WESTWOOD, N.J.—Mayor Ray Arroyo had more to say than his time allowed at the Jan. 27 session of the 2021 Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce Mayors Breakfast, held on Zoom this year instead of at the warm and gracious Iron Horse Restaurant.
“I didn’t realize the 5-minute rule was in effect, especially with the number of questions that were put forth,” he told Pascack Press following the annual event, which was his second such since being sworn in as mayor.
Of note, he said keeping parking, “a finite resource,” in sight, “We anticipate increases in vehicular traffic and in shopper parking demand as a result of the ongoing addition of—as [host] Robin [Malley] stated, thousands of apartments nearby along the north-south corridor.”
That point resonated with Arroyo’s fellow mayors, all of whom have had to contend with the pressures of development and redevelopment, and—depending on one’s point of view—overdevelopment.
Arroyo shared his prepared remarks with us, and so this is an expanded look, in the mayor’s words (lightly edited), at challenges and trends in his borough, the self-described hub of the Pascack Valley:
Regarding the Central Business District, first floor vacancies, and new occupancies: Last year I rebutted claims that downtown Westwood was struggling to find tenants, that businesses were closing at uncomfortable rates. This was before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Based on data I’d asked Celebrate Westwood to provide, I can report this year, that over the past 12 months—10 of which were within the ongoing global pandemic—16 businesses have either closed or relocated out of Westwood.
Eighteen businesses have newly opened or expanded to nearby storefronts along the ground floor of the Westwood Central Business District. That is a net positive gain of two businesses to the Hub of the Pascack Valley.
Breaking it down a bit further, two of the five businesses that closed include Bank of America and New York Sports Club. Their spaces are unused and under renovations respectively, and their closures were in the works prior to the pandemic.
The Sports Club will become a new mixed use residential/commercial anchor on the south end of the district, offering five affordable units per the terms of Westwood’s Fair Share Housing Settlement agreement
The bank—housed in an imposing Art Deco landmark building at the town’s main intersection—was a victim of the growing inutility of brick-and-mortar bank locations in downtown settings.
This reverses a trend that was popular just 15 years ago.
Online banking and mobile apps have done to retail bank branches specifically what Amazon has done to brick and mortar retail more generally. Westwood now has three former bank sites empty and available. So far, two of the three—with the upside of plentiful onsite parking—have generated interest for adaptive reuse.
Of the 16 storefronts that went dark during 2020, nine are now reoccupied or soon will be, and 10 belong to nine entrepreneurs new to Westwood. They have brought their business models to a town that they believe will withstand the pandemic’s worst economic impacts.
This new investor interest and business churn has occurred not only during severe public health and economic crisis, but without Westwood having added new uses, recommended for as-of-right zoning amendments in its recent Master Plan re-enact.
Nevertheless, Westwood’s well managed and cared for Central Business District remains a desirable destination for business investment due to its scale, charm, and pedestrian friendly environment—unique for our area—and for its Parking Authority’s engaged management of customer, commuter and employee parking.
The ParkMobile app, implemented by the WPA in fall 2020, streamlines the downtown parking experience and allows for better data collection. This data, when used in conjunction with recording the manual meter and kiosk collections, will better inform our land use, planning decisions.
Westwood’s parking inventory has been mostly fixed for 25 years. The additional meters were added in private/public partnerships pursuant to developers’ agreements across two CBD properties.
Keeping this finite resource in mind, we anticipate increases in vehicular through-traffic and consumer parking demand, stemming from the pending addition of thousands of apartments across neighboring towns, this to partially satisfy their affordable housing mandates.
We have taken a cautious approach with respect to adding parking intensive uses as of right in the CBD. We plan to study, post-pandemic trends with an eye towards appropriately scaled growth, intensity, and commercial improvements.
Historically, Westwood’s land use governance has been thoughtful and deliberative: qualities that have avoided mistakes and produced much evident success. We’d prefer to plan for additional public parking, or better allocation of existing resources, based on data and actual observation rather than assuming that rideshare services, and public transportation, will soon replace owner operated vehicles in a truly appreciable way.
In fact, over the last decades, neither train nor bus commuters have generated much CBD activity, except for the occasional coffee and newspaper a commuter may grab in the morning or a take-out dinner meal in the evening. And now, without those 300 daily train commuters passing through the Westwood Train Station, commuter/consumer impact is even more negligible.
The post-pandemic rebound of transit into New York City is an unknown, but will likely follow a long-term trajectory.
High earning “knowledge workers” in finance, insurance, information services, and tech prefer the work at home model. Time is a most precious commodity. For many industries, there is no need and, perhaps, a newfound detriment to the commuters’ three-hour round trip daily slog:
Employees save on the expense of NYC priced travel, clothing, food, and entertainment and employers reduce their overhead rental costs for “vanity” office locations, utilities, maintenance, and client entertainment expenses—while realizing increased productivity.
Those saved dollars—repatriated from NYC—become discretionary dollars that can be spent locally. Few commuters are currently on the trains and buses, but Goldberg’s is still booming. CBD lunch business, largely moribund pre-pandemic, has also picked up, in line with more folks working from home.
