Redevelopment in urban areas presents a unique set of challenges; parochial politics, polarized communities, financing obstacles, permitting delays, and costly and sometimes conflicting regulatory mandates – especially for sites contaminated with so-called forever chemicals.
At NJBIA’s recent Energy and Environmental Policy Forum, experts discussed these challenges and offered some solutions that the next gubernatorial administration should consider implementing to help developers overcome these hurdles.
Caryn Barnes, VP of the engineering and environmental consulting firm Langan, told panel moderator Dan Kennedy, CEO of NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, that the state needs to act faster on environmental permits that can now take over a year.
“There’s other states that turn them around in 90 days,” Barnes said.
Caroline Erlich, executive director of the Woodbridge Township Redevelopment Agency, said the problem is that in New Jersey, “we stress the process more than the product.”
“So much time goes into following up on all these regulations and then it’s years and years until you see the outcome,” Erlich said. “The governor’s office has to play a more active role. If there is a major project that's going to hit more than just one department ... make sure everyone is on board and working together on it.”
Erlich said a state project manager be assigned to keep the application process on track and ensure that the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Community Affairs, and other impacted state agencies are cooperating with one another.
Ted Zangari, who chairs the Real Estate Department at the Sill Cummis & Gross law firm, pointed out that New Jersey has a “marketing arm” known as Choose New Jersey with the governor often serving as pitchman to attract new economic development. Once a business is operating, the state Business Action Center (BAC) helps it navigate government bureaucracy.
“What’s missing in-between is a task master, or set of text masters, because you need more than one to take a company that is coming to the state or expanding in the state ... from the permitting and approvals process handholding, through the groundbreaking, and to the ribbon cutting before it can be passed off to the BAC,” Zangari said.
Zangari said a Commerce Department, like existed under prior administrations, needs to be created again to help companies “get to yes.” It’s too much to expect a governor’s deputy chief of staff or a lieutenant governor to shepherd projects through from application to groundbreaking to completion when they already have other governmental responsibilities.
Zoe Baldwin, VP of the Regional Plan Association, said that the next governor needs to focus on the bureaucracy, not just the senior staff.
“We need to make sure that we have the people to get all of these tasks done because all the money in the world does not matter if you cannot get it out onto the street or into a development,” Baldwin said.
To view the entire Urban Redevelopment Challenges panel discussion on Oct. 28, go here.
