Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried recently sat down with the Robbinsville Advance to talk about issues impacting the township’s past and future.
The first part of the Q&A resulting from that interview ran in the March issue of the Advance and reflected his thoughts about the annual municipal and school budgets. To read that article, go to our website at communitynews.org.
This month, Fried talks with Robbinsville Advance editor Bill Sanservino (a Robbinsville resident) about the plans for the township municipal building.
Last year, the township announced it was looking to purchase the vacant Investors Bank buillding in Robbinsville Town Center and use it as a combined municipal/police/court facility.
Officials said that plan, coupled with the sale of the current municipal building would result in an overall savings, and be cheaper than building a planned police/court facility. That plan has now changed.
In the interview, Fried also talked about commercial and residential development, open space, and saving money through shared services with other towns.
The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. The interview will be continued in next month’s issue.
* * *
Robbinsville Advance: What’s the status of the municipal building plan?
Dave Fried: We had an interesting development with that. We tried very, very hard to work with the bank, who is a lease-lessor of that property, and the owner of the property, and we just weren’t able to come to terms.
The owner of the property wants far more than the property is worth. Their building was appraised at $9 million and they want almost twice that. Actually, a little more than twice that, and we’re not going to overpay for the building.
So, we have worked out a deal with the bank where the bank, who has a 10-year lease on that property, is willing to sublease the property to the town at a significant discount. That will save us a considerable amount of money. So instead of buying the property, we’re now looking at leasing the property.
The bank will also release us from our covenant on the municipal building, which will allow us to sell the building with no restrictions. So that will allow us to sell the building and move into the building next door. For approximately what we were just going to pay in interest on our note, which is going to be a huge savings for the town.
RA: Have anyone shown any interest in the municipal building. What kind of businesses do you think might be interested?
DF: We’ve got a lot of people that are interested in this building, believe it or not. I think more than likely, because we will have to put it out to some sort of an auction.
Or we’ll have to put it into a redevelopment zone, depending on which way we decide to go with that. But I think more than likely, the most interest will be for a medical use for the building.
RA: What is the plan for the current police station and court buildings? Will it impact the Senior Center at all?
DF: We’ll keep the senior center where it is. The court needs to be taken down. It’s at the end of its life, and it’s been at the end of its life for probably 10 years. We’ve certainly gotten more life out of it than we ever expected.
As for the police station, we haven’t made a decision yet. Originally, we thought we might sell that whole property. The property owner is next door Would probably be very interested in that property because it it’s on Route 130 and it would be a commercial use.
But we’re also getting greater needs for recreation. Ten years ago, pickleball wasn’t a thing. We just put four in and already have gotten requests for more. So we may just keep that property available to us for expanded recreation. I think we need to talk about that some more, and really think it through.
There’s clearly interest from the commercial side, but it might make more sense to leave that as a potential expansion for recreation as we move forward. There’s no residential nearby. We won’t bother anybody. So we got to spend a little time really thinking that through.
Commercial and residential values
RA: What are we seeing in terms of interest in residential development throughout town. Do we have any developments that are still yet to come online or ones that are being proposed?
DF: We’re getting very close to being built out. With this Gordon Simpson project—the Gordon Road project that Sharbell is doing—that pretty much finishes off their project. The Town Center South is probably the next largest parcel that we have. So if that goes seniors, there are really no other large parcels in town. There’s a few that may have, 8 to 10 houses, but in terms of anything significant, density wise, there’s really not a whole lot left.
RA: How about on the commercial side?
DF: Commercially we’re focusing on Route 130. But even there, when you think about our commercial, the largest opportunity for us was our warehouse park.
Warehouses are now more valuable than office space. It’s kind of amazing. If you had told me 10 years ago that a warehouse would actually be more valuable than the Investors Bank building that we’re thinking about buying (for a municipal building). I would have laughed at you.
But now warehouses are significantly more valuable than office space, which was unimaginable a few years ago.
But that’s actually been a real win for us, because as these warehouses become more valuable, as we reevaluate their value, it gives us a significant amount of new revenue. These warehouses are now two and three times more valuable than they were. They’re paying more and more in taxes, which is taking some of the burden off of our residents.
RA: So, something that was a class C ratable 10 years ago is now is class A,? That means can assess them at a higher value and then charge them more money?
DF: Yes. They’re now the highest thing in town.
RA: Comparing residential valuations as opposed to commercial valuations—have they remained equal? Has one gone up more than the other?
Commercial is going up slightly more than residential but not by much. The way it’s going, a warehouse park could eventually be more valuable than some of the office space Route One, which was the most valuable property in Mercer County for quite some time.
RA: In the case of office parks, they are not as valuable because more people are working from home and the vacancy rate is a lot higher.
DF: Yeah. Exactly. Right.
Open space
RA: In November, voters approved a one-cent tax increase to pay for open space and recreation. What is the next step in implementing plans, and where is the township with the properties that it was intended to address.
DF: I was very pleased to see that that open space question passed. We’re going to move forward with buying the farm on Tindall Road (Serenity Farm). We’re excited to continue to move forward with that. I believe our attorneys are already talking to their property owner on that.
