Battle brews in N.J. over Jaindl plans
Rural Warren County prepares to fight proposal for 6 million square feet of industrial buildings
A massive stretch of farmland in White Township, New Jersey, near pastures where horses graze and directly across the Delaware River from the imposing cooling towers of Martins Creek Power Plant, has taken center stage in this rural community.
It’s that land, about 581 acres bordered by Route 519, Foul Rift Road and Buckhorn Creek, that major Lehigh Valley developer David Jaindl scooped up for more than $11 million this year in a township where fewer than 5,000 people live. Many of those residents aren’t thrilled with Jaindl’s arrival, after he filed an informal plan with the township in late March for a possible seven industrial buildings totaling more than 6 million square feet on the site.
Those feelings are clear heading northeast on Route 519
toward the land. About 3 miles away, the appeals start — white yard signs plunged into lawns in front of residents’ homes, with red lettering reading, “No Warehouses Ø Save Our Towns.”
Jaindl says the opposition is premature. He appeared before the township Planning Board on April 9, when he made a presentation about the informal plan and fielded questions from residents. Jaindl, who previously said that meeting allowed him to gain a better understanding of White, stressed there’s no official site plan filed and that his company is “still working through some early details” for the site.
“We hope to strike a balance on this site between what is ‘permitted to build’ and what is seen there today, agricultural lands,” Jaindl said in an emailed statement. “Meaning we do not expect to develop the property to its full potential and hope our plans, when filed, will show that we are listening to the township and our neighbors to this property.
“Our plans will include development ‘permitted by right’ and also keeping agricultural lands with the idea of continuing our farm operations,” he said.
Among those eagerly awaiting those plans will be Citizens for Sustainable Development, the group responsible for the lawn signs, which has organized to fight an industrial park that they say would change the fabric of the rural area. It is the group’s stance that the time to act is now — not later.
They are pushing township officials, who have remained mum on the Jaindl land, to rezone the area in question to rule out such an industrial use. They argue the current zoning, which allows an array of industrial uses, is inconsistent with the township’s master plan, which prioritizes the preservation of the area’s rural agricultural character and its open space.
The fight may just be getting started.
A meeting cancellation
If it wasn’t already known, the community’s interest in Jaindl’s development became clear at a White Planning Board meeting July 9.
There, in a small, white municipal building near the intersection of routes 519 and 46, residents from White and surrounding municipalities packed the parking lot, with those arriving just before the 7:30 p.m. meeting forced to make their own parking spot along the blacktop’s edges. They wore orange, some with shirts reading, “No warehouses. Save our farmland,” the two phrases surrounding a logo with a field, silo, barn and fence.
Inside, the residents crammed into a tan-and-brown, wood-paneled room jammed with chairs, with 5-foot gray file cabinets against one side of the room. When all the chairs were taken, residents lined the room’s walls. When the walls were taken, they sat on the floor, with grandmothers, mothers and children alike plopping down and sitting cross-legged. Some stood in the hall outside the room, out of seating options inside. Two overhead fans tried to keep the room cool.
Soon, however, things ground to a halt. The crowd of well over 100 — some said closer to 200 — exceeded the room capacity of 99 people, forcing the board to postpone.
Following the announcement, one woman yelled, “You didn’t foresee this many people?”
Not much later, after more residents expressed similar sentiments, board member Joseph Phillips said, “I didn’t expect it to be this large.”
Perhaps one reason why is because there wasn’t anything on the agenda specifically pertaining to Jaindl’s land. The board was, however, slated to have a discussion regarding the township committee’s request that planners reexamine the master plan, a conversation that certainly could have included the Jaindl land.
The meeting has since been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in a larger venue: the neighboring elementary school’s cafeteria.
Zoning concerns
For years, the land was for sale. Most of it, with power lines running through its center, was owned by PPL Corp. and, later, Talen Energy. Talen decided to sell what it considered “underutilized land.”
Another parcel, at the corner of Foul Rift Road and Route 519, had a for sale sign planted out front, advertising 70 acres of land zoned for industrial or commercial use, according to an image captured in September 2016 by Google Maps.
That zoning was set in 1999, following a reexamination of the township’s master plan specific to the tract of about 700 acres west of Route 519 and south of Foul Rift Road, extending to the Delaware River and to the municipal boundary with Harmony Township. That stretch, adjacent to an industrial zone, includes what is now Jaindl’s land and was, at that time, in the R-1 zone, which permitted detached single-family residences.
Then, as was common in the area, the township was trying to stem residential development on the tract, believing that PPL would follow the trend of power companies selling off their prop
erties, according to Planning Board meeting minutes from 1999. Specifically, the township had concerns about the property’s underlying rock formation, prone to solution caverns that act as a groundwater supply. Detached single-family homes, the Planning Board reasoned, raised concerns regarding wastewater being discharged into an aquifer.
