NJ suburbs: Endangered because of millennials?
Michael L. DiamondWEST LONG BRANCH - New Jersey's suburbs, with their sprawling single-family homes and regional malls built to attract baby boomers, need to be re-engineered for a new generation that wants to ditch its cars and walk, experts say.
Despite reams of demographic data, real estate developers and mayors say the turnaround hasn't been easy. Not-in-my-backyard residents aren't shy about voicing concerns about noise and traffic new development can bring.
"The state of New Jersey has to recognize they're facing a land-use apocalypse," said Carl Goldberg, a real estate consultant and former chairman of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.
Goldberg was one of several experts who spoke recently at Monmouth University's Kisalk Real Estate Institute's forum titled: "The Future of New Jersey's Suburbs."
The event came as builders try to make New Jersey hip and cool enough to attract the giant millennial generation that has made it clear: A suburban life with a large home and long commute to an office park isn't as idyllic as it once sounded.
"Many of our 20th century assumptions about growth and development have been made obsolete,” Rutgers University economist James W. Hughes said.
Five lessons from the conference:
1. Millennials are everything
To baby boomers and generation Xers, the giant millennial generation born between 1980 and 2000 are selfie-obsessed consumers who don't understand the value of hard work. But while their predecessors grumble, millennials are reshaping communities.
They want to walk to work, to stores, to bars and restaurants in a trend that has led to the revitalization of cities. Employers have followed them.
The result: From 1950 to 2004, New Jersey added 29 jobs for every one job added in New York City. From 2004 to 2015, New York City added 29 jobs for every one job in New Jersey, Hughes said.
Millennials "look for where they want to live and then think about a job," said Geoff Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Smart Growth America, a Washington, D.C., research group. "Who does that?”
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2. Jersey City > Eatontown
The shift to cities has been a boon to New Jersey towns on the Hudson River waterfront, a PATH ride away from Manhattan. But it has left the Garden State's traditional suburbs with lots of abandoned space, known as stranded assets.
One in five giant office parks — the size of five Empire State Buildings — are empty. And 7 million square feet of retail space, or 410 football fields, are vacant, said David Fisher, vice president of governmental affairs for K. Hovnanian Homes.
Other developers worry they are headed for the same fate.
The Monmouth Mall in Eatontown at the intersection of the Garden State Parkway, Route 18, Route 35 and Route 36 is well positioned for a pre-internet era when consumers liked to drive.
But the property's owner, Kushner Cos., last year submitted a plan to turn the enclosed mall into a town center with as many as 700 apartments.
"When they first came to us they said the mall is doing well, but it's going to fall and it's going to fall fast," Eatontown Mayor Dennis Connelly said. "And I believed them and our government body believed them. The whole thing for us was to get that out to the community."
Problem solved? Not quite. Four residents have filed a lawsuit, challenging Eatontown's decision to change the zoning rules there.
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3. Think different
Bell Works is emerging as an unlikely case study.
The 2-million-square-foot building, formerly known as Bell Labs and home to 7,000 researchers when AT&T had a monopoly, closed in 2005 as part of a corporate consolidation.
Somerset Development bought it two years later and has spent the past decade trying to redevelop the nation’s biggest empty office building for the digital age.
The building is 70 percent leased – with technology companies, utilities, insurance companies, financial services firms – which are moving into offices that have amenities such as ping-pong tables, hammocks and retro refrigerators.
“We were handed an incredible canvas,” Ralph Zucker, Somerset’s president, said. “What we’re most proud of is we didn’t muck it up.”
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4. N.J. can muck things up
The Garden State’s communities with train stations are thriving, attracting residents who have easy access to NJ Transit and Manhattan.
Case in point: Sickles Market said last week it would move into the 45,000-square-foot Anderson Moving & Storage building across the street from the Red Bank train station. Redevelopment of the long-abandoned building is expected to begin in the next couple of weeks.
Yet NJ Transit riders of late have suffered from long delays, taking to Twitter to voice their outrage. And they are bracing for disruptions this summer, when Amtrak plans to fix the infrastructure that NJ Transit uses.
“You can’t encourage transit hub development if you can’t produce the transit,” Tim Evans, director of research for New Jersey Future, a regional planning group, said after the forum.
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5. All aboard
Developer clashes with suburban home owners are nothing new.
A story in the Oct. 18, 1960, edition of the Asbury Park Evening Press detailed how David Evans withdrew his application in Middletown to build a 30,000-square-foot building for ShopRite after three property owners and the congregation of the Middletown Baptist Church objected.
It doesn’t sound like much has changed. Current and former mayors said it is a battle trying to keep residents content and pivot their towns to the future. After all, New Jersey homeowners' property tax bills are sky high; they have the right to voice their opinions.
“The hardest thing to do is say, ‘Thank you for your comment’ and completely ignore them, but sometimes that’s what you have to do,” Holmdel Mayor Eric Hinds said. “There are times you have to think about a much bigger picture.”
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Michael L. Diamond; 732-643-4038; mdiamond@gannettnj.com