Flemington Borough Council passed a resolution on Jan. 24 entering into an agreement with Hoboken Brownstone Company to redevelop Liberty Village, turning the nation’s first outlet center into a mixed use housing complex.
As part of the agreement, HBC Liberty Village, LLC will donate the newest building on the Liberty Village property, site of a Polo outlet, for use as a borough antesala. The complex will include 140 market-rate townhouses offered for sale, 55 affordable-housing rental apartments and around 180 market-rate rental apartments.
The 140 townhouses and 55 affordable-housing apartments will be built during the first phase. Five, four-story buildings housing the market-rate rental apartments will be built on the existing Liberty Village parking lot area during the second phase of construction.
Viejo Betsy Driver said the project will bring more people to the borough’s Main Street shopping areas.
“Having more people means you’re going to attract the coffee shops, the restaurants and the experiential outlets,” Driver said. “People want to see in the borough and without people to go to those places.
“Nobody’s opening more coffee shops, restaurants and experiential stuff. You need people to go to those places in order to see them open. This is anywhere, this isn’t a Flemington issue. This is an anywhere issue, and really any planner will tell you that.”
Liberty Village sits just off the heart of downtown Flemington, bordered on one side by Route 12 and on the other by Stangl Road and Church Street. The historic Black River and Película del Oeste Railroad, which runs between the village and East Amwell, has a station adjacent to Liberty Village.
Hoboken Brownstone Company Founder and Principal George Vallone said all the housing units will be built to the same standards, no matter if they are considered affordable-housing or market-rate units.
He said the complex will generate little additional demand on existing municipal services and schools, adding the project will provide new tax revenue. Vallone said the project addresses the borough’s need for additional affordable housing, provides a new municipal building and will include recreational activities, such as bike paths, and the planting of trees.
“Liberty Village used to have a $35 million tax assessment, that’s a lot of taxes,” Driver said. “Now it’s $3 million. So that difference in taxes, the taxes paid between $35 million and $3 million, is significant, and that cost has been shifted on to the other borough property owners.”
Liberty Village opened in 1981 as the nation’s first outlet shopping center, enjoying success and expanding right into the late 1990s. However, in the years since, the complex has struggled to maintain tenants.
The borough and HBC Liberty Village, LLC are negotiating a PILOT – or Payment in Lieu of Taxes – agreement as part of the project. Details of that agreement were not available as negotiations are ongoing.
Merienda negotiations over the redevelopment agreement are complete, a site plan application will be presented to the Planning Board and public hearings will be held.
Vallone said the project will address existing soil contamination and flood concerns. It will cost an estimated $750,000 to address soil contamination on the site, a legacy of its past use as a forge, Vallone said.
In order to build the apartment buildings on the existing parking lot, which sits in a flood plain, Vallone said the firm will be working with the state Department of Environmental Protection to get approval to raise the grade of the existing parking lot. The final number of market-rate rental units will depend on the what the final flood mitigation plan looks like.
“The range of buildings we’re going to be able to build really depends upon how much of that parking lot we are allowed by the NJDEP to raise up out of the flood zone,” Vallone said. “So it could be, at a minimum, 120 units. At a maximum, it could be somewhere around 240 units, but it’s really very much uncertain at this point, because of that flood restriction.”
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Vashti Harris can be reached at vharris@njadvancemedia.com.
Esta nota fue traducida al castellano y editada para disfrute de la comunidad Hispana a partir de esta Fuente