So, the board concluded, the land should be rezoned to a low density industrial district, a zone “designed for relatively largescale industrial with incentives to provide centralized wastewater treatment,” according to the minutes. The designation allows for all uses permitted in the industrial zone, including warehousing or storage, confirmed township engineer Paul Sterbenz.
Residents had concerns back then about the rezoning ordinance.
One resident said he and his family would like to see the residential zone retained, reasoning that he did not want an “industrial park” that would create more pollution, according to meeting minutes. Another resident said he, too, would rather take his chances with homes than industrial operations. Another had concerns about potential warehousing and trucks, arguing Route 519 was not wide enough to accommodate more traffic. Still, several people spoke in favor of the change.
In the 20 years since, there hasn’t been much activity on the land, Sterbenz noted, aside from a solar facility that was built in a southern part of the tract several years ago.
Until now, anyway.
And now that Jaindl is here, Citizens for Sustainable Development wants that rezoning decision from 1999 revisited.
At a Township Committee meeting July 11, Tom Bodolsky spoke for 30 minutes in front of the committee. Bodolsky, a civil engineer and vice president of Citizens for Sustainable Development, made his pitch for why the township should consider rezoning the land — again.
The low density industrial district, Bodolsky said, is out of sync with the township’s master plan, the backbone for local zoning law.
Specifically, according to the 2004 master plan, the township’s first goal is to “preserve and enhance the rural character” of the area, which includes preserving actively farmed land. The second goal is to provide for commercial and industrial development, where appropriate, that will have a “positive impact on the community and the environment while also providing necessary services, jobs and ratables.” Those two goals, the first of nine listed, were unchanged following a 2014 master plan reexamination.
Bodolsky argues that building massive warehouses on land with cavernous geology beneath it, while also loading up Route 519 with trucks, goes against that master plan.
“The amount of trucks that could be promoted out of those two zones is unacceptable,” said Bodolsky, referring to the low density industrial district and adjacent industrial zone. “If you come out of those zones on 519, no matter which way you turn, you are going through residentially zoned areas continuously until you get to routes 80 and 78.”
At the meeting, organizers also presented a petition with more than 600 signatures, requesting the township rezone the land and follow the master plan.
But the township also is about to reexamine the master plan, which hasn’t been reevaluated since 2014. The reexamination request came about because of more than just Jaindl’s land, Sterbenz said, noting other parties have made zoning change requests.
When that discussion begins — and it should at the Planning Board meeting Wednesday — more than just White residents will be interested in listening in.
‘A parade of trucks’
Hope Township, New Jersey, is celebrating its 250th birthday this year, with a parade planned for Sept. 21.
But it’s another kind of parade that has the historic area concerned: the potential for a procession of trucks heading north on Route 519 that could travel through Hope on the way to Interstate 80. Such a scenario could happen if warehouses are built in White.
“We never tell another town what to do,” Hope Deputy Mayor John Kruk said. “We don’t chime in on other towns’ planning, but where this directly affects us is truck traffic.”
Hope is grappling with the issue already. When dump trucks go through the village, carrying construction aggregate to the quarries, the vibrations don’t do old stone buildings built close to Route 519 any favors, Kruk noted. In some cases, he said, dust spits out of a stone building’s cracks when the trucks rumble through.
Right now, there’s a voluntary truck traffic route that goes around Hope, with signs diverting truckers to take Route 46. But, Kruk noted, the voluntary program has no teeth.
So what Jaindl’s arrival has done for Hope is renewed the township’s efforts to prevent trucks from coming through the village, which was established by Moravians in 1769. Kruk said the Township Committee has reached out to the New Jersey Department of Transportation about getting a mandatory route set up.
“We can’t have a parade of trucks continuously coming through town,” he said.
If trucks want to get to Interstate 78, that will take them south on Route 519 through Harmony Township.
“Harmony Township would really like to see White Township change their zoning so this can’t happen,” Committeeman Richard Cornely said.
Harmony sent a letter expressing its concerns to the White Township Committee and the Warren County Board of Chosen Freeholders. Cornely said White has not responded, while the freeholders said they can’t make any decision until formal plans are filed.
The situation reminds him of what Harmony did in 2010, when the township bonded $6 million to acquire a farm property where Dowel Associates proposed a large housing development. The development was controversial because the township believed such a project was not appropriate on the site’s karst geology and it was in the heart of the township’s agricultural area, where other farms had been preserved.
After the purchase, the project went away, and the site remains a farm today.
“We wanted to keep Harmony Harmony,” Cornely said.
Now, he’s hoping White reaches a similar conclusion and takes steps to keep more trucks off Route 519.
“I think it’s going to be a crazy burden for 519,” said Cornely, who owns local company SCC Concrete Inc. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense because it’s not near major highways.”
‘Change everything here’
In his 54-year-old bowling alley, Dennis Smith stood behind the counter, next to the selection of bowling shoes and against the backdrop of 12 lanes. On a Tuesday in July, he took a break from the cash register and pulled out a copy of the Jaindl Industrial Park conceptual landscape rendering that has been circulated all over town.
