Promises, promises
Opponents of the Golden Triangle redevelopment have long accused the township of striking a hasty deal with Toll Brothers to close a $4 million budget gap. Toll has been paying down its land purchase in $4 million per year increments. It should be fully paid up by 2011. But the township earlier this year extended the builder’s schedule for completing Cornerstone to 2015. That means tax ratables might not be in place for several years, leaving the township with a revenue shortfall. And if Toll decides to walk away from this deal, it gets back its money plus 8 percent interest.
Critics chafe as well at the $32 million East Brunswick shelled out to build a 1,681-slot parking garage for commuters and future residents of Cornerstone. (Neary says the township will pay for the garage’s construction with parking fees and contracts with bus companies using the depot. The township opened the garage on Oct. 1 and will pay Toll $1 per year in rent. It has a 60-year lease with a 30-year option.)
One mayoral candidate in the recent election, Christi Calvano, is against building more houses in an area whose roads are already badly congested. Calvano also doesn’t buy the township’s promises about leasing space to high-end retailers. She points to another strip mall redevelopment, about a mile south of the Golden Triangle, for which the township made similar promises; in November, the first two stores to open there were Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us.
David Stahl, East Brunswick’s newly elected mayor, has objected in the past to how this project was negotiated, including the subordination of the township to Toll’s lender for any claim on the land. But Stahl generally favors the project and said during his campaign that he might shore up the budget gap through spending cuts and debt restructuring.
In an interview with a local newspaper last March, Toll’s vice president of land acquisition, Robert Fuller, said that Cornerstone’s progress had “no real correlation” with Toll’s financial circumstances, which since that interview have worsened. Demand for housing in New Jersey hasn’t exactly been robust lately; in the third quarter of 2008, the state’s foreclosures were up 95 percent compared with the same period the previous year, and its rate of foreclosures in September—one in every 453 homes—outpaced the national average, according to Realty Trak.
“A lot of people think Golden Triangle is a terrible idea now,” admits Neary. What once looked like a promising solution to this problematic site’s redevelopment remains up in the air because, he says, “it’s a different market today.”