By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ROBBINSVILLE — The Township Council chose two redevelopers for parcels at opposite ends of the 90-acre Town Center South Redevelopment Area and now will try to negotiate final redevelopment agreements with these companies.
The first resolution approved at the July 26 council meeting named a joint venture of Sharbell Development Corp. and Elite Showcase Complex LLC as the redeveloper candidate for 52 acres of township-owned land at the zone’s eastern end on Route 33. The second resolution approved by the council named the Ferber Co. as the redeveloper candidate for 2.5 acres owned by Roma Bank at the western end.
The centerpiece of the Sharbell-Elite concept plan is a 200,000-square-foot sports and entertainment complex with 1,400 parking spaces on a 28-acre interior parcel Elite would lease from the town.
Sharbell wants to build four mixed-use commercial and residential buildings, a hotel and one or two stand-alone restaurants near the sports complex. Sharbell and the township have declined to reveal how much Sharbell has offered to pay the town for the 13.5 acres the developer needs for the mixed-use buildings, which could contain between 120 to 150 residential loft-style units.
The remaining 10.5 acres of the 52-acre tract of township land shown on the Sharbell-Elite concept plan is reserved for a new public park and community pool, which could remain township-owned and be developed with open space funds.
The Ferber concept plan proposed a 14,000-square-foot Walgreens on 2.5 acres owned by Roma Bank at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Route 33, across from Foxmoor and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Council Vice President Vince Calcagno and Councilwoman Sheree McGowan, who both voted for the resolutions, emphasized naming Ferber and Elite-Sharbell as redeveloper candidates does not obligate the town to accept their concept plans as submitted. Changes likely will be sought during the negotiations, but the two council members did not elaborate on what those might be.
”This does not tie us to anything,” Ms. McGowan said prior to the unanimous vote on the redeveloper resolutions. “All this is doing is allowing us to negotiate, and as everyone knows, negotiations can fall apart.”
The 52 acres of township land in the Elite-Sharbell proposal includes the 40-acre Kushner tract, which the township purchased for $12 million in 2007 to stop the construction of hundreds of single-family homes that could have overburdened the school system. The township now is paying the debt service associated with this purchase and is looking to the redevelopment process to ease this financial burden.
Neither Ferber or Elite-Sharbell’s plan addresses the large vacant tracts of privately owned land east of the proposed Walgreens where the Washington Village and Robbinsville Commons residential/commercial projects had been planned until the developers lost their financing after the credit market collapse of 2008.
In addition, the privately owned lots with small businesses and homes fronting Route 33, which are located directly across from the existing Town Center, are not included in the concept plans. All these smaller lots have different owners.
One resident asked the council if it was setting itself up to be dealing with more than a dozen different redevelopers, each for their own piece of property.
The township’s redevelopment planner, Stuart Wiser, said that while it would have been desirable to have one redeveloper for the entire 90 acres, the redevelopment plan adopted by the council in March was left flexible deliberately in case that was not possible. The 164-page redevelopment plan sets guidelines for the types of projects that are permitted in the redevelopment zone, which stretches along Route 33 from Washington Boulevard to Robbinsville-Edinburg Road.
Councilwoman Chris Ciaccio said she hoped if negotiations with Elite-Sharbell and Ferber produce council-approved redeveloper agreements, it might lead to “movement” on some of the privately owned lots.
Under state law, a township that declares an area in need of redevelopment has extensive control over the redevelopment process, including the power to use eminent domain to force the sale of private properties if needed. The township has said, however, it prefers to negotiate with the owners of the privately owned parcels, not force the sale with condemnation proceedings.

