Neighbors fume as Parsippany OKs warehouse zone next to big housing project

Parsippany expects to add more than 1,400 new residential units from just three of the redevelopment projects currently underway in Morris County's most populous town. But even more change is set to come.

Across the street from the 600-unit PARQ development, which is replacing a demolished office park along Parsippany Road, township officials see a good fit for a new warehouse to replace yet another unused office building. While no proposal has been formally made, the council voted last month to rezone the lots at 20 and 30 Lanidex Plaza West to allow for warehousing and fulfillment operations.

Neighbors who spoke up at a July 25 meeting, however, did not share the council's qualified enthusiasm for the idea. Some shared concerns about traffic, lighting and noise. Others worry about the impact on neighboring Eastlake Elementary School.

"This is very concerning to us," said Renee DiMaggio-Richardson, whose family owns and operates Par-Troy Funeral Home, another neighbor of the Lanidex properties. "We live here. My nieces go to [Eastlake]. Are we going to have truck noises constantly interrupting our services here?"

Still, the council unanimously passed an ordinance at the meeting to approve the rezoning of the Lanidex West property, which it had previously declared as an area in need of redevelopment.

Council: Warehouse better than apartments

"We have way too many vacant office and antiquated office buildings in Parsippany," Mayor James Barberio told the audience. "These obsolete buildings are underutilized and cost our taxpayers money. Also, they create an unattractive nuisance. Bad things happen when buildings go vacant and properties are unsupervised."

With the market for conventional office space nearly nonexistent, that left the council with two options, Barberio said: "warehouses or multifamily housing."

Replacing the 60,000-square-foot building on the two lots is "the best use to repurpose this property so we can clean up this blight and create a positive tax ratable, the mayor said, adding that the development "could add $100,000 annually to township revenue."

"If we do nothing, it will continue to decay and will eventually become multifamily housing."

Lanidex LLC purchased the 5.67-acre property in 2019 for $4.7 million, including the single building at 20 Lanidex Plaza West, public tax records show. A building planned for the second lot on the combined properties was never built.

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No formal application has yet to be submitted to the town to redevelop the property.

What's driving the building boom

Two factors have fueled the redevelopment and housing boom in Parsippany and elsewhere in North Jersey. One is the need to repurpose vacant office properties made obsolete by the trend toward remote work. An analysis by London-based research firm Capital Economics said office values were "unlikely to be recovered even by 2040."

Township officials once boasted of Parsippany's tens of millions of square feet of office space, and thousands of hotel rooms in the community, which was long a hub of Fortune 500 corporate headquarters at the crossroads of routes 80 and 287.

Now, mixed residential and retail projects like the District at 15fifteen redevelopment on Route 10 or Parq on Parsippany Road are more in favor for developers, as are warehouses.

"A developer has told us his most valued use is a warehouse," Councilman Justin Musella said. "We have to be mindful we have 25 million square feet of office space in town, which is 20 percent vacant."

Another driver is the 2015 New Jersey Supreme Court decision that enabled property owners to propose large developments with market-rate homes as long as they include a percentage of the affordable housing mandated by state law.

Reacting to the slow progress in providing that housing, New Jersey's highest court shifted enforcement to lower courts, where developers are now allowed to sue local communities to fulfill their housing obligations.

Affordable housing as 'a wedge'

Michael dePierro, a veteran Parsippany councilman and planning board member, said the town will have to adda total of 4,000 residential units to cover the 800 affordable units required by the state.

"The developers use (the Supreme Court decision) as a wedge to force us to work with them," dePierro said. "Parsippany already had 7,000 apartments, high density in Mount Tabor and Rainbow Lakes, and two senior housing buildings. But [state officials] − they still wanted more. We're not opposed to affordable housing, but we have been inundated."

That explanation didn't satisfy critics at the meeting.

"You can't use affordable housing as a stick," said former planning board member Judy Hernandez, currently running for council. "One hundred feet from a school − really?"

"What we want to know is are these the only two options, as we care for our families and have families coming in and out of our establishment," added DiMaggio-Richardson, the funeral home owner.

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Mayor Barberio and council members expressed their own reservations but stressed their vote was only to allow warehousing as a possible permitted use. Any specific proposal must still be introduced and win approval from the Parsippany Planning Board, they said.

"I have major concerns," Councilman Paul Carifi Jr. said. "I went to Eastlake. I am not voting for a warehouse. I would urge if it were to go the route of a warehouse, that the planning board will listen and take into account each and every one of those factors and do everything possible not to affect those areas."

But Parsippany resident Julia Peterson said at the meeting that she has been aware that the warehouse concept has been under discussion since January. "The trajectory seems to be to develop a warehouse," she said. "There's not a lot of going back from a warehouse."

William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com 

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This article originally appeared on Morristown Daily Record: Parsippany NJ approves warehouse zone next to housing project