While the Haddonfield municipal government continues its due diligence review period with conditional redevelopers Woodmont Properties, other local groups are seeking to override that process.
By Matt Skoufalos | July 11, 2024
“Say No to High-Density Development at Bancroft,” spotted in Haddonfield in January 2018. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
The decade-plus saga that has come to define redevelopment of the 8.2-acre Bancroft parcel in Haddonfield has taken yet another turn in recent weeks, as objectors to the latest plan put forth by the borough government — to construct 120 apartments on the site — have set in motion processes to overturn it.
The latest of these is a lawsuit from the group Haddonfield Encouraging Responsible Development (HERD), with borough residents David Huehnergarth and Chris Maynes alleging that Haddonfield Commissioners didn’t follow their own processes outlined within the May 2023 requests for qualifications and proposals for the project (RFQ/P).
According to that document, the redevelopment plan calls for “4.65 acres of Public Use/Active Recreation and 1.42 acres for the repurposing of the existing Lullworth Hall” on the west side of the parcel.
On the east side, it calls for “4.95 acres of passive open space, which will be constructed, owned and maintained by the Borough, and market-rate and affordable age-targeted residential units on the Property.”
The RFQ/P further states that, “pursuant to the Redevelopment Plan, the Property can be developed either with market-rate townhouses (with affordable housing in duplexes) or market-rate condominium flats (with affordable housing as condominium flats) in mid-rise buildings, or a combination of either.”
Huehnergarth and Maynes allege in their suit that “despite the RFQ/P’s emphasis on proposals for age-targeted and for-sale units, Woodmont’s response proposed neither.”
The suit further seeks to invalidate the redevelopment agreement on the grounds that Roche no longer claimed Haddonfield as his primary residence at the time of the vote, alleging that the “commissioners’ actions with the participation of Commissioner Kevin Roche were arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable and contrary to law.”
At the same time, former Haddonfield Mayor Neal Rochford is leading a contingent of residents in collecting signatures for a petition to designate the entire parcel as open space with the exception of 10 affordable housing units.
“The Bancroft site holds immense historical, environmental, and recreational value for our community,” Rochford wrote in an open letter to the community posted to his Facebook page. “By designating it as a permanent open/recreation space, we ensure that it remains a haven for residents, and a place of tranquility amidst our active borough.”
Conversely, the letter reads, petitioners fear “this type of development would increase traffic congestion, strain local infrastructure, and potentially overburden our schools and public services.”
Rochford, who served on two consecutive Haddonfield commissions — one that acquired the Bancroft parcel from developer J. Brian O’Neill in exchange for right of first refusal to develop the site, and a second in which he was mayor during the redevelopment negotiations for it — said he was motivated to participate in the public conversation after the borough awarded the conditional redevelopment agreement to Woodmont.
“Just about everybody I talk to was taken by surprise that 120 apartment rentals was the choice of the commissioners,” Rochford said. “A lot of people, including myself, felt like we could do better there; that we could do something special.
“I wish that the borough had put in some more communication before their announcement, but it is what it is,” he said. “As soon as the announcement came out, we started putting together an action plan to change course, which we feel is a much better solution.”
In Haddonfield, borough commissioners, while in office, typically attempt to refrain from commenting on the motivations and decisions of their predecessors. The reverse hasn’t always been true, however. A prior lawsuit from the HERD group was led by ex-mayors Jack Tarditi and Tish Colombi while Rochford was in office.
That legal action was further complicated by a second, simultaneous lawsuit from Fair Share Housing Center over a redevelopment plan that would have created deed-restricted 55-and-older housing on the site, and ongoing negotiations with O’Neill over density and design of the space that dragged on until the current group of commissioners bought him out of the agreement.
Haddonfield Commissioners Neal Rochford and Jeff Kasko talk about amendments to the Bancroft redevelopment plan at the borough planning board meeting in January 2018. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
Now that he’s on the other side of the table, Rochford sees things differently.
He pointed out that a petition for referendum is a different approach than making the borough incur legal costs defending itself in court, and expressed his wishes for the public conversation on the issue to be held above the fray.
