New Jersey Appleseed is Pleased to Announce the Addition of an Exciting New Topic Just Added to the March 23rd Land Use & Development Public Policy Forum:
8:45 am – Special Address: Revitalizing, Re-Purposing & Adaptive Re-Use of Stranded Assets
In a blink of an eye, advances in technology, the ways in which corporations do business, the emergence of “Echo-Boomers” and the “Millennials”, shifting demographics, high property taxes and housing costs, affordable housing demands and needs, unprecedented weather events, changed circumstances and increasing expense of doing business in New Jersey have triggered a rising tide of corporate flight from our State. Large suburban office parks, buildings, structures and office campuses, once the hallmark of corporate headquartering here in New Jersey, are rapidly becoming relics of the past. Companies re-thinking their business models are opting to cut expenses by shedding their real estate assets, moving out-of-state, but leaving in their wake once mighty, state-of-the-art fortress type structures and campuses. Such stranded assets have become obsolete, vacant and difficult for their owners and property managers to market and sell, and have also left underutilized infrastructure and land resources. The loss of such significant ratables is placing substantial and, in some areas, potentially unyielding financial strains on property taxes and municipal budgets.
Re-purposing and redeveloping these sites for adaptive re-use, therefore, has become of paramount importance to the very survival of host municipalities and, overall, is absolutely vital to New Jersey’s economic recovery and ability to remain competitive.
This opening special address will focus on innovative ways that community revitalization can be achieved through adaptive reuse and repurposing of abandoned commercial assets. It will touch upon how land-use policies and development approaches can be crafted to meet rapidly emerging needs, create new, viable and even greater ratables for their host municipalities from within the existing envelope and structures of such assets, correct imbalances within community and regional land use patterns, and minimize impacts to precious land resources and protected open space. Such innovation represents a different twist on our recent “Sandy” influenced notions of sustainability and resiliency.
Presented by: Thomas D. McCloskey, Partner, Fox Rothschild LLP