BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
TINTON FALLS — Anyone who has something to say about the proposed rezoning of the 39-acre lot that houses the blighted federal Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) building can speak up on Monday.
The Borough Council is having a special meeting and public hearing on the subject Nov. 22 at 7:30 p.m. in the municipal building on Tinton Avenue, blocks away from the site.
“This is an important issue,” said council President Jerome Donlon. “We didn’t have a regular meeting scheduled until December, so we called for a special meeting so we could get moving on this eagerly anticipated project.”
The rezoning of the CECOM site is a unique one to the borough, but one which many have welcomed as a productive means to beautify the area on Tinton Avenue where the mammoth 737,000-square-foot federal building sits.
Bought nearly two years ago by Abraham Leser of Brooklyn, N.Y., the CECOM facility was built in 1974.
Leser bought the building from Matrix Development Group, Cranbury, for $14.75 million after about $2 million in landscaping, facade and soft cost (architectural, engineering surveys and renderings) work had been put into it.
When Matrix owned the building, the company estimated that it would cost $45 million-$50 million to upgrade it to first-rate (class A) office space. The entire inside would have to be gutted and rebuilt, the company projected, because the building was constructed specifically for Army use 30 years ago.
Considering the traffic implications that could come with current zoning parameters, the uncertain marketability as an office structure and a need for active adult housing defined in the borough’s master plan, the council has opted to try to rezone the property as an active adult redevelopment zone.
This zoning is a twofold process, according to municipal land use law.
The borough first had to declare the area in need of redevelopment, which it did about a month ago. The Planning Board made the recommendation, and the council adopted a resolution accepting the recommendation.
The second part of the process is to rezone to accommodate active adult housing and officially make it an “active adult redevelopment zone,” the only one of its kind in the borough.
The zoning ordinance for active adult housing recommends zoning to accommodate about four 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot detached homes per acre, or about 130.
The PRC Group, West Long Branch, has talked to officials about a concept for such a gated community on the site, replete with the detached, high-end homes, a clubhouse, ponds, trails and other recreational facilities. The company has not presented plans before the Planning Board, though.
But the rezoning would accommodate such a plan.
This rezoning will be unique to the borough in that the zone will be a redevelopment zone as well as one set aside for an active adult community.
“This being a redevelopment zone gives the borough and public more input in the development process,” Councilman Peter Maclearie said. “It’s a positive alternative. Everyone seems to be anxious to see improvement on the site, and this offers that as well as room for input.”
When an area is declared in need of redevelopment, a municipality has the power to condemn property for the greater good of the public.
In this case, officials have cautioned, there is to be no misunderstanding — that power is confined solely to the 39-acre CECOM site.
That power could be helpful in razing the blighted building, which has been estimated to cost $3 million alone to demolish.
The borough recently rezoned the 60-acre Laurino Farm, on Hance and Sycamore avenues, to accommodate an adult community of 168 $400,000-$800,000 town homes. Ground will be broken soon on that project.
At the southern end of town, what was formerly the Twin Brook Golf Course will be home to 150 age-restricted homes starting at $350,000. The plan was approved by the Planning Board in August 2003.
The feeling among officials is that active adult communities, allowing people age 55 and older with no children, take the tax strain off the borough by not adding children to the schools and lessening the strain on an overburdened district.
Active adult housing is one way to keep pace with out-of-control property taxes in the state, Mayor Ann McNamara has said. With school taxes taking up about 60 percent of property tax bills and constantly on a steep rise, the only way to keep taxes at bay is by building tax ratables like high-end adult communities, she added.