Does anyone know what they’re building on Springfield Ave across the street from the Hilton Branch library? More apartments?

Don't know, but almost all new construction on major streets is retail on the first floor and residential above, similar to older buildings. Unlikely it would only be apartments.

Yes, more apartments. The typical mixed-use retail/residential blah blah blah.

New building is so close to existing building.  It looks like less than a foot of clearance!

I have mixed feelings about these developments.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see the redevelopment of Springfield Avenue and empty lots along Valley and SO Ave. No one wants to see neighborhood blight.  On the other hand, Valley and Springfield just cannot handle anymore traffic.  On a regular basis, traffic gets backed up on Valley all the way to Rynda during rush hour.  I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  I do think the congestion is leading to a lot of frustration, accidents and additional cut through traffic on residential streets.

Not that I know

Perseverance said:

 I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  

Building in question is at Springfield and TUSCAN in Maplewood.  Quite some distance from Valley and Springfield which is in Union.

Perseverance said:

I have mixed feelings about these developments.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see the redevelopment of Springfield Avenue and empty lots along Valley and SO Ave. No one wants to see neighborhood blight.  On the other hand, Valley and Springfield just cannot handle anymore traffic.  On a regular basis, traffic gets backed up on Valley all the way to Rynda during rush hour.  I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  I do think the congestion is leading to a lot of frustration, accidents and additional cut through traffic on residential streets.

There are two new buildings in this area.  The one the OP cited is, indeed, opposite the grounds of the Hilton Branch Library. This is a 30-unit apartment building on the site of the former Di Pietros [sp?] deli and grocery.  The other building is the one cited by Joan, a smaller mixed-use building at the corner of Springfield and Burnett, across Burnett from Walgreens.

When are too many new apartment building too many? Is it time to change zoning to preserve the character of our towns? We have enough of these monstrosities.

Traffic really has gotten noticeably horrible recently.  

Perseverance said:

I have mixed feelings about these developments.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see the redevelopment of Springfield Avenue and empty lots along Valley and SO Ave. No one wants to see neighborhood blight.  On the other hand, Valley and Springfield just cannot handle anymore traffic.  On a regular basis, traffic gets backed up on Valley all the way to Rynda during rush hour.  I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  I do think the congestion is leading to a lot of frustration, accidents and additional cut through traffic on residential streets.

Formerlyjerseyjack said:

When are too many new apartment building too many?

When there is no more demand and they do not rent. Until then it is needed and warranted. 

People who live in predominately single-family areas oppose measures to provide additional housing, such as building apartment buildings or allowing multi-family housing or accessory dwellings. This drives up the price of housing and promotes endless sprawl. So what's the answer? Where should people live? Those of you with kids, say, in middle school -- where do you see them living when they graduate from college? Anywhere near here on a new grad's salary? Not likely.

In this week's NYT:

The Great American
Single-Family Home Problem

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html

... Whatever the specifics, what is happening in Berkeley may be coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Around the country, many fast-growing metropolitan areas are facing a brutal shortage of affordable places to live, leading to gentrification, homelessness, even disease. As cities struggle to keep up with demand, they have remade their skylines with condominium and apartment towers — but single-family neighborhoods, where low-density living is treated as sacrosanct, have rarely been part of the equation.

If cities are going to tackle their affordable housing problems, economists say, that is going to have to change. But how do you build up when neighbors want down?

“It’s an enormous problem, and it impacts the very course of America’s future,” said Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard who studies cities.

The problem is that smaller and generally more affordable quarters like duplexes and small apartment buildings, where young families get their start, are being built at a slower rate. Such projects hold vast potential to provide lots of housing — and reduce sprawl — by adding density to the rings of neighborhoods that sit close to job centers but remain dominated by larger lots and single-family homes.

Neighborhoods in which single-family homes make up 90 percent of the housing stock account for a little over half the land mass in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, according to Issi Romem, BuildZoom’s chief economist. There are similar or higher percentages in virtually every American city, making these neighborhoods an obvious place to tackle the affordable-housing problem.