“We’ve been trying very, very hard not to criticize the administration, but to advocate for a better solution,” Rochford said.
“That last group of people, it got very personal; they attacked us in very personal terms, and we’re not trying to do that.
“We’re not doing this as a lawsuit, which Mr. Tarditi did to us,” he said. “We’re not trying to do it as a special election. I don’t think you do referendums every time commissioners make a decision. But this is something major enough. Let the residents have their say about what they want.”
To put the initiative on the ballot, Rochford said his group needs about 535 in-person signatures from registered Haddonfield voters who participated in the last election. At the moment, it has collected around 450.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said.
Rochford believes the town could be able to secure Green Acres funds from the state of New Jersey to cover the cost of preserving the land; moreover, he’s unconcerned by the prospect of building only 10 affordable housing units on the site as opposed to a larger-scale project that might take more of a bite out of the local affordable housing obligation.
“We’re going to have to have these microprojects to meet our obligations,” Rochford said. “We’re going to have to do fives and tens and tap into that fund that the state has for projects under 25. It may be difficult, but I don’t think it’s impossible.
“A 100-unit complex and an additional 18 for affordable housing, by Haddonfield standards is too big,” he said. “What’s going to try and get people over that hump is when they see the success of the Snowden project; the three affordable units going in on Ellis Street.
“If we’re able to build our 10-unit place at Bancroft, then you’re going to start to win hearts and minds.”
Composition of existing Haddonfield housing stock. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
‘The reality is that someone has to pay for these things’
The work of winning hearts and minds might begin with members of the borough land use board, which, in the midst of updating its community Master Plan, frowned upon the idea of multifamily infill housing, accessory dwelling units, and other accommodations to address a local housing inventory that is largely old, expensive, and contains three bedrooms or more.
That kind of opposition to creating a variety of housing options in the community has frustrated Haddonfield Mayor Colleen Bianco Bezich, who also served part of an unexpired term on Rochford’s mayoral administration while the Bancroft issue came before it.
Bianco Bezich has made it a priority of her administration to bring the borough into compliance with its affordable housing obligation, including seeking scattered housing sites throughout the town, and securing state funding to help offset the cost of constructing The Place at Haddonfield, originally dubbed Snowden Commons, which will build 20 affordable housing units in the borough.
Abandoning the redevelopment agreement with Woodmont is “not a legal possibility if we want to maintain our position on affordable housing,” the mayor said.
“This is a project that incorporates or integrates the affordable housing that we are required by law to put there,” Bianco Bezich said.
“Any promotion of putting that as open space ignores all the work of prior administrations to move forward with Snowden and Crows Woods,” the borough athletic fields, about which “people came out and very vocally championed us doing something,” she said.
Neither does the mayor believe that construction of 10 affordable units would be enough to attract a conmercial developer to the project, meaning it would fall to Haddonfield to bond money for their acquisition and construction, which alone could cost $10 to $14 million, she said.
File photo: Haddonfield Commissioners (from left) Kevin Roche, Frank Troy, and Colleen Bianco Bezich in August 2023. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
“The reality is someone has to pay for these things,” she said.
“[For] that Snowden project at 20 units, we were able to secure one of the first-ever grants for small-scale projects.
“A 10-unit project, it’s unheard of to fund them with millions of dollars from the state. I offered to try previously, and was shot down.”
Bianco Bezich also pointed out that reworking the settlement agreement for the Bancroft parcel could open up the borough to additional legal challenges from Fair Share Housing.
“There are too many costs and too many legal hurdles to pretend that solely open space is a possibility at this point in time,” she said.
“It’s disingenuous and not feasible for someone to promote that site as open space right now, particularly coming from past administrations that designated it an area of redevelopment with residential use,” Bianco Bezich said.
Her colleague, Commissioner Frank Troy, was far more succinct in his remarks from the dais.
“I would have a lot more respect if it was private citizens who hadn’t held office and said, ‘I want to gain signatures and present it to you for a referendum vote,’” Troy said.
“I think it’s a little bit silly for someone who had the chance to make a decision, and failed to do so, or was too chickenshit to do it” to criticize the current process, he concluded.
