FRANKLIN LAKES — The borough is moving forward on multiple affordable housing fronts after responding to a Jan. 31 deadline to comment on fourth-round quotas issued to municipalities in October by the state Department of Community Affairs.
The borough has taken five actions in response to the department's quotas number.
It first responded with a challenge to the 497 new affordable units assigned by the state, offering calculations that 463 is a more accurate number. The borough's assignment ranked fourth among Bergen County municipalities, behind Paramus's 1,000 units, Mahwah's 629 and Ramsey's 503.
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Franklin Lakes then said it would continue its association with the 26 municipalities acting as the coalition Local Leaders for Responsible Planning to legally delay the enactment of the fourth-round quotas. The group is appealing two court rejections of its proposal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
The borough also announced its decision to end its association with a 12-municipality challenge to the affordable housing law's constitutionality spearheaded by the borough of Madison.
It issued a request for proposals for the design and construction of a 65-unit affordable housing complex previously planned for McCoy Road and now on 3.5 acres donated to the borough as part of its settlement agreement with S. Hekemian Group on the development of the remaining 89 acres of the Cigna property.
The fifth action to be taken by the borough is to wait for a Planning Board application for development of the remaining portion of the Cigna site by S. Hekemian Group, trading as SHG Franklin Lakes LLC, "in the next few months."
Changing uses in Franklin Lakes
The 189-acre complex was built by IBM in 1971 and vacated in 1993. Medco bought the property in 1997 and sold it to Express Scripts in 2012. In 2015, Express Scripts agreed to donate 100 acres of the site to the town in return for a reduced tax assessment. Known as Parsons Pond Park, it was dedicated in June 2016.
Cigna, which was bought out by Express Scripts in December 2018, announced in August 2021 that it was moving its 2,100 employees to Morris Plains.
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Hekemian initially proposed 2,500 multi-housing units for the site, or 28 units per acre. The number of units varied throughout discussions during 2023, from 650 units to 305 units and 495,000 square feet of warehouse space.
The borough came to an agreement with SHG Franklin Lakes LLC and the Fair Share Housing Center in November 2023 to rezone the property with two options — one for retail use and the other for federal use.
Three lawsuits were filed challenging the agreement. In October 2024, the mayor and Borough Council adopted a new ordinance amending the 2023 zoning to settle the three legal challenges.
Ordinance 1927 would: