JACKSON, NJ – Jackson Township was once a rural, wooded, and sleepy bedroom community that few people wanted to live in. In the 1970s and 1980s, most people moving ‘down the shore’ instead sought out waterfront communities such as Brick and Toms River. Those towns saw huge population booms during that period.
Others, for religious reasons, moved to Lakewood which swelled to over 100,000 residents, but the sleepy community of Jackson continued to grow slowly, but in the 90s, Jackson began having a boom of its own. The population grew from around 45,000 to its current 60,000.
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Now, Jackson is experiencing another boom and according to a report today is the 6th fastest growing town in all of New Jersey.
That’s fueled in part by a relocation of Orthodox Jewish families to the community and in part by a vision by current Mayor Michael Reina to turn the once sleepy town into a bustling commercial and high-density housing hub.
After taking office in 2010, Reina hired NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw to create a commercial to lure high-density industry into the community and to solicit builders to build on the remaining buildable properties in Jackson.
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“Jackson’s future has arrived,” Reina said when he announced a massive warehouse, apartment, retail and commercial complex built around sports fields adjacent to Six Flags Great Adventure.
Other industries followed, and commercial warehouses and strip malls replaced wooded lots on major roads in the town. Most prominent however has been the addition of high density housing projects.
The names are familiar to residents, Jackson Parke, Jackson Twentyone, Jackson Trails, and others, which are expected to add more than 4,000 more housing units in Jackson over the next few years.
The boom isn’t just Jackson-centric. Neighboring Lakewood was the 5th fastest growing town in New Jersey and Toms River was 8th.
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Now, Jackson’s future under Reina is all but certain, it will eventually become a city in the woods. While much of Jackson is preserved open space, a large amount of the buildable property in recent years has been sold to developers as housing and property prices are booming.