Civil Municipal Magazine Aug 2023

NEWTON, N. J . And the former site of the National Guard Armory is slated to become a ShopRite. Built in 1961, the armory closed in 2008. Situated on some five and a half acres of land, the site is very attractive to the ShopRite grocery store chain, according to The New Jersey Herald. “There’s definitely a lot of redevelopment activity in all parts of the town,” said Russo. Newton’s community development director, Kimberly Ann Williams, and its city planner, Jessica Caldwell, also weighed in. Caldwell said that Thorlabs, a major local employer with about 1,500 workers, just opened another facility on Diller Avenue. Thorlabs is a leading designer and manufacturer of photonics equipment for research and manufacturing. (Photonics is the physical science of light waves, dealing with the generation, detection, and manipulation of light.)