BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
TINTON FALLS — Despite some dissension by neighboring businesses, plans for a 130-store upscale outlet mall on Route 66, straddling the Neptune border, are moving forward.
“The Planning Board granted preliminary approval and that approval was memorialized by resolution last week [Feb. 23],” Borough Council President Jerome Donlon said. “That resolution just makes the preliminary approval official.”
The development has been an issue of contention for Neptune business owners and officials. They have raised traffic impact concerns.
But plans have forged forward for the development ,and they are now at a stage where conditions must be met to proceed. And Tinton Falls officials are optimistic that there will be no hang-ups in the plans.
Attached to the preliminary approval of the 450,000-square-foot center are numerous conditions that must be met before final site approval is granted.
“There are a lot of conditions,” Donlon said. “Those conditions range from little things like adding something to a drawing, to minor changes in the physical site plan, to first securing permits from other [state] agencies that may be first in order to proceed. But the developer has remained committed to the project and has not wavered because of any conditions.”
Mayor Ann McNamara and Borough Law Director Edward McKenna Jr. have called the proposed development and attached improvements the epitome of smart growth initiatives touted by the state.
McNamara has said that the area, in the southern portion of the borough, has been ripe for this sort of development for some time. The right developer — one who wanted to implement the improvements — just had to come along.
That developer, Chelsea Properties, Roseland, is the first with steadfast interest, in a string of others who have backed away from developing the landlocked 63-acre site that borders Neptune and is sandwiched between Route 66 and the Garden State Parkway.
In the past, Borough Administrator Anthony Muscillo has said that many developers’ desires to build on the site waned when they were faced with the infrastructure improvements that needed to be made for adequate access to the site.
One of those improvements is a slated overpass to allow proper ingress and egress to and from the site, the approvals for which “were in place years ago,” Donlon said.
The state Department of Transportation (DOT) had pledged to pay for $3.5 million — or half — of the total estimated $7 million cost to construct the overpass.
But the DOT has since reneged on the deal. And McKenna is confident that, in addition to Chelsea’s contribution, the funding will come from one source or another, public or private.
“The money is not coming from the DOT because the fund for such improvements is supposed to be used to connect local roads, and this overpass would not connect local roads,” McKenna has said. “It would connect Essex Road with Route 66 instead, and both are not just local. But the developer is not discouraged. We are looking to any private corporate or state/federal entities to help fund the improvements. The developer is also considering contributing a lot. Any and all parties should be considered.”
The DOT has already issued the permits for the overpass to be built, so the only issue to grapple with now is funding it, McKenna added.
In addition, Chelsea must first settle other traffic, environmental and roadway condition issues before final approvals are granted.
Neptune residents and officials have expressed concern with traffic issues related to the mall, but Donlon said the developer is in step with meeting all necessary conditions for approval, including satisfying concerns on local, county and state levels before moving forward.
McKenna had said that some of the environmental concerns raised by critics — such as stormwater runoff and drainage around the area of the proposed overpass — had been addressed with overpass approvals years ago.
To streamline the process for meeting certain conditions, the area where the mall will be built was declared by council as an “area in need of redevelopment” not too long ago. It was a move which officials thought paved the way for the state-subsidized improvements that may make development of the site easier for a developer.
“The access, the geography and the physical constraints of the site qualified it,” Donlon said. “Developers had lost interest in the past because of those things. Now we have a committed developer.”
As soon as the developer “gets to a point where [it] meets the criteria necessary to move on, such as the state DOT and environmental permits, then the final site plan approval will be applied for,” Donlon said.