Housing Units Set For Former Nike Base In Gloucester Township

GLOUCESTER TOWNSHIP, NJ - A housing complex looks to be coming to the former Nike missile base in Gloucester Township. Council approved a pair of resolutions to sell part of the former Nike missile base Monday night.

DKGT 18 LLC, owned by Pat Barone and Ken Shatz, purchased the former radar site on Williamstown Road for $1 million. The site sits on 27.5 acres of land.

All units will be market rate, meaning there will be no affordable housing units in the complex. The developer paid a developer’s fee so that none of the 75 planned units would have to be designated as low- or moderate-income.

The fee is 1.5 percent of the assessed value for each unit. At $3,000 per unit, the company is expected to pay $225,000, according to Community Development Director Ken Lechner.

That money will go into the township’s affordable housing trust fund, which goes toward development to help the township meet its affordable housing obligation.

The former missile site on Berlin-Cross Keys Road isn’t part of the deal. It occupies 13 acres of land.

“This is my 15th year on council, and we’ve been looking for something for that site for 15 years,” Gloucester Township Council President Orlando Mercado said. “For years we held out for a commercial ratable to go there. That was when we had 8,000 students in our K-8 schools, and we were bursting at the seams. We don’t have that problem anymore.”

The base opened in 1956, and closed in 1974, according to nj.com. It has mostly remained vacant until now. Gloucester Township officials were considering the missile site for a medicinal marijuana dispensary, but the state didn’t select the township as a site for a dispensary.

“We were offered residential development at the Nike site in the past, and we always balked at it because we wanted commercial development,” Mercado said. “We swung a couple of times, and we missed. Things fell apart. Now we have a well-known builder in Pat Barone who wants to build homes.”

Resident Ray Polidoro pointed out that when developers want to build projects on lots this size in other states, they make a contribution to school budgets or escrows for schools. He said this may be important in this situation, as adding homes to the township is likely to add children to the school system.

The township formerly had two funds that developers were asked to pay into. One was for sidewalks and one was for recreation, but one was deemed to be unconstitutional and the other inappropriate, according to Lechner.

“Other states have an impact fee, but New Jersey doesn’t,” Lechner said. “This developer will pay taxes the same way everyone else does, and part of their taxes will go to the schools. That’s how they’ll pay their fair share.”

“I don’t think they’d be able to wiggle their way out of paying for something that has to do with our schools,” Polidoro said. “It might be worth looking into. Our schools would look favorably on that.”

There was some other development news that came out of Monday night’s meeting at the municipal building.

Council approved a proposed ordinance on introduction that would establish a single-family residential overlay development to the New Vision Redevelopment Area. Building specifications had to be amended, and those details can be found in the agenda packet for Monday’s meeting, posted on the township’s website.

Mercado also said that 360 units were being built in the southern portion of the township.

As part of a joint project led by Ryan Homes, 180 townhomes are being built behind Target. The project, approved in 2014, calls for all the units to be market-rate homes to be built on private property.

Another 180 market rate apartments may be built behind the Acme on Berlin-Cross Keys Road. These would be 1- and 2-bedroom apartments with garages.

Image via Shutterstock.