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By Brianne Harrison
Associate Editor
Despite its anti-business image, the good news is that New
Jersey is indeed offering assistance and incentives to encourage certain types of growth, including retail, and commercial developers are paying attention. The bad news: New Jersey,
the most densely populated state in the U.S., is running out of developable land. That scarcity is exacerbated by a number of state
regulations that make most of the state’s Highlands, Pinelands and
coastal areas off-limits to developers.
The operative term continues to be “smart growth,” which New
Jersey began encouraging several years ago as a means of limiting
suburban sprawl and concentrating development in town centers
and near public transportation hubs. The state’s Office of Smart
Growth and its Smart Growth Planning Grant program promote
mixed-use developments with retail and residential components and
walk-able town centers.
The grant program provides up to $3 million a year in State funds
to counties and municipalities that want to pursue smart growth. In
June 2007, nearly $750,000 in smart future grants was awarded to
13 municipalities and organizations to help formulate plans to revitalize commercial downtowns.
“To us, smart growth is as recognizable a phrase as ‘good morning’,” says Joe Morris, vice president of commercial leasing and mar-
keting for Edgewood Properties, Piscataway. “We embrace it.”
Edgewood’s most recent foray into smart growth is the Garden
State Park redevelopment in Cherry Hill. The redevelopment of
the former racetrack site includes retail and residential components.
One outgrowth of the Office of Smart Growth is Main Street New
Jersey, a program that provides certain communities with technical assistance and training to revitalize their commercial downtowns. The
goal is to create downtowns that are attractive places to live, work and
shop. Since its inception in 1990, the program has created more than
1,000 new businesses and 3,600 building improvement projects, and
has attracted over $609 million in private reinvestment.
The so-called jewel in the crown of the Main Street New Jersey
program is Englewood, which wrenched its business district’s west
side from the grip of urban blight. Determined to revitalize the shopping district, the city cleaned up a park on West Palisade Ave. that
was a magnet for drug users and bought several dilapidated houses
on a nearby street.
In a final coup, Englewood demolished several run-down
buildings on West Palisade and persuaded GroupUSA, a national
women’s retailer, to put up a building with 16,000 sf of retail space
on the first floor and 15,000 sf of office space on the second.
GroupUSA’s decision to build on West Palisade was aided by the
