After decades as an active excavation site, the Riverdale Quarry is being cleared for redevelopment.
Excavation has stopped, and machinery has been removed from the 127-acre site, south of Hamburg Turnpike and west of Interstate 287. Quarrying was expected to end in 2014. A decade later, the site is finally getting ready for its next life.
Due to the delay, borough officials adopted a revised redevelopment plan for the site in spring 2024, setting new zoning regulations and defining the types of businesses that can operate there. The plan, developed with input from the town's Quarry Redevelopment Committee and property owners, allows for a mix of industrial and commercial uses, town records show.
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Permitted uses include warehouses, distribution and fulfillment centers, last-mile logistics hubs, data centers, light manufacturing facilities and makerspaces, or workshop-style spaces designed for small-scale production and prototyping. The plan allows uses to be combined within a single building, providing flexibility for future tenants, records show.
Town officials identified the uses in an effort to create jobs near residential areas, capitalize on the site's access to Interstate 287 and restore lost tax revenue, records show. The redevelopment plan calls the site an "ideal employment location," as it is largely hidden from local neighborhoods.
In addition to principal uses, the redevelopment plan outlines several permitted accessory uses. They include office and employee space, solar carports and outdoor storage. Town officials said the quarry owners, currently Bernardsville-based Riverdale Quarry LLC, will ultimately bring a developer forward to negotiate with the borough. The resulting developer’s agreement should set more specific requirements for any project.
The Riverdale site, assessed at more than $24 million for tax purposes in 2025, was leased by Tilcon New York Inc. for crushed stone production in 2024, according to town records. Its property tax bill is roughly $444,710, county records show.
North Jersey area known for pinkish-white stone
The site was once well known for its Pompton Pink Granite, a distinctive pinkish-white stone found only in the Riverdale, Pompton Lakes and Bloomingdale area.
Widely used as a decorative building stone, it may have been formed about 1 billion years ago from magma beneath the New Jersey Highlands, state geological records say. The colorful granite has been used at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Paterson and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Some of it can be seen in the rock faces behind the Walmart store at the northwest intersection of Route 23 and Interstate 287.
What happens to former quarries?
Many former quarries in North Jersey have become residential sites. The Villas at Crown View in West Orange now stand at the former Orange Quarry near Interstate 280, and the aptly named Heritage Lake at the Quarry sits amid a former limestone quarry in Hamburg.
Some former quarries have taken on more commercial use. A former quarry in West Milford along Greenwood Lake Turnpike turned into the home of a mulch company and now also houses a natural gas compressor station for the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company.