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Nothing in this week’s Council agenda is as opaque as this two-liner on p. 4 under the rubric “Council-listed items”.
- “Formation of Redevelopment Agency for Townwide Redevelopment - Mayor Schwartz, Deputy Mayors Orgen & Belcher”
The same 7 words and the authors’ names are repeated on p. 21 of the agenda. But the rest of that page is blank! –
And there are reasons why Voices knows that how our elected leaders will now flesh out these words could be the basis for real consternation or true applause.
Are there in these 7 words recognition by our three “Mayors” that the current redevelopment process engineered by prior Councils over the past 7 years (since 2018) has failed? Has the nearly universal antipathy to what Teaneck has done to Margaret Baker’s Decatur Avenue residential neighborhood built so much resistance to what the words “redevelopment” have meant that Council must step back and create another mechanism that truly allows affected neighborhoods to participate in what and how the Town wisely decides to build?
That astute recognition is at least possible. Voices has never forgotten that in the 1970’s a massive public controversy crushed efforts to develop Teaneck Southeast Corner until Council formed a competent and independent Redevelopment Agency to oversee the creation of Glenpointe.
In June 2022, Voices wrote the following:
“45 Years ago, a deeply divided Teaneck wrestled with whether to allow development of the marshy disfigured area we now know as Glenpointe. In 1977, the Town Council openly and transparently created a carefully crafted Teaneck Redevelopment Agency to which it appointed a balanced and respected leadership. The Agency functioned as a public entity with a board and open meetings. And it was completely separate from the Town Council.
This Agency – amidst very robust public debate – guided the town to the development solutions we now identify with the Glenpointe complex, the area in the southeast corner of the Town.”
That was the one and only time in Teaneck’s history that Teaneck officials had designated part of this Township as being blighted and thus in need of redevelopment.
The Teaneck Redevelopment Agency eventually handed decision-making about Glenpointe back to the normal land use processes. It did this long before 2008 when Council formally abolished the Agency.
Indeed, in September of 2018 as that Council reached for the State’s redevelopment tools (eg., AINRs) the original plan was to form a new Teaneck Redevelopment Agency. Council even introduced such an ordinance.
But that Council soon decided it would itself be the redevelopment agency. The seven years of redevelopment strife that have followed have exposed the debacle when Council grabbed the unfettered power itself.
Consternation or Applause in 2025?
One other reason to be a bit hopeful. There is clearly growing consensus in 2025 that only a town-wide approach can be successful in the selections this fully developed town makes. We have so very little land whose use we can develop. We can afford neither to make poor choices nor to be convulsed in controversy when we make those choices.
Unfortunately, the brand-new Master Plan provides little guidance. To start with, the words Redevelopment Agency do not appear anywhere on its 124 pages. Nor is there the needed primacy given to how development must be guided by the ability to sequence development’s implementation that takes into account the larger contexts in which each step must occur, i.e. the Route 4 bridge replacements, for example.
If, as looks likely, we are about to frame a new Redevelopment Agency Voices hopes it will be done by remembering 1) what it was that made our first redevelopment agency function – and allowed it to create a successful Glenpointe and 2) what it is that made our last 7 years of Council-led redevelopment such a mess.
We wait with both hope and anxiety to hear what will be added to these 7 agenda words: “Formation of Redevelopment Agency for Townwide Redevelopment - Mayor Schwartz, Deputy Mayors Orgen & Belcher"
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