Woodmont Properties Bancroft RFP Building Massing, August 2023. Credit: NJPEN.
‘People use these process arguments when they know no amount of process would satisfy their objections’
Similarly, Fair Share Housing Executive Director Adam Gordon said he didn’t believe any of the processes being employed to avoid constructing housing at the Bancroft parcel were legal nor feasible.
Gordon cited the failed 2013 referendum, whereby the Haddonfield Public School District sought to acquire the Bancroft parcel for $12.5 million, as the let-the-people-have-their-say moment Rochford’s petition is looking for.
“This is exactly how white, wealthy communities keep people out: they create endless processes, the local bureaucracy of revisiting every decision, saying, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have agreed to do what we agreed to do,’” Gordon said.
“People use these process arguments when they know no amount of process would satisfy their objections.”
Such arguments also underpin an obstructionist rhetoric that Gordon said is common in other wealthy, educated New Jersey communities, and which is often coded for practices that effectively are tantamount to housing segregation.
“I think that the idea that ‘nothing should ever change in my community’ is really the core of the mentality that keeps New Jersey so segregated,” he said. “When you say, ‘We don’t have space for people in Haddonfield,’ are you saying kids just don’t belong there, or that Black and Latino kids belong somewhere else?
“This is what we see wealthy, predominantly white communities do across the state,” like Millburn and Summit, Gordon said — all of which have bucked recent efforts to construct affordable housing.
“These are all very progressive places, but they’re all places in which they have endless debates whenever something is proposed involving affordable housing, and I think that undermines the government and state law,” Gordon said.
“I also think it’s really interesting to think about how we frame these things in our society,” he said. “I think people often point to cities and say, “Camden, they can’t figure out how to get anything done,” but here, that’s okay. It’s not a problem that we have endless cycles of process because it’s Haddonfield.”
Demolition of outbuildings at the former Bancroft property in Haddonfield in 2022. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
Gordon pointed out that the current RFP process was begun on a court order from the state, after the prior litigation efforts stymied any progress on the matter.
Abandoning those agreements would create “tremendous risk” for Haddonfield “and also significant additional expense,” he said.
“When you try to build affordable housing isolated in a way that’s not part of a development, that requires some way to fund it, and I don’t know that there are ways to do it,” he said.
“That’s something that’s going to cost the borough millions of dollars. Snowden is a real site, with a real developer, with a real plan.”
Furthermore, Gordon took a dim view of the argument that the petition to replace the existing redevelopment agreement would even hold water procedurally. He cited New Jersey Title 40, a statute that includes language on zoning powers, as clearly stating, “No zoning ordinance and no amendment or revision to any zoning ordinance shall be submitted to or adopted by initiative or referendum.”
“In general in New Jersey, you can’t make binding land use decisions by referendum,” Gordon said. Any referendum that passed “would really be advisory in nature, and would serve to drag further out this saga that’s been going on for 15 years,” he said.
Moreover, some of the rhetoric around the issue of development at Bancroft — from the HERD group especially, which bemoans the potential impact of adding new schoolchildren to the Haddonfield school district — if enacted into policy, would defy both the federal Fair Housing Act and the New Jersey civil rights code addressing unlawful discrimination in housing, including on the basis of familial status.
Content of yard signs created and distributed by the group Haddonfield Encouraging Responsible Development (HERD) in 2024. Credit: HERD.
“People are trying to revisit decisions that were made many years ago in which Haddonfield committed to using these properties to creating affordable housing,” Gordon said.
“There was an RFP; there was a public process to issue the RFP,” he said. “Now you have commissioners who invested a lot, developers who were playing by the rules of the process, and someone says, ‘Yeah let’s throw all that out.'”
To Gordon, the bottom line is clear: abandoning the agreements that have led to Haddonfield’s affordable housing settlements would subject the borough to further costs and less local control, either in the form of a builder’s remedy lawsuit, or the expense of acquiring and developing individual housing units in a town where the median home price far eclipses a half-million dollars.
Those concerns are compounded in light of the fourth round of affordable housing obligation updates, which are slated to begin in 2025, and new laws enacted this year.
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