We need to see those five options well before that special public meeting, so we’ll have a chance to evaluate them.
We need to know that among the options presented will be the one that’s best for Chatham: Satisfy our POP affordable housing quota by subsidizing 15 existing apartments. Make POP more attractive by landscaping and resurfacing the parking lot, and NOT selling, gifting, leasing, or otherwise disposing of any Borough land; or reducing the amount of free, open air, surface public parking; or building any kind of parking garage; or granting a PILOT tax break – or any other kind of corporate welfare. Why? https://chathamchoice.org/2022/02/our-little-town/
With the future of Chatham at stake, we need more than one such special public meeting, something our Mayor explicitly promised on 27 January 2020. (Start at minute 13:00.) https://vimeo.com/387823706?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=40797229
Given the settlement our Mayor and Council approved on June 14, 2021, https://chathamchoice.org/2021/09/, it appears that we have only two real options:
Cave-in, and build a big commercial housing project – smaller perhaps, but similar to the Kushners’ 4-story, 118-rental-unit block that would increase density, choke our streets, rob us of our public parking lot, burden our schools, diminish our quality of life – and probably cost Chatham a bundle, while providing a mere 15 affordable units. https://chathamchoice.org/2022/01/is-this-what-you-want-for-chatham/ OR
Stand firm, and persuade Fair Share Housing to let us preserve our public parking lot and small town quality of life, while satisfying our POP affordable housing quota by subsidizing 15 existing apartments scattered around town. https://chathamchoice.org/2021/10/
Of course, the second option is far better for Chatham and for the newcomers. If we make this choice, they won’t be set aside, crammed between the Post Office and the railroad tracks. They’ll be our next-door-neighbors and an integral part of our community.
In return, we’ll be able satisfy our affordable housing obligations for POP, and gain a bit of diversity, without increasing our population, density, traffic congestion, or air pollution.
As such, if we choose the second option, we won’t need to worry about higher costs for police, schooling, fire fighting, public works, etc. We’ll pay only the difference between the market rent and the affordable rent set by law for those few units – a knowable amount – instead of gambling our future on a big housing complex, whose effect on our net revenues Chatham has never even tried to estimate!
Best of all, by choosing the second option, we’ll preserve our free public parking lot, and our chance to landscape it and add a park, a popular proposal suggested by community leader Fran Drew https://chathamchoice.org/2021/07/dont-sacrifice-chatham-to-the-big-developer/, instead of getting stuck with a White Elephant complex we won’t need as affordable housing law evolves.
How can you help insure that Chatham makes the right choice?
Before we take even one more step with Post Office Plaza, we need to know the costs and implications of each option, as our Mayor first promised in January 2020. (Minute 13) https://vimeo.com/387823706
We’d rather trim the Borough budget a bit – or even increase taxes a little – to subsidize existing apartments, than play Russian roulette with Chatham’s future.
We’re 100% behind the Mayor negotiating to subsidize existing apartments rather than building a new apartment project that will destroy our quality of life, and we are counting on the Council to support that, too.
When they come up for re-election, we will vote accordingly.
At the end of tonight’s Borough Council meeting, our Mayor and Council will be going behind closed doors for a far more intimate encounter – one that could determine the fate of Post Office Plaza.
Let’s just hope they don’t get taken advantage of, and wind up signing another Secret Agreement like the one below, which they approved behind closed doors last June 14 – all but giving away control of Post Office Plaza – and then kept under wraps for months!
give the Kushner partnership yet another extension of time (their sixth!) to come up with a decent design for Post Office Plaza; or
let the Kushners’ exclusive contract expire – and give someone else a chance to design something that might suit us – instead of swamping our roads, schools, police and fire departments, and destroying our quality of life in Chatham Borough?
Which way will the Mayor and Council decide to go? To find out, tune in this Monday, Jan 24, at 7:30 pm using this link:
Check out this video about the big, 4-story, 118-unit, commercial rental complex the Kushner partnership is eager to cram into the plot behind our Main Street businesses:
Could a fire truck get close enough to fight a fire on the south side of the building? Photo credit: TapintoChatham
That video doesn’t show exactly what the project would look like, but what it does reveal is troubling to say the least.
The Kushner design sacrifices the free, public, surface parking lot we treasure, substituting fewer public spaces – mostly in a hulking, 4-story parking garage along the railroad tracks.
With no service road along those tracks, it appears the only way to get to that garage by car is via narrow, dead-end Bowers Lane, which is also the future site of a 34-plus-unit assisted living facility. And the only way out of that garage is a right turn from Bowers Lane onto our already clogged-up Main Street.
Worse yet, on foot, the only way shown into – or out of – that garage is in a secluded spot up against the railroad tracks, at the end of a narrow alley. (Would you have your mother use that door?)
The Kushner design also appears to encroach upon the property of some adjacent landowners, who were not even consulted.
Building it would require tearing down one of the most interesting historic sites in Chatham:
Once built, this new Kushner project would justify replacing other Chatham properties with 4-story buildings, inevitably robbing Chatham of the low-rise charm that drew many of us here in the first place.
Would this project at least provide plenty of affordable housing? No. It would yield a mere15 of the 320 affordable units envisioned in the settlement the Mayor signed on June 14, 2021.
Let’s face it: This Kushner proposal isn’t good for anyone except the rich developers.
But it’s pretty much what you can expect to see in Post Office Plaza unless our Mayor can persuade Fair Share Housing to accept a better solution – for instance, letting us subsidize 15 or so existing apartments – instead of building a big commercial project nobody wants.
What do you think of this latest Kushner scheme for Chatham? Email: [email protected]
Also, be sure to share your opinions with our Mayor before Jan 24, 2022, when the Borough Council must decide whether to renew the Kushner partnership’s exclusive status as redeveloper, or cut them loose.
