Business View Magazine | December 2020

387 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 BOROUGH OF SOUTH R I VER , NEW JERSEY thriving bedroom community, though there are commercial areas in the north and south parts of the town. The downtown area is seeing some redevelopment; one great example is the location of the former Old Capital Movie Theater. The theater closed and was converted into a manufacturing facility and will now be used as an apartment building on the upper stories and commercial at street level. Another project involves an old school that was torn down and will be replaced by a recently approved mixed- use development called Pondview Village. According to Krenzel, “Those are two development initiatives we have, in terms of recent projects that are going on in the downtown. As far as infrastructure projects are concerned, South River is one of the unique towns in the state that owns its own electric utility. This is why we are constantly upgrading and taking care of our electric utility. We also buy our water to provide the town with its water supply. We are currently going through a major infrastructure project to bring our facilities up to 21st century standards. And then there are typical infrastructure projects that involve taking care of roads and sewers.” Ray Eppinger, Council President, adds, “As John mentioned, one of our biggest infrastructure assets is our electric utility. And like so many other places, we are trying to update it to comply with 21st century standards. More importantly, because we own our electric utility, one of the biggest costs these days is not the actual cost of generation or buying of electricity; it is the cost of transporting it, especially in New Jersey. Up until the early 1970s, we generated our own electricity. Since then, it got too expensive, and we buy it off the grid now. One of the things we are doing to drive the cost down is to lower the transmission costs.” One project that South River is involved in is a unique battery storage program that falls into both infrastructure and green program categories. Eppinger explains, “With the electric Mayor John M Krenzel and Council President, Raymond T Eppinger The Laffin property was a place where new and used cars were sold. It will become a Seabra Foods store.