Two years earlier, the township council asked the Old Bridge Economic Development Corp. (EDC), a private, nonprofit body, to draw up a redevelopment plan for the 500 acres. It conducted what Russell Azzarello, EDC's executive director, calls a “mini charrette” with 22 developers that included Pulte and Hovnanian, “and they told us this [land] would be perfect for mixed use.”
EDC commissioned a plan that called for 750 units of age-restricted housing, a hotel and conference center, and office and warehouse space. Azzarello says 280 acres of Crossroads, as this development has been named, would still be left open in compliance with wetlands protection provisions. Phillips emerged, surprisingly, as Crossroads' biggest booster, even as some residents chided his endorsement as a betrayal. “The issue to me is simple: It's about property-tax relief,” he said during a raucous, four-hour-long town meeting attended by an estimated 150 local residents. Crossroads' proponents project that selling the property to developers could fetch $40 million, and that, properly developed, Crossroads could produce a ratable of $189 million and annual taxes of $5 million. “We want the best and cleanest ratable we can generate, and the best services,” says Azzarello, who is part of a redevelopment agency the council set up to weigh proposals from developers and builders.
If, however, the township doesn't achieve those numbers, the political fallout could be radioactive. There's a vocal, if small, NIMBY component that rejects any development. Other residents challenge EDC's assumptions about tax revenues and the land's value as too optimistic. And a sizable group of residents questions the wisdom of adding more housing—and more traffic—to a community where nearly 1,000 new units had already been approved for construction on other parcels. One opposing councilman threatened to investigate the legality of a retroactive referendum to allow residents to vote on Crossroads. He also vowed to keep the issue alive into the next election.