DISPATCHES: Meditations on change in New Jersey

DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet Changes in area bring benefits and damage to quality of life.

   I was on my way to the Brunswick Square Mall in East Brunswick the other day when I noticed something a little surprising.
   The old farmhouse that stood at the intersection of Davidsons Mill and Cranbury roads had been torn down and a sign was planted in what had been its front yard saying The Glen at Cranbury. The sign was typical of those one sees in front of soon-to-be-constructed shopping centers, featuring a lovely artist’s rendering and some contact information. And the site was now littered with what had been the house.

   I’d passed the house less than a week before on the way to a meeting and, as always, my wife and I wondered whether anyone took advantage of the palm reading and psychic services being offered. But now the house was gone and another shopping center was on its way. Oh, boy.
   Perhaps, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I do live in central New Jersey, where it seems that every available parcel seems to sprout a house, a warehouse or a shopping center. It’s the narrative of our region, a narrative that has transformed the world in which we live into one buried in traffic with schools bursting at the seams and nerves frayed beyond repair.
   I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Brunswick Acres. There was very little along Route 27 — a couple of small businesses, a post office and a church between Finnegans Lane and Henderson Road; a gas station, an A&P shopping center and a pharmacy at the corner of Henderson; an Italian restaurant and the Franklin Convalescent Center across the street from each other at Sand Hills Road; and some offices and the Kendall Park Shopping Center between New and Allston roads. My mom would let me ride my bicycle from Oakey Drive to the A&P or the Somerset Farms (now a Taystee Sub shop) — and sometimes as far as Kendall Park.
   Now, I don’t even like to drive the route. Between Henderson and Allston roads, there are five large shopping centers and several strip malls, a couple of gas stations and several office buildings and it can take up to a half hour sometimes to get from New Road to Finnegans Lane — about four miles.
   These kind of changes can be seen everywhere across town. My mom was in last week from Las Vegas. She lived in South Brunswick for 25 years, a time during which the community grew from about 10,000 residents to somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,00, but as we drove down Route 27 or cut across town toward the N.J. Turnpike, she would marvel at the changes. And she does this every time she comes in for a visit.
   South Brunswick is not alone in facing these changes. I drove through Monroe the other day, heading east on Buckelew Avenue, and passed several new developments — including the rather large Regency planned adult community. In Cranbury, K. Hovnanian is building Four Seasons at Cranbury, forever changing the already altered intersection of South Main Street and Old Trenton Road, while warehouses seem to pop up along and east of Route 130 on a daily basis.
   The changes have their benefits — new commercial properties do bring in jobs and tax revenue — though it seems to me that the benefits often do not outweigh the damage all this construction does to our quality of life. New Jersey already has the most polluted air in the country, and our region is fast approaching the kind of congestion that makes driving in Bergen and Essex counties and the rest of northeastern New Jersey such a repellent experience.
   The residents over on Davidsons Mill Road understand the kind of Faustian bargain the chase for ratables creates. That’s why they plan to do whatever it takes to prevent the Township Council from rezoning 220 acres from residential to industrial. Doing so would break a promise to residents made by former mayors Roger Craig and Debra Johnson — not exactly political allies — that land west of the N.J. Turnpike would remain residential and create the potential that rural Davidsons Mill Road could once again become a truck route.
   I’m not attempting to turn back the clock or even stop it. But more care needs to be taken when considering what the myriad changes we face might mean for us down the road. New construction — whether residential or commercial — has an impact that goes well beyond our tax bills.
   There are more than dollars and cents at stake here.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].