Hundreds of new apartments have been approved on a former industrial site in the heart of South Jersey’s College town.
220 Rowan Blvd., another Nexus Properties project in Glassboro
The Glassboro Planning Board voted Wednesday to save Nexus Properties’ plans for 220 units and about 8K SF of retail at the corner of Academy and East High streets in the downtown business district, 42Freeway reported.
The market-level project, called Glassworks, will span two city blocks and six stories on a site about three-quarters of a mile from the core of Rowan University’s campus.
Nexus expects the project to be delivered in 2029, 70 and 73 reported.
The new retail component will effectively be a replacement for the older commercial properties on the site.
The site once housed the Whitney Glass Works, which closed in the 1920s. The Heritage Glass Museum operates in the neighborhood and will remain open, along with Angelo’s Diner. The former Glassboro Library is set for demolition.
Lawrenceville-based Nexus is also a major student housing owner in Glassboro, with five properties listed on its website.
Some of that is part of the Rowan Boulevard project, where Nexus is forming a $425M public-private partnership with Rowan University to build a mixed-use neighborhood overlooking the campus.
While permitting can be a challenge in South Jersey, this area sees some multifamily development, a large portion of affordable housing is obviously for the state requirements for municipalities in the Mount Laurel doctrine.
Enforcement of a 1975 New Jersey Supreme Court decision requiring local governments to use zoning to produce more affordable housing is set to expire in 2024.
The push is also underway in Voorhees, where 180 affordable units are on the way. Administrators there greenlit plans for a 178-unit, market-rate office-to-home conversion last month.
But the mixed-use plan for the redevelopment of the Echelon Mall store has fallen through since they were introduced last year, reported in the Philadelphia Business Journal this week. Hoboken Brownstone Co told this outlet because of the uncertainty about the $90M tax credit sought through New Jersey’s Aspire program, which has paused the application process.