Although Ewing Township has been one of the hot spots for development in Central Jersey in recent years, there’s still a lot to be done to see those plans translate into actual construction.
A plan was approved in 2014 for the redevelopment of the old General Motors site on Parkway Avenue, but construction still hasn’t started yet on the project—the Parkway Town Center—that calls for a mix of retail space and housing units.
Across the street, the township is still working towards finalizing an agreement with a developer who wants to build a shopping center (rumored to be anchored by a Wal Mart) on the site of the old Naval Air Warfare Center.
In September, the township saw the opening of Campus Town, a mixed use development comprised of student housing and retail shops at The College of New Jersey. While the housing is fully rented, and a new phase of housing approved, the retail element is lagging behind.
Ewing Observer editor Bill Sanservino recently sat down with Mayor Bert Steinmann to talk about the progress of those projects, future development in the town and issues involving the state of the township in general. An edited version of that interview appears below.
You’re now into the meat of your second term as mayor, how do you feel about where the town is at this point in time?
Bert Steinmann: I was hoping that some of the projects that have been in the planning stages for a while would have started, but I have every reason to believe that’s going to start early winter or spring.
We’ve added more businesses. We’ve got Wawa coming into town and a Sonic on Olden Avenue that just opened. Walgreens at Olden and Parkside avenues finally got all of its approvals to build, so they’re starting. They’re going to raze the building where Domino’s is currently located and put the new pharmacy there.
We’re also very aggressively moving to forward at the corner of Parkway and Olden to do something with the old gas station there and we’ve had some interest. It’s a challenging corner because of the way it’s structured as far as traffic, and we’re having some discussions with the county to make a change there.
Also, Campus Town has been a plus for us.
Campus Town has been pretty successful on the residential end. (Two additional buildings of student housing were added to the project based on the success of the initial round of housing built there).
BS: The two new buildings are under construction and they’re already sold out. We also have a similar type of project on Parkside Avenue near Spruce Street. It’s a student housing type situation with 125 units that we’re expecting to be done by Spring. Both of those will help address the shortage of campus housing at the The College of New Jersey.
What’s been going on With Olden Avenue? I understand that you want businesses to upgrade their facades along the roadway.
BS: We held a meeting with the business owners there about a month ago, and we wound up with about 40 or 50 people who came. We had a very candid discussion about what the town wanted to do as far as Olden is concerned.
We are making changes. In the past we have given an incentive of $5,000 to business owners to make some facade changes and done some landscaping. We’re upping that $10,000, but we also told them they need to buy into the program. They need to spend time to clean their property and make it presentable.
You get a lot of questions in the Observer’s Ask the Mayor column that have to do with roads and road conditions. What’s happening in that area?
BS: There’s things in town we wanted to be further along with, including some road repair projects, but we are moving forward with that more aggressively. In 2016 we’re going to invest more in the infrastructure. In recent years we’ve concentrated a lot on upgrades to our equipment, but we’re at a point now where we can back away from that a little bit and concentrate more on our infrastructure.
This past year we did about 15 roads, and this year we’re looking to do more streets. We also want to focus on some traffic calming aspects to our streetscape.
Are there any other areas that seem to be of concern to residents?
BS: I know there’s been some complaints about leaf pickup and things like that. We are doing the best we possibly can to get it done. I encourage people to bag their leaves. If they bag their leaves and brush, we will pick it up the day after their garbage collection. With the loose leaves at the curb, it’s going to take a little longer. I understand there’s a lot of loose leaves initially, but once that’s done, there’s no reason why people can’t bag their leaves and then we get rid of them right away.
We’ve been very aggressive to try to clean the town up to the best extent that we can. Code enforcement has been out serving notice people for putting stuff out for trash when they’re not supposed to put it out. Obviously, we want to be a little bit compassionate. We don’t want to go out and cite people every time we see something. We give plenty of warning and tell them they have a certain number of days to fix the situation, otherwise a summons might be issued.
I think the town is much cleaner than it was, even two, or three or four years ago. Certainly our parks have improved tremendously. People are very grateful for that, but we need to do some maintenance work on some of our tennis courts. We did spend time and money on the basketball courts at Moody Park, and that probably is one of the top notch programs that Ewing officers.
What’s going on at the old Naval Air Warfare Center and getting an agreement with the developer?
BS: We’re there, its just a matter of the developer getting a lease signed with one of the major retailers. We have started an agreement with the developer, but we can’t finalize it until they have that tenant on board.
We’ve worked through all the preliminaries with the owner of the tract, which is Nassimi Inc. We went through the design of the building. We didn’t want it too look like a box store. It looks like a building with multiple-type uses and the architecture is completely different from what people are used to seeing. Instead of looking like one business, it looks like it could be seven or eight businesses.
Is it only going to be one business there?
BS: There’s going to be other businesses in the shopping center, but in this particular case, because the box (store) is so big—I think it’s about 155,000 square feet—I didn’t want it to be a cookie-cutter type thing, and we made it perfectly clear to the developers that that wasn’t going to happen.
We also spent a lot of time with them about what the frontage along Parkway Avenue was going to look like and what the entryways are going to look like. We also focused on landscaping and creating a walkable area leading into the center.
Also in the center will be six or seven other stores that are in the mix. They’ll be located a little closer to Parkway Avenue, but again, it’s all about the same design and the same flow.
Has there been any word on the particular tenant or types of tenants that they would want to have in there?
