WOOLWICH TOWNSHIP TDR PROGRAM
Woolwich Township, NJ
Urban Partners has recently assisted Melvin/Kernan Development Strategies, develop a Transfer of Development RIghts (TDR) program in Woolwich Township, NJ. Our role in this project has been to estimate the population growth that is expected to occur in this Gloucester County community and to quantify the real estate market demand for residential, retail, commercial and industrial/flex uses that will
accompany this growth. We have assisted in the identification of appropriate sending and receiving areas for the proposed TDR program and evaluatied the market dynamics of various alternatives to assure that the TDR approach can be implemented successfully within the proposed physical parameters proposed. This project received the 2010 New Jersey Smart Growth Award.
These TDR efforts build froma prior study Urban Partners completed in coordination with Brown & Keener Urban Design. In this earlier work, we prepared a plan for the development of Woolwich Township. This plan was intended as a prototype of small area development consistent with
the overall master plan for the State of New Jersey -- Communities of Place. Woolwich Township has direct access to three Interstate Highways, including the New Jersey Turnpike, and is less than 40 minutes away from Center City Philadelphia. Although currently an almost exclusively farming community, Woolwich now senses that development pressures are growing.
This prototype development effort aimed at operationalizing such tools as transfer of development rights and targeted public infrastructure investments to effectively concentrate development in centers, hamlets and villages. The consultant team dealt with the substantive issues necessary to make these tools real in the community: the rights of land ownership; the expectations of farmers, as sellers and as farmers; and the impact on existing residents of substantial new development including costs to the municipality, as well as impacts on the overall quality of life. Urban Partners
assessed real market possibilities for development in the community and determined the likely the time periods during which development might
take place.
