The Verona Community Pool is a place for many different activities: splashing, swimming, socializing, and more. What it is not now, and will not be in the future, is a place for residential housing development.MyVeronaNJ.com’s July 8 story on the pool’s budget problems has gotten many residents thinking about ways to make the budget stronger–while keeping the pool affordable. The ideas have ranged from special hours for lap swimming to day passes, per-person family memberships and greater use of the pool grounds for ...
The Verona Community Pool is a place for many different activities: splashing, swimming, socializing, and more. What it is not now, and will not be in the future, is a place for residential housing development.
MyVeronaNJ.com’s July 8 story on the pool’s budget problems has gotten many residents thinking about ways to make the budget stronger–while keeping the pool affordable. The ideas have ranged from special hours for lap swimming to day passes, per-person family memberships and greater use of the pool grounds for concerts, outdoor movies and other recreational events.
But other residents have asserted, on-line and in person, that town officials are deliberately weakening the pool’s finances so that the pool, which operates on a budget separate from the municipal budget, can be forced into bankruptcy. Then, they assert, the nearly 8-acre property can be developed into affordable housing. They even claim to know the developer who will get the contract.
Except that that can’t happen. The Town Council has taken steps to ensure that the pool grounds can’t be developed.
Back in 2021, Verona got an inventory of open space in town that suggested adding the pool grounds to our Recreation and Open Space Inventory (ROSI); that is, designating the land a “Green Acres” property. Once designated as Green Acres, a property must continue to be used for recreation or conservation only; it can’t be built on or paved over.
On July 7, 2025, the Town Council unanimously approved a resolution to formally add the pool grounds to Verona’s protected open space. It also added Centennial Field, a tract between Sunset Avenue and Brookdale Elementary School, the pocket park on Grove Avenue, 14 acres on Mount Prospect abutting Eagle Rock Reservation and nearly 12 acres at the end of Commerce Court. Taken with the previously existing ROSI properties–Everett, Freedom and Liberty fields, the Hilltop Reservation and 6 acres along Brookside Terrace–Verona now has 75.69 acres of protected land. (The town had put the update to ROSI aside while it was dealing with affordable housing issues.)
Verona’s resolution does not require the approval of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which administers the Green Acres program. And even if a future Town Council were to decide to change Verona’s ROSI, it is nearly impossible to remove a Green Acres designation, in whole or in part. Towns that have tried to do this have faced costly lawsuits and have not prevailed.
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