KEARNY –
Kearny is another step closer to seeing new commercial development along its Passaic Ave. corridor, close to its East Newark border.
The town’s governing body signed off last Tuesday night on a three-year redevelopment agreement for a portion of the Passaic Ave. Redevelopment Area with DVL Kearny Holdings LLC and its principals Alan Casnoff of Philadelphia and Lawrence J. Cohen of New York.
Key to that mobilization is construction of a BJ’s Wholesale Club on the east side of Passaic Ave. which will be positioned as the “anchor” of several new retail stores planned for the area near ShopRite.
Eric R. Ballou, principal of InSite Engineering, the Wall Township firm hired by DVL to assist with the project, told the mayor and Town Council that DVL expected to begin disconnecting utilities at older retail properties on the mall site shortly before tearing down those structures, starting in November.
Then, the firm figures it will be undertaking “infrastructure, beginning early next year, for the BJ’s project,” Ballou said.
Under terms of the redeveloper agreement, DVL must pay the town $50,000 a year in “administrative fees” plus consultant fees by Oct. 1 and each year thereafter until the town has issued a certificate of completion for the project. However, the fee will be adjusted downward based on a formula keyed to the “gross building area of the new buildings” completed.
Those new buildings will be an 87,788 square foot structure to be leased to BJ’s Wholesale Club, a 35,000 square foot, one-story structure to house one retail client and a 17,000 square foot, one-story structure that will house five smaller retail tenants. Other than BJ’s, no other tenancies have yet been announced by DVL.
Additionally, the agreement calls for DVL to pay the town $90,000 in administrative fees owned for 2013 and 2014 for which DVL was “in arrears from prior redeveloper agreements.”
DVL must also provide to the town $184,000 as its contribution toward the eventual construction of a Passaic River Waterfront Park/Walkway within the next decade.
DVL has pledged to try to hire Kearny residents as construction workers for one out of every five jobs on the project.
DVL will put up $75,000 in “condemnation escrow” to acquire easements from Kmart.
Some history on the project: In December 2000, the town declared 86 acres in the southwestern part of Kearny to be in need of redevelopment, and in 2001, the mayor and council adopted the original Passaic Ave. Redevelopment Plan which was revised in 2007 and amended in 2014 to allow for the construction called for in the agreement approved last week.
– Ron Leir
