Medford is studying three parcels
for a rehabilitation area

At its Aug. 11 session, Medford Township Council voted unanimously to direct the Planning Board to run a preliminary investigation of three properties in the township's Community Commercial Zoning District, near the corner of Church Road and Medford-Mount Holly Road, which is County Route 541. The question in front of the board is whether those properties should be designated an area in need of rehabilitation. The council's own summary of the resolution says the designation is meant to encourage private investment, new rateables and new jobs.

The three properties named in the resolution are 203 Medford-Mt. Holly Road, 199 Church Road and 205 Medford-Mt. Holly Road. The Church Road address is the mailing address of Fellowship Alliance Church. Township Manager Robert Dovi told the council the church plans to subdivide the front corner at the intersection, along with a parcel that holds a vacant auto parts store.

What is going on the corner has not been settled. Mayor Michael Czyzyk said the township has been given a developer and not an end user. Shared Administrator Brandon Umba described a possible Wawa as a rumor. There is already a smaller Wawa at that corner, inside an existing plaza. Umba also said the developer first asked the township for an area in need of redevelopment, a different designation, and the township said no. Czyzyk described what is being sought as more a change of use than a redevelopment, which is why the township is looking at rehabilitation instead.

Most of the council discussion was about what a designation would carry with it. Umba told the council that a rehabilitation designation does not allow a payment in lieu of taxes, known as a PILOT. It does allow a tax abatement, but the council has said it will not allow one here. Czyzyk said he would not approve either for this property, and named one case he would entertain, a PILOT that helps fund the schools.

For context, the properties sit near where more than 1,000 units are expected in the area under the third and fourth rounds of New Jersey's affordable housing obligations, the periods in which the state sets how many affordable homes each town must plan for. Medford has used the designation before: an earlier rehabilitation area produced the brewery that now occupies the former municipal building on Main Street, with a reported five-year tax abatement. It is the Planning Board's investigation that comes next, and the council would act after that.

A preliminary investigation is a study, not a designation. What a designation would mean for a specific property is a question for a licensed New Jersey attorney. Reported by Pine Barrens Tribune. This is a summary in our own words; the full report is theirs.