“Single-family neighborhoods are where the opportunity is, but building there is taboo,” Mr. Romem said. As long as single-family-homeowners are loath to add more housing on their blocks, he said, the economic logic will always be undone by local politics.

joan_crystal said:

Building in question is at Springfield and TUSCAN in Maplewood.  Quite some distance from Valley and Springfield which is in Union.

Perseverance said:

I have mixed feelings about these developments.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see the redevelopment of Springfield Avenue and empty lots along Valley and SO Ave. No one wants to see neighborhood blight.  On the other hand, Valley and Springfield just cannot handle anymore traffic.  On a regular basis, traffic gets backed up on Valley all the way to Rynda during rush hour.  I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  I do think the congestion is leading to a lot of frustration, accidents and additional cut through traffic on residential streets.

I don't think that the post was referring to the intersection of Valley St and Springfield Ave. I think it just was expressing concern about development along Valley St and development along Springfield Ave.

I totally agree, they're building too many too quickly. What you'll have are a bunch of empty apartment building, to increase tenants they will have to lower the rent and then there goes the neighborhood. You can not expect people to pay top dollar for an apartment when the stores around don't match up. Walgreens,CVS and 711 is not worth $3000 a month. Maplewood will never be Brooklyn NY and or Hoboken.. Watch how many fatalities will occur due to the people cutting through the back streets to avoid Springfield Ave traffic. 

Perseverance said:

I have mixed feelings about these developments.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see the redevelopment of Springfield Avenue and empty lots along Valley and SO Ave. No one wants to see neighborhood blight.  On the other hand, Valley and Springfield just cannot handle anymore traffic.  On a regular basis, traffic gets backed up on Valley all the way to Rynda during rush hour.  I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  I do think the congestion is leading to a lot of frustration, accidents and additional cut through traffic on residential streets.

Heaven forbid rents drop below $3000 a month. School teachers and cops might actually be able to live in our towns and then, you know, there goes the neighborhood. 

Formerlyjerseyjack said:

When are too many new apartment building too many? Is it time to change zoning to preserve the character of our towns? We have enough of these monstrosities.

The VAST majority of housing i Maplewood is single family homes.  I can understand a desire to "preserve the character" of a community, in the abstract, but it would take a significant number of new apartment buildings to change the Township's physical characteristics.

Yes, I understand it's at Springfield and Tuscan.  I think you misunderstood - I was referring to Springfield Avenue and Valley as thoroughfares being at capacity.  However, I do think the intersection of Springfield and Valley is also terrible and desperately needs a left turn signal! 

joan_crystal said:

Building in question is at Springfield and TUSCAN in Maplewood.  Quite some distance from Valley and Springfield which is in Union.

Perseverance said:

I have mixed feelings about these developments.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see the redevelopment of Springfield Avenue and empty lots along Valley and SO Ave. No one wants to see neighborhood blight.  On the other hand, Valley and Springfield just cannot handle anymore traffic.  On a regular basis, traffic gets backed up on Valley all the way to Rynda during rush hour.  I know Sheena and Vic are very pro development.  Have either of them spoken about our infrastructure?  I do think the congestion is leading to a lot of frustration, accidents and additional cut through traffic on residential streets.

Agree with you and I was a renter for years in this immediate area before we decided to buy a house so I'm not at all anti-apartment.  Our rent was definitely below $3000.   My main concern is the congestion issue.  Someone had posted on Facebook a Village Green article about how a developer had approached Gleason's to tear it down and build a 40 unit apartment building (if memory serves me correctly).  Parker and Valley are already a disaster with CHS, the Y, etc.  

I'm not even sure if there's a viable solution to this.  We can't widen Valley or other major arteries because many of them residential.  Even if we could, I wouldn't even want that.  I don't know if there's some misguided belief amongst our local governments that renters won't use cars?  

GoSlugs said:

Heaven forbid rents drop below $3000 a month. School teachers and cops might actually be able to live in our towns and then, you know, there goes the neighborhood. 

