Tag: Third Round

UPDATE: Recent developments have shed new light on the events described below, revealing important facts. They are incorporated to help explain what this situation means for Chatham Borough as of October 5, 2026.

Borough residents got a big surprise at the special Council meeting on Monday, June 22, 2026. https://chathamborough.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=519

At that meeting, our Borough Council stunned observers by voting DOWN a big Redevelopment Plan the Mayor & Council had been pushing hard for more than two years. https://chathamchoice.org/2024/06/visioning/

Why would the Council vote down a pet project? What the heck is going on here?

The Mayor said the Council voted down the Plan because of a more recent proposal by AJDM Chatham, LLC to build apartments on River Road under existing zoning law, meaning without the lucrative PILOT property tax exemption and other special incentives available under a redevelopment plan.

(See that proposal here: https://d3n9y02raazwpg.cloudfront.net/chathamborough/7fe546f1-090f-11f1-bb28-005056a89546-21f92362-28af-4727-9270-fd5a12163dfa-1778081726.pdf)

The Mayor’s explanation doesn’t match the facts. (See 42:54 here: https://chathamborough.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=519)

In fact, AJDM’s proposal is NOT more recent. It actually PREDATES the Redevelopment Plan. How do we know?

When the Council first unveiled that Plan, on April 14, 2026 https://chathamborough.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=488, the Planning Board ALREADY HAD SEEN details of the AJDM proposal, as you can see in the following letters, dated March 6 and 27, 2026:

https://www.chathamborough.org/forms-documents/forms/affordable-housing/3022-chatham-presentation-04-14-26/file

What all that means is when the Mayor & Council first presented the new River Road Redevelopment Plan to the public, they already knew what the AJDM was preparing to build without the benefit of such a plan or a PILOT tax exemption.

So contrary to the Mayor’s explanation, seeing the developer’s proposal cannot be the reason the Council chose to reject its pet Plan at the June 22 meeting. So why did they?

To figure out what’s actually going on here, it helps to know how the Plan for River Road got on the agenda, and the effect of its rejection.

First, though the Mayor & Council had spent years angling for a new Plan for River Road, they probably were dismayed when, in December 2025, the compulsory affordable housing program virtually forced them to propose such a plan on command.

A December 9, 2025 settlement agreement with Fair Share and a big developer provided for unpleasant consequences if the. Borough Council failed to accept or reject a plan for River Road before July 1, 2026, and hinted that it had better provide for high-density apartment buildings.

So in April 2026, the Mayor & Council did propose a Plan that would have allowed up to 720 new, high-density apartments on the Borough end of River Road near the Ivy, including something like 169 on the AJDM property.

Meanwhile, AJDM’s smaller 100-apartment proposal was before the Planning Board. Some assumed that proposal was a bargaining chip, meant to prod the Borough Council to adopt the big Redevelopment Plan. Others insisted it was a hedge, in case the Council rejected the Redevelopment Plan.

Nobody expected what happened next.

Our Council’s June 22, 2026 vote to reject the River Road Plan triggered consequences under another decision our Council made at that same June 22, 2026 meeting, voting to approve a court order that wasn’t in the agenda package posted online, and the public couldn’t see until it was filed with the court the following day.

The mysterious document the Council approved was a court order setting the terms of the Certificate of Compliance the Borough needed to gain immunity from lawsuits over its affordable housing policy for 2025-2035.

That order, which the court ok’d a few days later on June 26, 2026, gave the Borough until July 1, 2026 to decide whether or not to adopt the Plan for River Road, and gave others up to 30 days to weigh in on that decision.

By approving that court order, our Council simultaneously gained the benefit of the Certificate of Compliance and opened the door to demands for ever higher density zoning on River Road.

https://chathamborough.granicus.com/DocumentViewer.php?file=chathamborough_b5a5307bccb6659729cd063fb1501bf8.pdf&view=1

That wasn’t necessarily a bad move. Our Mayor & Council needed that Certificate to protect the Borough and, at the same time would have been fools to rubber stamp a Plan allowing up to 720 new apartments in one small part of River Road, even if rejecting that Plan might trigger an objection by some would-be developer, demanding that higher density to make a project feasible.

And to some that risk seemed small given AJDM’s proposal to build 100 apartments. Didn’t that prove that current zoning was sufficient to attract development?

All good, right?

Surprise! Less than two weeks after getting that approval, AJDM itself filed an objection to the Compliance Certificate, claiming essentially that the level of density that had attracted it to River Road was NOT sufficient to attract development. The Borough must adopt another Redevelopment Plan, allowing higher-density housing.

Others essentially concurred, including Fair Share Housing Center:

So the Borough must, either fight those objections or cave and accept a sea of very high-density housing on River Road.

If anyone can handle this situation, it’s the Borough’s longtime affordable housing lawyer. But he isn’t the one who decides whether to stand firm or cave and adopt a very high-density Redevelopment Plan for the rest of River Road. That’s up to our Mayor & Council.

Let’s jus hope they’re equal to the task.

Meanwhile, the Borough’s Fourth Round housing plan seems to be on hold.