Toms river mayor hill says to expect more hi-rise apartment buildings downtown — Crane at a hi-rise apartment building construction project. - File Photo

TOMS RIVER, NJ – With the construction of two ten-story twin tower apartment buildings in Downtown Toms River, Toms River Mayor Maurice “Mo” Hill, in an interview with Shorebeat this week, said residents should expect more towering apartment buildings in the downtown village.

“Any town that has gone through redevelopment has gone vertical,” he said in the interview. “In Red Bank, if you go a block away from the Molly Pitcher on the Navesink, there are two 12-story apartment buildings.”

Hill refers to apartment buildings that pre-dated the Downtown Red Bank revitalization project that started in the early 1990s and saw a nearly vacant Broad Street revitalized with pizzerias, furniture shops, jewelry stores, retail stores, and restaurants. Red Bank’s revitalization continues some twenty years later, but no ten-story buildings have been built in the downtown center since the project began.

Red Bank had been referred to by many as “Dead Bank” in the 1980s until Mayor Edward J. McKenna was elected to office and promised to make starting and operating a small business easier as his number one priority. McKenna did not base his town’s resurgence on high-density hi-rise apartment buildings. Instead, he focused on bringing in businesses.

He created a special improvement district, and vacancies downtown dropped from 35% to just 1% in just a few years.

Photo: Red Bank has managed to keep its historic charm and revitalize its Downtown area without the need for 10-story hi-rise apartments and high-density residential development.

Now, Red Bank is a destination hub for many, filled with restaurants, most of which occupy century-old buildings in the historic downtown center. It’s one of the ‘hippest’ towns at the Jersey Shore, if not in all of New Jersey. It has a little bit of everything.

One thing it doesn’t have is new hi-rise apartment buildings.

Hill also rebuked residents’ concerns that Downtown Toms River is a ‘small village’ raised by former Mayor and current Township historian Mark Mutter.

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.”

Hill double-down on hi-rise apartments, saying his plan for Toms River’s future requires high-density apartment buildings in the downtown village center. He said residents should expect more mixed-used towers in the future to attract millenials and empty nesters seeking smaller living spaces.

Daniel Rodrick, a councilman who is seeking to unseat Mayor Hill in June’s GOP primary election, said he wants to see the town attract more restaurants, businesses, and nightlife opportunities and focus less on ten-story hi-rise buildings and providing developers with free land to turn the village into a city. Rodrick’s idea for Toms River is more in line with McKenna’s vision of Red Bank back in the 1980s. It’s a plan that worked for Red Bank and nearby Freehold Township.

More attractive businesses bring more attractive visitors, which brings more investment into sensible solutions for the future. He opposes Hill’s real-life game of Sim City in Toms River.

Rodrick had argued against a 30-year tax abatement given by Hill to Capodaglia Properties, the engineering firm that will break ground at the ten-story apartment building this year. Capodaglia purchased the land being used for the twin-towers project from the township for just $1.

Rodrick also argued that the money generated by the project short-changes the Toms River School District as the project will pay no school property taxes as part of the deal provided by the Township, even if it brings students into the district.

“We already have 100,000 residents, and there are empty storefronts all around the community,” Rodrick said when the project was proposed. “There is no money in this for our schools. I am steadfastly opposed to this.”

Councilman Matt Lotano, two years ago, proposed an ordinance that would split the tax profits made by the township with the school district. To date, no such ordinance has been proposed by the town council.

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