US Census: A million people living in Ocean County by 2048? It’s ‘absolutely possible’

TOMS RIVER - Just how big will the population of Ocean County get over the next 25 years?

In his election night remarks, Ocean County Commissioner-elect Frank Sadeghi, a civil engineer, told a packed crowd of fellow Republicans that the county could reach one million inhabitants by 2048.

“The population of Ocean County has doubled since 1981,” Sadeghi said. “And, at the rate that we see Ocean County growing — you see those pockets in Jackson Township, Berkeley Township; there’s still room in Toms River, Brick, so the county’s growing — I think in 25 years, we’ll probably reach a million people.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Ocean County in 2022 was estimated to be 655,735, making it home to more people than in the states of Vermont or Wyoming. In 1980, the county’s population was 346,038, according to the census records.

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County Commission Director Joseph H. Vicari (whom Sadeghi is succeeding on New Year’s Day), said the county’s own internal data indicates that the actual population of Ocean County is closer to 680,000 in 2023. In fact, in the summer months, when the Jersey Shore swells with visitors and those who own vacation homes here, the county population already stretches to 1.3 million on any given day, Vicari said, citing additional data from the county Department of Business Development and Tourism.

Asked this week about Sadeghi’s comments, which were made in the context of a broader speech about the challenges the county faces in the years to come, Sadeghi’s future fellow commissioners either agreed with him or did not dispute his election night assessment.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” said Commissioner Jack Kelly. “Look how much we’ve grown in the last 25 years and tell me if we can get to that number in the same amount of time.” The population of the county in 2000 was 510,916, up from 433,203 in 1990, according to census records.

“In 1950, there were 50,000 people who lived in Ocean County,” said Commissioner Virginia E. Haines. “So, 70-odd years later…”

Commissioner Gary Quinn, a builder by profession, was more circumspect about forecasting population growth. He noted that the state of New Jersey has been able to rein in development by aggressive enforcement of the Pinelands Protection Act of 1979 and the Coastal Area Facilities Review Act of 1973. One law protects the Pine Barrens and the other statute protects the Shore’s wetlands from development.

Additionally, nearly 30,000 acres of open space and 3,300 acres of farmland have been preserved by the county government since its establishment of a dedicated property tax for open space preservation in 1998, Haines has previously pointed out.

To date, an estimated 60% of the county’s total land area of more than 628 square miles has been protected from development by the combined conservation efforts of the federal, state, county and local governments, she said.

Nevertheless, there is room to grow, Kelly said.

“Don’t forget, a lot of these towns are passing ordinances that allow for building up instead of out,” he said.

That reality has not gone unnoticed by voters in the county seat of Toms River. Republican Councilman Daniel Rodrick defeated his incumbent mayor in last June’s GOP primary and won about 70% of the vote in Tuesday’s general election on a platform of curbing development in the township that once included a pair of proposed 10-story towers that were to be built on the downtown waterfront.

One of Rodrick’s campaign promises is to find a way to halt Capodagli Property Co.’s controversial plan to build the six-story apartment buildings with 281 apartments on land located at Main and Water streets. The proposal — reduced in size from the initial 10-stories — received the green light from the township’s Planning Board earlier this month.

In Lakewood, the county’s biggest municipality and the state’s fourth-largest “city”, and where motor vehicle traffic is at a standstill on a daily basis (there were 5,244 car crashes in Lakewood in 2021), the population increased 45% during the 2010s — from 92,843 at the start of the decade to 135,158 in 2020.

As of 2022, the population was 139,506 and Lakewood was ranked fifth statewide in building permits for new housing construction and 12th for office space development out of 564 municipalities in New Jersey.

Donna E. Flynn, a county government spokeswoman, said that the county does not maintain an official projected population number based on the available buildable land, its zoning and real estate trends — often referred to as a “buildout number” in the parlance of local government.

“We don’t know what that number is yet,” Kelly said. “So, is (a million people by 2048) possible? It’s absolutely possible.”

Contact Asbury Park Press reporter Erik Larsen at elarsen@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Ocean County NJ: Population could reach one million by 2048