Officials in Cranbury and Monroe are aggressively pursuing land preservation to stave off residential development.
By: Matt Kirdahy
Officials in Cranbury and Monroe are aggressively pursuing land preservation to stave off residential development.
But rising housing prices in the region make land more attractive for developers, increasing the cost of undeveloped land and making it potentially more difficult for towns to compete with builders for property.
Two farmers whose properties are slated for preservation in Cranbury are considering selling to developers instead and two Monroe farm owners have sold their land for construction rather than take less money from the state Farmland Preservation program.
"It’s fierce competition," Harvey Moskowitz, Cranbury Township Planner, said. "Developers are covetous when it comes to towns like Cranbury. It’s a desirable community to developers."
James Hughes, dean of the Bloustein School of Public Policy at Rutgers University, said that every time a developer purchases a parcel in town and builds houses, it increases the costs of the land and homes in the town. The development makes land less affordable for towns to buy and preserve and more feasible for landowners to sell to developers.
"When we look over the past 100 years it’s always possible for land to decrease in price," Mr. Hughes said. "Will Rogers said, ‘it’s a good investment because we’re not making any more of it.’ Land will inexorably rise in value. The only thing that would cause it to drop would be a decline in the economy."
In Cranbury, the Township Committee is considering buying the two farms now slated for preservation the 131-acre Simonson farm on Cranbury Neck Road and the 88-acre Barclay farm on Ancil Davidson Road because their owners are considering pulling out of the program because developers are offering more money for their farms than the program can pay. Township Planner Harvey Moskowitz has said a developer could build a maximum of 40 houses on the two properties.
The Cranbury Township Committee will discuss the property acquisitions Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. in the large group instruction room at Cranbury School.
While the two farmers have announced their intention to the township to leave, they have not pulled out of negotiations with the county, according to Linda Busch, country farmland preservation administrator.
Under the Farmland Preservation program, the applicant sells the development rights of their property. The state pays 60 percent of the appraised value of the land’s development rights, the county pays the next 20 percent and the municipality pays the balance. If the farmer agrees to sell for less than the appraisal amount, the municipality would pay a smaller share.
The appraised value is usually 2 years old by the time of the closing because the application takes about that long to review. The applicant is not entitled to an updated appraisal under the program, Ms. Busch said.
Ms. Busch has said the county appraised the Simonson farm at $16,200 per acre and the Barclay farms at $16,300 per acre. The property owners just have to sign a contract with the county to receive the money for the rights of the property.
A letter from the Simonson family to the Press said it had agree to accept 81 percent of the appraised value in compensation for selling its development rights to the county. The letter said three developers have made "contractual offers" in excess of the county offer.
Ms. Busch said the Simonson and Barclay properties would be unusual in the history of the program. She said only one or two applicants have dropped out of the program and gone to developers since the program’s inception in 1985. To date, 3,380 acres throughout the county are preserved with the Farmland Preservation program.
"It’s a landowner driven program," Ms. Busch said. "It’s not that the county tries to make known the wonderful quality of program and encourage people to apply. It’s a volunteer program that benefits the landowner and public in all. It helps in terms of planned growth. We deal with comparable sales based on a well-defined analysis. So we don’t feel we compete."
But Monroe Township Engineer Ernie Feist said the rising land prices could be keeping farmers from approaching the program in the first place. While some farmers continue to apply for preservation, others are staying away because they believe the county appraisals are too low, he said.
He cited the 151-acre Skeba farm on Wycoff Mills and Applegarth roads purchased by Renaissance Properties and the Byrnes farm on Applegarth and Cranbury Station roads.
Dr. Hughes said it’s difficult to predict if the number of farmers who choose to sell to developers while land prices are rising will grow.
"I don’t think anyone really knows," he said. "It’s paradoxical. Twenty years ago, when land was really cheap and there was no demand for it, it could’ve been bought up cheaply. No one thought we were going to lose any of it and there was no program to buy it up. People thought it was going to be there forever."