Business View Magazine | July 2019

249 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 underutilized properties has further shifted Bloomfield towards being a primarily residential municipality, with the current population at roughly 50,000. Matthew Watkins, Bloomfield Township Administrator and Secretary of the New Jersey Municipal Managers Association, reports, “We’re currently doing one of the largest brownfield-to- greenfield projects that I know of in New Jersey. It’s an 18-acre property that, since the 1800s, had housed two different factories that were diverting the water from two parallel rivers in ground that was historically a wetlands.” For years, the property lay fallow, and in a controversial decision, the property was approved for residential development. In 2014, with a change in administration, newly elected Mayor, Michael J. Venezia and members of the governing body purchased the property. The Mayor and Council recognized its environmental importance as historic wetlands and potential for badly needed recreational amenities. Now under construction, the project will turn the former site of the factories into 6.5 acres of restored wetlands. The upper portion will have a soccer field for the youth, walking paths around the entire perimeter of the property for passive recreation, and a couple of playgrounds. The second phase includes a 3,000-sq.-ft. environmental center building that would serve as a classroom for educational programs, meetings, and community activities. The parking lot will have a permeable pavement surface that puts rainwater back into the ground. The wetlands creation will hold 10 million cubic feet of water and slowly let it drain out after a time to help with flood control downstream – a problem in the past, when these two rivers flooded the area. According to Watkins, “We started construction of the project in 2019 with funding of $13.5 million. We have, so far, seven to eight million dollars in grants, and hoping to get more. We expect to have the wetlands, and the soccer field, and the walking paths constructed by September of this year. Phase Two – the Environmental Center and small ‘tot lots’ playgrounds – will depend on available funds. The designs are all done; everything is being constructed in anticipation of those additional facilities.” The Garden State Parkway splits the municipality north/south; a substantial on/off ramp right by the municipal building leads to a 45-vehicle pay parking lot. Watkins notes, “We want to get on board with the electric vehicle (EV) market by BLOOMF I ELD TOWNSHI P , NEW JERSEY