SAYREVILLE – As part of an effort to meet its affordable housing obligation, the Sayreville Borough Council has allowed the creation of developments with affordable units to move forward while requiring the developments to have fewer market rate units than were originally proposed.
On June 25, council members adopted an ordinance establishing new affordable housing districts for the Camelot at Sayreville I and Camelot at Sayreville II developments and an ordinance establishing a new affordable housing district for the Cross Avenue development.
Camelot I and Camelot II are being developed by the Kaplan Companies and Cross Avenue is being developed by National Lead, both of which filed as and were granted intervener status in Sayreville’s litigation over its affordable housing requirement.
As a result of the developers’ intervener status, the council was presented with ordinances to permit their developments with affordable housing in their zones. In the original ordinance permitting the developments, Camelot I had 173 units, with 26 units designated as affordable housing; Camelot II had 300 units, with 45 units designated as affordable housing; and Cross Avenue had 163 units, with 24 units designated as affordable housing.
Under the ordinances adopted by the council, Camelot I will now have 168 units, with a minimum of 10 units designated as affordable housing; Camelot II will now have 150 units, with a minimum of eight units designated as affordable housing; and Cross Avenue will now have 132 units, with a minimum of seven units designated as affordable housing.
The Camelot developments also may have an additional 10 units, but are not permitted have more than 318 units combined.
Because the projects will create additional market rate units apart from the required affordable housing units, the developments have been a source of concern for residents who have spoken about the potential impact the additional residential units may have on the school district, traffic, taxes, open space, population density and safety.
The Cross Avenue property has received additional opposition from residents of the Melrose section of Sayreville, near where the project is scheduled to be built. The residents have contended that the location for the project is not suitable for development and should be preserved and designated as open space.
In 2017, the original ordinance that would have permitted the two Camelot developments and the Cross Avenue development was amended to include only the two Camelot developments and was then rejected by the council.
The rejection of the ordinance was overruled by New Jersey Superior Court Judge Arnold Natali. The borough appealed the judge’s decision. Subsequently, council members passed a resolution at the June 25 meeting memorializing the execution of a settlement agreement between Sayreville, National Lead, Kaplan and the Fair Share Housing Center, which advocates for the creation of Affordable Housing in New Jersey.
Also on June 25, the council adopted an ordinance amending a redevelopment plan for properties on River Road to allow for the creation of a development that will have all of its units designated as affordable housing. The River Road development will have 88 affordable units, according to the borough’s affordable housing counsel.
Sayreville’s requirement is 785 affordable units.
The ordinances received support from resident Jim Robinson, a former Planning Board chairman who had been critical of the previous affordable housing ordinances.
“I want to thank you [the council] for getting us to this point,” Robinson said. “The ordinances you are going to pass are not perfect, and I’m sure we’ll hear from my friends in Melrose about some concerns they have, but this is a far cry from the original ordinances that would have allowed for the building of thousands of market rate apartments in Sayreville.”
Resident Janice Benedetto of the Melrose section acknowledged she is not in favor of the Cross Avenue site being developed instead of being preserved as open space, but thanked council members for their work in creating a new plan and urged them to pay attention to the future of the planned development.
“Even though we are not happy with the fact we are not getting 22 acres of open space, which we would have liked as [a nature preserve], I appreciate everybody’s efforts to take a bad situation and improve it as best as possible and to have the best outcome, but it needs to be [watched] along the way,” Benedetto said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done and we need everybody’s support to have a good outcome and to have this go forward trying to protect the wildlife, protect the quality of life, to protect things like the environment.”
While voting in favor of the ordinances, council President Victoria Kilpatrick thanked members of the public for their input in helping the council create a new plan for the affordable housing obligation.
“I cannot thank the public enough, as well as our professionals, as I have done repeatedly,” she said. “This has been a long process and it is not over, but we are so much closer to what we need to be. The faces and the people [who] we have heard come up, you really did open our eyes to things we didn’t even understand at first on our own – and you are correct. The public was instrumental in helping us to see and to lead us in the direction in which to research and to obtain the best professionals we could.”
Kilpatrick also thanked her fellow members of the council for their work in helping create the new ordinances.
“We [the council] did come together at a time when originally we were not,” she said. “I’m very happy to see we all were able to work together on something I think is a much better fit for our town. Again, it’s not as perfect as I wish that it could be. It’s not the exact thing I think we all wanted to have happen at the end, but we are going to make this work.”