2014: Boom!

After many years of stalled projects, it appears that 2014 will be the boom year Plainfielders have long anticipated.

For the past several years, Frank Cretella provided the only visible progress in redevelopment, although his Park Avenue projects on the PNC Bank block represented just two of more than a dozen the Planning Division has been tracking through various stages of approval. Now his Gavett Place plans are picking up, and newcomer Mario Camino is also promoting his plans for projects on Park Avenue and North Avenue.

As a freelancer for the Courier News in 2008, I covered Steven Chung's proposal for 80 senior apartments behind his block-long building on East Front Street. Chung successfully rehabbed the former senior center site and attained full occupancy of all the new spaces, with the popular Pollo Campero and other restaurants and a Neighborhood House satellite facility. But the apartment proposal did not take off. Now there is talk that it is ready to go.

Add in the Union County College acquisition of former Thul property for an expansion and things look bright indeed.

Even the seeming duel over Lot 9, with the Housing Authority proposing 84 apartments and Cretella floating the concept of a brew pub and distillery, is a good sign of increasing interest in development. And then there is the long-awaited transformation of Elmwood Gardens from public housing with a poor reputation to low-income affordable townhouse-style construction.

It's only a twinkle perhaps in someone's eye, but the former National Starch property in the West End has been rezoned from "light industrial" uses to permit a shopping center or entertainment venues and more.

Of course, one hopes the new construction will provide jobs for city residents, even though a proposed local hiring ordinance was deemed problematic.

The new administration may have to find a way to beef up the Planning Division, which lost personnel in recent years, in order to deal with this new interest in the city. The key to making it work is to ensure developers have a full understanding of Plainfield's land use requirements and are willing to meet them. This means increased demands on city staff to explain and enforce the city's master plan, zoning ordinance (including two new Transit-Oriented Development zones) and historic preservation considerations. With all that in mind, it might be a very Happy New Year for Plainfield.

--Bernice