TOMS RIVER, NJ – Hi-rise buildings have been the topic of concern for residents in Lakewood and Toms River as officials move forward with plans to build bigger and taller in both growing cities.
In Toms River, the township council had voted on an ordinance that allows buildings up to 12 stories to be built in the downtown area. Led by Mayor Mo Hill’s land sale of a $3.5 million open space parcel to a developer for just $1, a ten-story twin-tower apartment building has been approved on the Toms River waterfront.
More are to follow as Hill’s plan to turn downtown Toms River into an urban center like Hoboken, New Brunswick and Red Bank is moving forward at a rapid pace.
In neighboring Lakewood, where Hill was born and raised, city officials are proposing an ordinance to allow for 14-story hi-rise buildings in the Lakewood Industrial Park Zone.
That move was brought on by developers who, like in Toms River, see the future as being bigger and taller in this once-rural part of the Jersey Shore.
Lakewood and Toms River could be the next cities with visible skylines in New Jersey if both plans continue to move forward.
The Lakewood township committee will hold a vote Thursday to decide the fate of Toms River stye hi-rise buildings there.
Lakewood has building height limit of 65 feet.
The issue raises concerns among firefighters in both towns who will now have to figure out how to fight fires in skyscrapers where their existing equipment cannot reach.
In Toms River, Hill warned residents that should he win the Republican nomination in June, the growing city should be expected to ‘go vertical’.
Hill also rebuked residents’ concerns that Downtown Toms River is a ‘small village’ raised by former Mayor and current Township historian Mark Mutter at a recent council meeting.
Under Hill’s proposed plans to revitalize Downtown Toms River, the town will not be the same one residents knew when they grew up here. That is by design, Hill said.
Hill says expecting the downtown area to remain a quaint village is ‘unrealistic’ and ‘childish’.
“It’s not a small village, and I don’t think you can go back there,” Hill, a native of Lakewood and graduate of Lakewood High School, said in the interview. “We’d all like to go back to the way things were in our childhood, but it’s just not realistic.”