands region two decades ago. The development would have helped meet a different state mandate: affordable housing requirements.

That particular redevelopment never came to pass. Since then, the desire to build residences at the shopping center has waned while calls to revitalize the town’s small business community have grown louder. Borough Council member Michelle Kerr is among those opposed to rezoning the shopping center for residential use, according to the publication.

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The state government has laid out requirements for affordable housing across its largely reluctant townships and boroughs, and Ringwood is not exempt. It needs to build more than 200 affordable housing units, an obligation it is contesting in court, citing its lack of development capacity and other restrictions. Characterized by lakes, rolling hills, parkland and the historic Ringwood Manor, the borough is among Passaic County’s least densely populated municipalities.

The future of the former convent occupied by the Capuchin Sisters and the Franciscan Sisters of Ringwood also remains murky. Tennessee-based American Addiction Centers purchased the property in 2015 for $6.4 million, eyeing a 162-bed inpatient recovery center. By 2019, however, the company put the property back on the market, seeking to pay down debt; the property remains in American Addiction’s hands.

A case summary prepared on behalf of the borough stated that Ringwood’s fair share obligation was to build 377 affordable housing units. The number has nearly been knocked in half since then, but there doubts about whether Ringwood can meet that obligation persists due to Highlands regulations, which restrict sewer treatment and water capacity necessary for development.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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Affordable HousingNew JerseyPolitics