Help the Mayor resist the pressure to sacrifice Chatham to the big developers. Remind him of what he said back in 2016:
This Monday, the Borough Council will vote to change the Plan for Post Office Plaza such that it will probably be forced to wipe out our free, public parking lot and build a 100+ unit rental apartment project with a multilevel garage.
Our Mayor says that project “sucks,” but he cannot stop it without your help.
Show the Mayor you support his efforts to stop the overdevelopment of Post Office Plaza. Come to the meeting of the Mayor & Borough Council, 7:30 PM, Monday, 13 December 2021, Borough Hall, 54 Fairmount Avenue, upper level.
… should a multistory garage and transit village (with four-story, multi-unit buildings) be built in this area, an additional downside could certainly materialize… namely a diminution in property values.
Many Chatham homeowners first moved here because of the borough’s arboreal character and wide-open spaces…
… the last thing a recent arrival from, say, Queens, New York, Jersey City, or South Orange might want to see are the aforementioned urban or quasi-urban communities following them to quiet and leafy suburban Chatham Borough.
An important factor in the valuation of so many residential properties here is precisely this quiet, leafy character of our charming suburban community. If this were to change in as dramatic a fashion… this pillar of the borough’s high property values might quickly dissolve…
… borough residents will now have to be vigilant on a case-by-case basis that such “visions and goals” do not indeed become fact.
Equally problematic are the potential tax increase implications accompanying all of the newly permitted construction. In particular, multistory parking garages are expensive to build and Chatham Borough taxpayers would ultimately foot the bill, regardless of the manner in which this project is financed…
These potential changes represent the worst sort of overdevelopment, one that would decidedly transform our charming little arboreal hamlet into something more nearly resembling the less suburban places from whence many of us first came to Chatham Borough…
…the new master plan creates the conceptual and legal room for a creeping urbanization in Chatham Borough. It portends the arrival of deep-pocketed developers who care nothing for the investment, financial or otherwise, so many of its residents have made in the purchase and maintenance of their homes, and the living of their lives, in this picturesque small New Jersey town.
…when these developers do arrive, they will be accompanied by their teams of highly-paid lawyers as they seek the Borough Council’s approval for their proposed redevelopment projects.
This will be a fundamentally asymmetric situation in terms of available resources to fight these projects, since individual Chatham homeowners will be hard-pressed to match the developers in terms of required legal fees. It will, in other words, be a David versus Goliath-like proposition for many Borough residents…
… the Planning Board’s vote in favor of the new master plan… has let the proverbial genie out of the bottle… it provides a policy foundation and framework for the borough’s land use laws and building regulations…
Chatham’s location and great schools naturally attract real estate developers looking to make a fortune on new apartment projects. At one time, they had to follow zoning rules, intended to keep out huge towers that would clog up our streets and swamp our schools, police, etc.
Those protections began to erode in the 2000s, when Chatham began to relax zoning standards, in hopes of attracting taxable developments. Around 2016, our then Mayor & Council discovered a state “redevelopment” law that seemed to promise a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to any town willing to waive normal zoning rules, allowing developers to build big projects that could be tax “rateables.”
Of course, there was a catch: Such projects usually aren’t ratable at all. They are eligible for fabulous property tax breaks and other goodies that shift most of the costs – and risks – to us taxpayers.
In their naive quest for easy money, our then Mayor & Council led us into a Plan to build a big apartment project in Post Office Plaza – behind the Main Street Post Office. That POP Plan will clog our streets with hundreds more cars and trucks – without any real benefit to Chatham.
It all started with a few small steps. We’re simply investigating possibilities, the Mayor & Council told themselves. We can stop at any time, they said.
But as usual, each small step makes it harder to stop. At some point, there is no way out. It happens so gradually that people don’t wake up until it’s too late.
Almost nobody in Chatham woke up until November 14, 2019, when the Council’s handpicked developer unveiled a big, horrible design for Post Office Plaza. It triggered public outrage.
When our current Mayor took office in January 2020, he tossed that ridiculous design off the table. But he did not scrap the POP Redevelopment Plan itself. He vowed only to consider a range of options and to hold several Town Hall meetings before doing anything. (See for yourself, starting at minute 13: https://vimeo.com/387823706)
The Mayor did not keep that promise. At the June 28, 2021 Council meeting, he suddenly announced a new design proposal for POP.
The Mayor was vague about that new proposal. He led residents to believe that other options were still possible and would be discussed at future Town Hall meetings.
In reality, the Mayor had already signed a June 14 contract in an affordable housing lawsuit. He had signed that contract without having held a single Town Hall – or even having resumed in-person Council meetings after Covid.
What’s more, in that contract the Mayor had all but promised to make the POP project at least 100 rental apartments – unless he could persuade Fair Share Housing Center to accept something else. To help get that result, he’d promised to change the Plan by January 1, 2022 and to try to get a final agreement signed by June 1, 2022, permanently locking Chatham into a deal nobody had seen yet.
The only reason that deal ever came to light is in August 2021 one smart Chatham lady spotted a mysterious notice on the Borough website, and began asking questions. Residents flocked to the next Council meeting with even more questions the Mayor couldn’t – or wouldn’t – answer.
Sad reality is that we’re getting sucked into a POP project that will displace some 18 Chatham families of modest means who live there now, to make room for 15-17 lucky North Jersey housing lottery winners of modest means. It will make a rich developer even richer. But for Chatham there’s no reason to expect anything but more traffic, higher costs, and a lower quality of life.
Chatham residents are in the dark. And the clock is ticking.
It’s time to wake up.
Urge our Mayor to find a better way to satisfy our obligations under the June 14 agreement – such as subsidizing apartments on Main Street or converting a vacant office building for residential use – before it’s too late.