Formerlyjerseyjack said:

When are too many new apartment building too many? Is it time to change zoning to preserve the character of our towns? We have enough of these monstrosities.

That horse has bolted

I don't know the answer to this, but how much more traffic, if any, would a 40 unit apartment generate, compared to a business?  It's not as though there aren't cars going in and out of the Gleason's lot all day.  There may be good reasons to prevent an apartment building there, but I'm not sure increased vehicular traffic would be the main one.

ml1 said:

I don't know the answer to this, but how much more traffic, if any, would a 40 unit apartment generate, compared to a business?  It's not as though there aren't cars going in and out of the Gleason's lot all day.  There may be good reasons to prevent an apartment building there, but I'm not sure increased vehicular traffic would be the main one.

This is a good point.  If an objection to more multi-family buildings is the traffic generation, and the choice is between, e.g. a 40-unit building of 1-2 br apartments and a retail/service building (or a complex of 4-5 smaller retail tenants), there could be a good argument that the retail choice would generate more traffic over the course of an average day.  I don't really know one way or the other, but I don't think it's valid to assume that the multi-family option is the greater traffic generator.  I'm sure the experts in the field have studied this.....

Formerlyjerseyjack said:

When are too many new apartment building too many? Is it time to change zoning to preserve the character of our towns? We have enough of these monstrosities.

Are you seriously talking about the “character” of SA?  I’d think anyone driving through would have a VERY hard time defining it, let alone defending it. And let’s face it—it’s for driving not walking. 

Maybe we should consider a KFC/Coffee House near Yale Street!

Best Regards,

Ron Carter

Which has more traffic? An optician or kitchen planning store, compared with a 7-11?

weirdbeard said:

....there could be a good argument that the retail choice would generate more traffic over the course of an average day.  ....

Where is the new school going to be built to accommodate all the new children that will be moving into these new apartments?  Or will we just add more portable classrooms even though we don't have SoCal weather and making kids go outside a few times a day in winter to go back and forth to the portables doesn't work in northeast winters. 

spontaneous said:

Where is the new school going to be built to accommodate all the new children that will be moving into these new apartments?  Or will we just add more portable classrooms even though we don't have SoCal weather and making kids go outside a few times a day in winter to go back and forth to the portables doesn't work in northeast winters. 

Here we go again with the mythical children.....

Don't worry spontaneous, children don't live in apartment buildings. Only grown ups do.

Dennis_Seelbach said:

spontaneous said:

Where is the new school going to be built to accommodate all the new children that will be moving into these new apartments?  Or will we just add more portable classrooms even though we don't have SoCal weather and making kids go outside a few times a day in winter to go back and forth to the portables doesn't work in northeast winters. 

Here we go again with the mythical children.....

Sorry, I forgot that only adults who don't drive cars live in apartment buildings.  My mistake   

On a serious note:

Clinton School:  Kindergarten, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade are closed

Marshall School:  1st and 2nd grade are closed

South Mountain School:  Kindergarten is closed

Seth Boyden School:  2nd and 3rd grade are closed

Tuscan School:  All grades are closed

https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=286

Current enrollment

Columbia High School:  1,930

SOMS:  805

MMS:  762

Clinton:  578

Jefferson:  486

Marshall:  537

Seth Boyden:  534

South Mountain:  601

Tuscan:  632

https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/domain/43

Nothing to see here, move along.

Let's approve more multi-unit apartment buildings because we can!  And give PILOTs away like candy! yeah!

spontaneous said:

On a serious note:

Clinton School:  Kindergarten, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade are closed

Marshall School:  1st and 2nd grade are closed

South Mountain School:  Kindergarten is closed

Seth Boyden School:  2nd and 3rd grade are closed

Tuscan School:  All grades are closed

https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=286








Current enrollment

Columbia High School:  1,930

SOMS:  805

MMS:  762

Clinton:  578

Jefferson:  486

Marshall:  537

Seth Boyden:  534

South Mountain:  601

Tuscan:  632

https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/domain/43