Developer Pushes Application to Convert Planned Senior Community to Mixed-Age Housing

After hours of testimony Tuesday night, the Barnegat Township planning board pushed to next month its decision on a developer’s request to convert a planned senior community in the western part of the township to general market housing, a switch that, , ups the amount of required affordable housing in the community and has some residents concerned.

Seacrest Pines at Barnegat, located just west of Heritage Point South on West Bay Avenue, was originally approved as a 347-unit age-restricted community similar to K. Hovnanian’s “Four Seasons” developments, with a 12,000-square-foot clubhouse, two pools and multiple ball courts.

The developer is seeking approval of a new plan with 305 homes, including 112 “age-targeted” houses marketed to retirees but available to anyone, 132 "family-targeted houses" and 61 affordable units clustered in row houses. The new plan also reduces and divides the recreation offerings to a smaller clubhouse, single pool and a family play area with playgrounds and basketball courts.

Barry McCarron, a K. Hovnanian division president, said the recession has changed the senior housing market dramatically since the development was originally planned in the early 2000s and approved by the board in 2005. Equity has evaporated, older adults are working longer and fewer people are interested in buying retirement homes. Sales rates have dropped 65 percent, he said, while prices have dropped 20 percent. 

“Now you have this tremendous oversupply of active adult homes,” McCarron said. His company estimates that from Lacey Township south to Little Egg, “there’s roughly an eight-year supply of homes in communities that are being constructed today, and that’s not talking about any pipeline communities.”

The solution, he said, was to open the development up to a wider population, and a relatively new state rule gives weight to the argument. 

The Conversion Statute, adopted in 2009, allows developers to change a planned age-restricted community to a non-age-restricted one after the project has been approved by a local planning board, as long as the company meets certain deadlines and requirements. That includes making 20 percent of the units affordable, as opposed to the usual 10 percent, though it grants developers the right to cluster the affordable units instead of making them blend in with the rest of the homes in the community.

A similar proposal in Lacey Township last year led to a long legal battle over whether age restrictions could be lifted. The township ultimately .

Attorneys for the planning board and the company underscored that the language in the statute is strong. Unless the board deems the changes to the project pose a significant detriment to the surrounding community, the rule says, they shall be approved. 

In addition, said K. Hovnanian attorney Richard Hluchan, filing deadlines meant the developer's conversion application is the only one Barnegat will ever see.

"It's not opening the floodgates or anything like that," Hluchan said.

But as they listened to testimony from the company's representatives on traffic patterns and home designs, some on the board raised concerns about the plan.

When pressed, McCarron acknowledged that his company had not yet tried building a similarly mixed community, with homes targeted toward – though not limited to – both families and seniors.

Planning board member Al Bille, who also serves on the Township Committee and lives in a nearby community, said he worried the plan wouldn’t appeal to buyers. “I don’t see how you’re going to market something like this,” Bille said. “I don’t know how you’ll get seniors moving there.”

Charles Olson, who lives in the adjacent Horizons South development, said he and his neighbors were worried about a number of possible issues, some dating back to the original plan for the new community. Drainage is already a problem in his neighborhood, he said, and new roads could funnel still more water into failing detention basins in Horizons South.

And in an area where seniors make up the vast majority of residents, he said, people aren’t happy about their homes backing up to a neighborhood full of people of all ages. “People are really concerned about security,” he said. “You don’t know who these kids are.”

Helen Makarewicz, another Horizons resident, said the project was wrong for the area and would raise property taxes.

“I think the plan fits their needs, but not ours,” she said.

Due to time constraints, the hearing was cut short. There will be further testimony and a public comment section at the board’s next meeting, set for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28 in the .