Community Voices: Garwood’s Affordable Housing Failure of our Paperboard Site

Bruce Patterson is a resident of Garwood, NJ

Dear Editor

During round 3 fair share process thru 2015, the Garwood planning board and governing body designated the 4.5-acre defunct paperboard factory site on North Ave to have total of 124 residential units of which 15% or 18 were to be for affordable housing (AH). The other 106 units were age restricted. Housing density was 27 units/acre. Wilf/Garden Homes, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate agreed to provide and their plan went into the application process. Their application process was delayed thru 2017 and beyond but they demolished and cleared the old factory site.

For 8 years, Wilf/Garden Homes dragged their feet with constant excuses not to proceed.  The public observing that the borough not suspecting or questioning anything, accepted these excuses and did not force construction for the 8 years the property remained fallow.

Come 2024, Round 4 was imposed by law on all towns. Garwood then had an additional 80 AH units mandated to provide.  The Garwood planning board elected to posit another 57 units on the Wilf/Garden Homes property, the new total of 181 units including the newly increased set-aside number of 20% on the existing site. That added another 12 AH units to the original 18 units. The density was now 40 units/acre.  All seemed agreed and settled.

However, Wilf/Garden Homes, right before the round 4 final deadline of state approval, sued Garwood Borough saying that demographic circulations create a higher demand for units everywhere in our northern NJ area. This went to court and thru final negotiations ended up forcing Garwood to provide even more, another 31 residential units, of which 6 would be AH. Yet still keeping the 15% AH set-aside from the original 124 unit amount. Total residential make up on the Wilf/Garden Homes property is now finalized at 212 units, of which 36 are AH and 176 are for 55-year older luxury market rate community. Density is now 47 units/acre up from original 27 units/acre. 212 units up from original 124 units. 

The astounding concern is that after all the additional units and after the redeveloper sued our borough, our governing body is now further considering giving Wilf/Garden Homes, the billion-dollar conglomerate, a PILOT tax exemption which lessens cash flow to our borough anywhere from 25 to 50% from normal taxation like we homeowner pay.  IMO Garwood, our controlling authorities thru our small-town innocence and lack of critical thinking should be held up as an example of the failure of this affordable housing program’s process; a lesson for other towns’ reading this and my previous letters.

Very Truly yours,

Bruce Paterson

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