It’s not just Cranbury, it’s happening in Bernards Township as well. Before anyone is too hard on the towns, the State forces us to build a certain amount of low income housing. The townships fight but you know the NJ Courts.
The Trump Administration announced this week it is moving to stop this farm theft.
The infamous “Mount Laurel” decision.
And I'm the last one to defend the State of New Jersey, but the state's affordable housing mandates were designed specifically to address the problems that were caused by municipalities like Cranbury.
The political leaders in towns like Cranbury sat down years ago and determined that their best course of action over the long term would be to encourage as much large-scale warehouse development as possible. This was based on a simple -- and cynical -- understanding of how New Jersey's system of governance works. They figured out that warehouse development gave them the best combination of impacts vs. benefits of any land use. Warehouses gave them the following:
1. Low impacts on municipal utilities (they use far less water and generate far less sewage than any other commercial land use)
2. No new students in the school system
3. Much lower rates of traffic (on a per-acre basis) than other land uses such as residential, retail, office, etc.
4. Property tax revenues that far exceed the costs of municipal services for the properties
The result of all this was that you have these municipalities with millions of square feet of warehouse space, with lots of truck traffic on regional roads in neighboring towns, and no local residential development where the workers in these buildings could live. You end up with thousands of workers traveling to these jobs from miles away, with other municipalities carrying the cost of all the municipal services for these workers and their families.