Smith knows the land well. Not only does the low density industrial district jut around his bowling alley, but some of the land that Jaindl now owns used to be his family’s farm, where he grew up. He remembers riding motorcycles around the land near an old cemetery.
Now, he looks at the conceptual rendering and points at some of the seven buildings on the landscape, including building No. 4, a 1.575-million-squarefoot behemoth that — if built — would be the second-largest industrial building in the extended Lehigh Valley region. It would only trail the 1.7-millionsquare-foot structure in the Majestic Bethlehem Center that QVC and HSN will occupy this year.
If development occurs on the site, Smith is hopeful such a project would provide a boost to his business, Bel-Pike Lanes and Gammy & Pappy’s Snack Bar. But he also has a hard time envisioning warehouses on the farm where he grew up, confused about why the site — 10 miles or so from interstates 78 and 80 — is a logical spot for warehouses.
“It doesn’t belong here,” he said. “It really doesn’t. This is farm country.”
Jaindl has not talked much about what his Jaindl Land Co. saw in the site, telling The Morning Call in April that he “just liked the site.” In his statement, Jaindl did not address questions pertaining to what specifically he liked about the site and what he thought about its highway access.
White Township officials also have stayed quiet in recent months. After telling The Morning Call in April that Jaindl’s plan is so preliminary that “it’s kind of hard to talk about,” White Mayor Jeff Herb has not returned several calls since. Similarly, when Deputy Mayor Sam Race was reached by phone this month, he suggested The Morning Call contact township Chief Financial Officer Kathleen Reinalda, who did not return calls seeking comment.
While most of the comments from people on social media have been negative, lamenting such a use of farmland and the increase in truck traffic on county roads, a few comments also pointed out the potential positives, including additional tax revenue and jobs. Opponents argue, however, that such a large development could increase the burden on taxpayers, especially to provide crews to police the truck corridors and respond to accidents.
Warren County might not mind an influx of jobs, however. For example, more than 36,000 Warren County residents travel outside the area for work, while more than 17,600 noncounty residents commute in to work there, according to 2015 inflow/outflow data from the U.S. Census Bureau. About 11,500 live and work in the county. One of White’s larger employers is DSM Nutritional Products, which employs 240 full-time-equivalent workers on a 500-acre campus near Route 46 where the company makes vitamin forms, premix and arachidonic acid.
Many of the county’s residents head east daily for work, explained Warren County Freeholder Deputy Director Richard Gardner. But Gardner, who said he’s waiting to receive more facts about the potential project, has doubts whether a cluster of warehouses can provide a significant employment boost.
“By their very nature, I think they’re supposed to be efficient and mechanized,” he said. “I can’t see a great number of people being employed by the project.”
In general, while some warehouse users may only employ dozens, a manufacturing operation or fulfillment center within an industrial building could employ hundreds, though the threat of further automation looms on the horizon.
Another challenge is that White continues to get older. The 2014 master plan reexamination document compared 2000 and 2010 census data, which showed the township’s population increased from 4,245 to 4,882 over the decade. But, most striking, the plan noted the township’s median age during that timeframe increased from 41.5 to almost 51 years old.
“This indicates that few young families are moving into the township,” the document notes.
Deana Lykins, a Democratic candidate for the New Jersey General Assembly’s District 24, which includes White Township, noted that’s a concern, though she has doubts whether an industrial park will bring in the types of jobs the area wants. Lykins, who attended the July 9 Planning Board meeting, said the area is looking for more smalltown businesses that each employ 10-12 people, maybe even some that are tourism-related. A major industrial park, she said, could deteriorate roads in a part of the state that has a hard time getting attention or dollars from Trenton as it is.
“Our overall age is increasing,” she said. “We see our kids kind of leaving and not returning, and we certainly need to address that. We just don’t believe that this is the way.”
A message left at the office of state Assemblymen Parker Space and Hal Wirths, both Republicans, was not returned.
Some residents have suggested maybe there’s a compromise that could be reached with the land, such as a corporate or research park instead of one geared toward warehousing. Jaindl’s statement to The Morning Call indicates he’s listening, though his exact thoughts will remain unknown until he files an official plan.
For now, residents such as Lorraine Cline are left to wait.
Cline’s great-grandfather came from Germany and bought two farms off Route 519. Cline was raised there, and so was her son. Now 77 years old, Cline remains on one of the farms, a 48-acre property with a house set back 700 feet from Route 519. The best parts about living there, she says, are how quiet and scenic it is.
Jaindl’s plan could change that. The conceptual landscape rendering ponders a 1.05-million-square-foot building a couple hundred feet back from the creek that runs through her property’s backyard. She’s concerned about the potential for noise and lights from the trucks, as well as the traffic that would be created.
“Of course, I would like to have it stay as farmland,” Cline said.
If Jaindl’s plan does come to fruition, she said: “It will change everything here.”