OLD TAPPAN, N.J.—Approximately two dozen members of the valley business community turned out to the annual Breakfast with the Greater Pascack Valley Mayors on Jan. 29 at Westwood’s Iron Horse Restaurant.
Old Tappan Mayor John M. Kramer said developments coming together in his borough over the next few years showed “the wheels have started to come off” following years of otherwise thoughtful growth.
Hosted by the nonprofit Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce, the breakfast gave each mayor or his or her designee five minutes to speak on hot-button issues.
The public was invited, and time was set aside for questions and answers.
Introduced by former Westwood Mayor Skip Kelley, who serves on the GPVCOC board, the organization’s president, Robin Malley of Friedberg Properties, set the tone for the roughly hourlong event.
Also speaking were Emerson Mayor Danielle DiPaola, Hillsdale Mayor John Ruocco, Montvale Council President Douglas Arendacs, Oradell Mayor Dianne Didio, Park Ridge Mayor Keith Misciagna, Washington Township Mayor Peter Calamari, and Woodcliff Lake Mayor Carlos Rendo.
Malley, vice chair of the Zoning Board of Adjustment in Woodcliff Lake, asked at the outset, “What is going on with the major building projects? How many rental units are coming into town? How many units are for sale? How many square feet of retail? What about affordable housing? What’s being done—you see so many vacant stores in the area—what’s being done to fill those vacancies?” she said.
Malley also established, via a call for a show of hands, that many people in the room shop on Amazon, a commercial juggernaut she said was “the culprit for a lot of what we lose because it’s so convenient to shop on Amazon instead of getting in our cars and going somewhere else.”
Lamenting empty storefronts in her group’s service area, Malley also said traffic is a regional problem and called on the mayors to see what they could do to steer Bergen County toward undertaking a traffic study.
She added, “If we can address that and maybe bring that up to the powers that be, I would love it and I know a lot of other people would love to see it. We’re hurting ourselves shopping online and yet we’re increasing our traffic. That’s what I hope gets discussed.”
Woodcliff Lake’s mayor lamented the difficulty in getting a cohesive vision to developing its Broadway, and Emerson’s mayor said she was pushing for a new look at the Kinderkamack Road corridor overhaul, which her council suggested left room for improvement.
Kramer got quick laughs by starting with, “Old Tappan: We have no Broadway, we have no Kinderkamack Road.”
Other mayors interjected, “You’re lucky!”
He said having served in Old Tappan for most of his life, “I’ve seen things change drastically in the town, however… it’s grown in an orderly fashion and one that has been pleasing to the community and has satisfied the residents.”
He said in his tenure as mayor, and as a councilman before that, “Everything was going fine. Believe me, I’ve led a charmed life—but it seems that in the past couple of years the wheels have started to come off.”
Kramer said, “We’re beginning to have so many developments and it’s due to our obligations with affordable housing.”
He said, “We’re going to see some great expansion in Old Tappan. I don’t know that it’s for the best; however, we’re all confronted with this situation.”
He listed a fully approved 26-unit townhouse development on 3 acres across from the regional high school and the former Pearson Education property, a nearly 20-acre property that was sold two years ago, and is before the Planning Board with 126 rental units, 99 townhouse units, and a 21,000-square-foot commercial parcel.
[For more, see “Hearings continuing on 229-unit mixed-use proposal”]
He also mentioned the four-unit United Way home project bound for a secondary street; a memory care facility bound for Central Avenue; and plans put forth for the former Presbyterian Church of the Palisades, including a senior assisted living facility.
“All of these,” he said, “kind of affect our traffic problems, our police department, and our first aid corps, in particular the assisted living facilities, which tax our ambulance corps to quite a degree.”
He said the loss of Foodtown at Bi-State Plaza was significant, with nothing on the horizon to replace it. He also lamented that Charlie Brown’s has closed after having been a successful business there for more than 40 years.
“We have all of these things coming into play and I can see a great change coming down the road for Old Tappan. We’ve been through such an orderly progression but this is coming to full force within the next couple of years. So it’s going to change Old Tappan.”
[Related: Mayors Dish Over Breakfast:
Amazon’s Impact, Housing Mandates, More]
