Robbinsville Township

Design First, Zone later: A municipal strategy to build a new Jersey town | Status: 90% Complete

The Town Council and the Planning Board of Washington (now Robbinsville) determined that the 13,000-acre New Jersey township should endeavor to maintain its rural character, rather that plan for its orderly conversion to suburban subdivisions. Because Robbinsville is home to a large warehouse colony, occupied by a distribution centers for a number of national companies, residents enjoy a certain amount of freedom from “ratables-chase” politics. How could future residential and commercial development be encouraged to create mixed use communities, sparing Township farms and forests? 

Mark Keener AIA AICP and partner, Bob Brown FAIA, led Township Master Plan process focussing continued viability of farmland and open space, through use of the state Farmland Preservation Program, the purchase of development rights by the township and the creation of a “transfer of development rights” process that includes farms as sending areas and new villages and hamlets as receiving areas.

Outcomes

What ultimately has become the Robbinsville Town Center sits adjacent to an older planned-unit development built in the early 1980s, as well as an established commercial area. It is near the intersection of U.S. Route 130 and Route 33, and is today, a community of about 1000 houses + loft-style condominiums, townhouses, duplexes, retail and commercial office space. the incremental realization of the plan over the ensuing decades is also a direct result of the building types, architectural standards, and street plan codified by the municipality and pursued by the master developer, Sharbell Corporation.

Project Team

Town Center Public Spaces: Mark Keener: Primary author and Project director, Design : Team: B. Brown | With: March Associates, Urban Partners | Township project director: Robert Melvin

Township Master Plan: Mark Keener: Project Manager, Design Leader: Bob Brown | With: Jim Hartling, Urban Partners | Township project director: Robert Melvin

As the preliminary civil engineering documentation moved ahead, it became apparent that Town Center’s public parks, streets boulevards and gardens needed to be considered in some detail sooner than anticipated. Otherwise, many of the hoped-for internal and external connections, and activities anticipated for these spaces may be foreclosed if final decisions about grading, dimensions and materials were made by individual participating developers without reference to an overall concept. A New Jersey Department of Community Affairs grant made funds available to develop conceptual plans for the design of each of the parks and public spaces needed to ensure that the Town Center’s public open spaces worked together as a linked system to be enjoyed by all Township residents. This extraordinary emphasis on creating and maintaining a high-quality public environment has several origins, but principally it is a matter of marketplace competitiveness.

What’s Next?

Many new homebuyers agree that the plan for Town Center substitutes the typical subdivision’s expansive lawn with SOMETHING BETTER. That “something better” is the amenity and conviviality of Town Center’s public parks, streets, boulevards and gardens. It is anticipated that the township’s plan will guide subsequent phases.