BS: The anchor store is a big box store along the lines of a Target type or Kohl’s type store. I can’t say the name, because they don’t want the name released. But the name is already out there, so it didn’t come from me. (Multiple sources have told the Observer that the anchor tenant will be a Wal Mart.)
One of the problems we had with the tenant was that they came in and said, “Well this is what we build.” And we said, “Well then we’re not interested.” We told the developer point blank, “If this is what they want to build, then you’re not welcome here.”
So they clearly understood, and when we actually sat down with representatives of the actual tenant, we told them what we wanted and they came up with some plans. We made some changes to those and now we’re at a point where we find them acceptable and it doesn’t look like their typical store.”
In terms of the store mix, do you expect to see something like Nassau Park in West Windsor or the Marketplace in Hamilton?
BS: Generally along those lines. They’re looking for a restaurant with outdoor seating, maybe a sporting goods store, a maybe a Hallmark and something like a Panera.
What about the General Motors tract and the Town Center?
BS: There has been some change to the proposal. The overall concept hasn’t changed in terms of architectural design on Parkway Avenue. It’s still three and a half story type retail on the bottom, some office/flex space and then some living space.
The for-sale product has diminished greatly and it’s more of a rental product now. Only because people are not in the market to be buying.
So there’s going to be an increase in rental units and a decrease in the number of for-sale units?
BS: Absolutely. I think the rental market is going to be a lot more extensive than it was. We’re meeting with them sometime at the beginning of this year because some of the building layouts didn’t exactly make sense as far as road structure was concerned. We want to make some adjustments without really affecting their unit count.
Will there be an increase in the number of units there?
BS: It’s at 1,000 units, a mixture of rental and retail space. They’re looking at basically one or two bedroom type rentals. Some three bedroom, but not a lot. And these are higher-end rentals. You’re looking at $2,000 and above. They’re looking for professional types and people who are just starting out. They’re obviously selling the fact that we’re close to the train station and close to the airport.
I guess they’ll start the residential first and the retail at some point after that?
BS: Yes, and then about six months into that, they’ll start work on the front end of the site (where the retail is located). If everything goes right, I think that we can have construction starting in March. It’s about six months later than I anticipated. I was thinking more towards the end of 2015.
Back to the other side of Parkway, at the shopping center across from the GM site where Marrazzo’s Thriftway is located, there’s been some talk about some type of renovation or redevelopment there. What can you tell me about that?
BS: We’ve had some talks with Sam Marrazzo (who owns the center). If we can convince the developer of the GM site to build a regional retention basin, then his (Marrazzo’s) retention basin would go away, and he wants to build stores along Parkway Avenue to mirror what’s going on across the street and then put living space above.
Also, Suburban Square on Scotch Road is talking to the businesses that surround them. They want to buy some of them up and expand their shopping center.
It sounds like a lot of people are talking about projects in town?
BS: Exactly. I had one individual who has a 50,000-square-foot building close to the airport, and he wants to raze that building and build a 250,000-square-foot building for office and commercial space.
Changing gears a little bit, how do you feel about how things went with the reconstruction from the gas explosion at Southfork?
BS: It went okay. I’m a little disappointed at the time frame that it took for that to happen. It was mostly contractor decisions that the homeowners association made, and then it just kept going back and forth. Then they started the process and then they wanted to change the process.
We tried to cooperate as best as we possibly could as a town. We waived all permit fees to make sure people get started and help them. I think it was mostly a contractor issue as opposed to anything else.
Finally, everybody is back in their homes, or close to being back in. Overall, do I think it should have taken a year plus? No I don’t.
How are the plans going for the township-wide property revaluation?
BS: It’s going to start in early 2016. It will impact some people somewhat adversely. Others will actually benefit from it, especially in some of the newer projects we have. At the end of the day it’s not about raising more revenue. It’s about making things equal, so one person isn’t paying 60 percent and the other 40 percent.
Speaking of taxes, do you have any insights as to what the budget is going to look like in 2016?
We’re starting to work on the budget. I’ve taken great pride in the fact that we’ve stabilized the taxes. I don’t expect it to change much. There will probably be a small tax increase. It’s been one or two cents for the last three or four years. I think we’re on that path to continue.
We’ve been very frugal as to how we spend our money and where we spend it. We look at other revenues that we can possibly get. We look at a lot of grant opportunities that are out there. We don’t always get them all, but we were successful with some. For example, the road project on Green Lane was a state DOT grant. We got the first half a couple of years ago and finally got the second half this year, so we were able to do that at no taxpayers expense. Those are the things that we are looking to continue to do.
Obviously we have expenses, and they go up like everyone else, but I think we’re going to remain fairly stable moving forward. That’s been my goal — not to have big swings. So you don’t have no tax increase one year and then the next year it’s 7, 8, 10, 11 or 12 cents. What I’ve been trying to do is kind of maintain. Yeah, we did have a little bit of an increase, but at the end of the day it’s the cost of a tomato pie.
How are things at town hall in general?
BS: I think we’re all getting along in my administration. I mean we have our differences sometimes, but we get through it. I am anal, to be quite candid with you, about things. I follow up with stuff and make sure it gets done. I probably shouldn’t be as micromanaging as I am, but it’s my nature. But truthfully, I see results.
I could be like people before me and be like, “I’m here, I’ll sign a paper, I’ll cut a ribbon and I’m good to go.” It’s not the way I am. And I think, for the most part, people accept that and are very pleased with that situation. I do get a lot of comments and people tell me that I’m doing a great job.
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