There’s a couple of other parcels that we’d like to see preserved, the Wittenborn adjacent to Allentown. There’s another farm we’d like to see preserved that’s right along the Assunpink Creek and makes some sense there. There’s the Stein property (Portions of the property are in Upper Freehold Township and Robbinsville) adjacent to the Wittenborn property that also might make some sense to take a look at from an open space perspective. There’s not a lot of large parcels left. So we’ve got to be strategic about what we do with our open space moving forward.
RA: What about the Oasis Farm (located on Edgebrook Road near I-195)?
DF: The Oasis Farm could also be another one that’s on our list that we’d like to potentially see preserved. So those properties over by Allentown, we’d like to be able to create a little bit of a greenbelt there.
RA: What do they what it is zoned for right now.
DF: So Wittenborn is zoned for village commercial, so it could be like village shops. Oasis, I believe, has got a residential zoning, and I’m not sure about Stein. I’d have to take a look at that one.
Shared services
RA: I know you’ve been an advocate in recent years of entering into shared services agreements with other towns. Can you talk about why that’s advantageous, and also some of the newer developments that that have happened on that front?
DF: We’re actually going to do the first-ever shared police station in the county with Hightstown. We’re sharing a municipal court with Hightstown. We share EMS with Hightstown. We do vehicle maintenance with a number of different towns. We’ve got shared services with Hamilton and also West Windsor and East Windsor. We’ve just recently approved an agreement with Allentown to do shared fire services.
The thought process behind that everybody — all towns — have got inflation. Everybody knows inflation is north of 2%. There’s no hiding that anymore, and we have a cap of 2% (on municipal tax increases). So, everything has gotten more expensive than the 2%.
The only way to make up the difference is either you have to go out to the voters and ask for more money, which is going to be very, very challenging. Or we have to find ways to do more with less, and shared services are the only way to do that.
So, you’re seeing towns who maybe didn’t want to consider doing this in the past, really being forced into doing it. I think it’s a good thing. It’s forcing towns to be more responsible, be better stewards of the public’s money, and also being creative and sharing services. Ten years ago, I think sharing a police station would have been unthinkable for people, but now we’re doing it. And we’re going to continue to do these things.
I think more and more, you’re going to see towns merging and sharing services. You know, this idea that there’s going to be the county doing it is probably unrealistic, because people identify by their towns. But I do think over time, you could potentially see the towns doing so much together that the need for county government may become less and less.
So, I think the original thought was the county would take over the towns. I really do think you’re going to see the towns eventually doing so much together, and people really identify with where they live by their town, not necessarily by their county. I think you’re going to see more and more towns doing more and more together and potentially eliminating the need for county government.
RA: Tell me a little bit about the fire services agreement that you just entered into with Allentown?
DF: This is actually a really good thing for Robbinsville and also a good thing for Allentown. They were sharing services with Upper Freehold and they were having some difficulty making that work. From Robbinsville’s perspective, this is very easy for us to manage. It’s effectively a square mile. They’re right on our border. We have the resources, and we also have 24/7 service, so we can continue to work with their volunteers and at the same time be able to provide them with (better) protection.
Right now, because all of Upper Freehold is not 24/7 with career firefighters, we can actually give Allentown a better service, because we have a really good relationship with Hamilton. If we are ever in Allentown for a fire—and we don’t have very many fires here in Robbinsville, we’re so close to Nottingham the Nottingham Fire Company (in Hamilton), that they can back us up if by chance we’re in Allentown.
At the same time, if we happen to be dealing with something in Robbinsville, Groveville Fire Company (in Hamilton) can actually back up Allentown if there’s something going on there.
So because of this relationship between the three communities, I think we’re going to be able to provide Allentown with really good service. And for our taxpayers, Allentown will be paying us $100,000 a year. That’s half a tax penny. It really helps our municipal budget as well.
RA: You’re confident, for the reasons that you mentioned, there wouldn’t be an undue impact on the ability to serve Robbinsville residents.
DF: No, we only have a few fires a year, and they only have a few fires a year, so the odds of us both having a fire at the same time are very remote. But if it happened, because we have Hamilton behind us, I’m very confident we can handle it.
RA: Is this just for fire? Or is it for all EMT services?
DF: Just for fire for right now. We do share EMT services with Hightstown. We have for years. One of the things that our chief has asked me to look at this year is the possibility of bringing EMS back in-house. We were contracting it out to one of the hospitals.
We are looking at the possibility for quality-control reasons at maybe bringing it back in-house. It be easy for us to do. We own the equipment. We own the ambulances. We own all of the resources to actually do it. We just have to hire the staff. Previously we thought it was less expensive to outsource it. It may make some sense to bring it back in-house. It used to be in-house.
RA: Right. What are you doing with Hamilton Township for shared services?
DF: We do a number of shared services with Hamilton. We do construction, we do auto, we really do have a great relationship with them. We’ll continue to work with the West Windsor for their health department services, and with East Windsor for their animal control.
So, we’ve got a number of different things. I think moving forward, we’ll be doing some more larger things with Hamilton. We’ve done some things finance-wise and inspections. We continue to talk about doing some bigger and deeper things with them in the future.
The Robbinsville Township municipal building. Robbinsville plans to sell the building if plans to lease the former Investors Bank building next door come to fruition. (Staff photo by Rob Anthes.)// <