Today, office buildings in New York City are allowed 40% occupancy under Covid regs, but in practice, facility managers are seeing closer to 10% occupancy.
Make no mistake: people and businesses are leaving for reasons other than the virus. Murders in New York City were up 42% and shootings up 15% in 2020 over 2019’s totals.
The streets are filthy, the subways are dangerous, and business properties are not adequately protected. Those who can are voting with their feet, just as the city’s similar unraveling in the 1990s brought myself and my wife to Westwood.
We ought not emulate that governance. Repeating its follies will only produce the same results here. But what does it all mean for the suburbs and for post pandemic localism?
After the 1918 pandemic, the euphoria of the roaring 20s spread nationwide. Westwood, for its 2.3 square miles, saw its third largest population boom in population growth, trailing only by comparison to the decade after its 1894 incorporation, and the postwar baby boom.
Similar pent-up demand is in the offing for us as long as the economy, like the virus, remains poised to surge locally. I believe it is. That belief is not based on faith. It’s based upon the reasoned investments entrepreneurs have continued to make in Westwood despite the pandemic, and in our currently booming residential real estate market. That market is fueled by those seeking to trade overpriced, cramped and dangerous urban living arrangements for suburban, small town spaciousness, personal safety and the relative ease with which one can be socially distanced—and comfortably sheltered from the storm.
In 2020 almost half—51 out of 105—single family homes in Westwood—sold for over their asking prices. In the second half of the year, 40 out of 75 sold for above list. With interest rates still low, Realtors are reporting increased foot traffic at open houses, and multiple same-day offers.
Westwood continues to offer what urban refugees like myself and my wife sought 27 years ago. And people are willing to pay a premium for it. The governing body’s job is not to screw it up.
As we look toward a post-pandemic future, we need to be smart about our expenditures and the ways in which our municipalities are funded. Despite the positive net of businesses in the Central Business District, we know many are struggling to make ends meet and our property owners have taken on additional burdens to retain viable tenants.
Our tax assessor has written down commercial values by 5%, adjusting to the economic hardships the pandemic lockdown and restrictions have wreaked on commercial property owners. This was done not only in the interest of equity, but in the hopes of reducing the number of tax appeals which generate litigation expenses and refund payments should property owners prevail.
In 2020 we realized an $86,000 shortfall in anticipated revenues. We were able to mitigate some of that through a hiring freeze, as well as reduced spending on salaries wages and overtime. Fortunately, the borough was reimbursed for its covid-related expenses via the Bergen County Cares Municipal Grant Program.
One place where we might best be able to lessen the strain of tightened budgetary belts is through the consideration of shared services. Westwood is open to participating in mutually beneficial, shared service arrangements.
For example, in 2018, both Westwood POA and HUMC donated two newer passenger vans to the borough, replacing two older ones that frequently broke down. The vans regularly serviced a small group of Westwood seniors, but CDL drivers were hard to get for the relatively few hours they were in service.
The pandemic shut that service down, but Councilman Chris Montana, SAB liaison, is working with Emerson Mayor Danielle DiPaola to expand the universe of users via a shared service provided for seniors in both towns. We can start in small impactful ways.
My final points bring us back to the omnipresent pandemic. As you know, COVID 19 vaccine distribution is managed federally, on a per capita basis. That puts populations with higher percentages of at-risk demographics at a disadvantage.
Other states, not so situated, are able to inoculate their 65 and older populations and get the vaccine into their general populations sooner, while we in New Jersey, particularly Bergen County, are backlogged with seniors waiting for appointments, contingent on the shots arriving.
We know many seniors do not have the computer skills to navigate the online application for pre-registration. Westwood’s Senior Advisory Board is putting together a team of volunteers willing to help our seniors by preregistering them online and following up to make sure they know where and when to arrive for inoculations. Volunteers have offered to drive them to their appointments as well.
Councilwoman Cheryl Hodges organized a similar effort during the pandemic’s March/ April peak, shopping on behalf of seniors to reduce their exposure to Covid-19.
We are also exploring the possibility of in-town vaccinations for seniors and inquiring how shut-ins might receive in-home inoculations.
We especially appreciate our ongoing relationship with PVMC, which has provided weekly updates on hyper-local case and transmission rates, hospitalizations—facilitating an analysis on what this all means for our community.
Our master planners have always recognized the importance of our hospital, perhaps never more so than during this pandemic. And for that reason, the governing body will be taking up their land use recommendations for the Hospital Zone, in order to strengthen this important institutional sector of our local economy.
Each town shares similar burdens but each brings its own subplots and inflections. We each have excellent professional advisors, citizen volunteers—whether elected officials, board appointees or people who truly care about each other.
We still have a number of hard months ahead of us but the light at the end of our tunnel is not that of an oncoming, largely empty NJT train: it’s the light of our post-pandemic afterlife… summoning us forth.
We’re going to be okay.
— Westwood Mayor Ray Arroyo