Palmyra, New Jersey

A small town spends its budget surplus wisely

Redevelopment is the heart of the economic agenda

For Palmyra, a small borough in Burlington County, New Jersey, in the south-central part of the Garden State, growth is on the horizon. Located on the Delaware River across from Philadelphia, PA, the borough’s strategic location and business savvy outlook makes it one to watch.

Geography is destiny

Located at the foot of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge on major State Highway Rt. 73, the city offers easy and direct access to Philadelphia and Interstate 95, the NJ Turnpike, I-295, and Rt. 130 in NJ. This, plus its close proximity to millions of people in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, makes Palmyra very attractive to commercial interests, resulting in, as in ancient Palmyra, a strong and vibrant economy with the ability to finance the construction of, if not monumental, then surely useful commercial, and often necessary, civic structures.

“We have a very healthy and substantial fund balance, or surplus, especially for a community of our size,” says Borough Administrator, John J. Gural. “Before we adopted the 2024 budget of $11 million, we had more than $5.8 million in available surplus, which gives any municipality the ability to do a number of projects that they would not normally be able to do.”

Those projects include: the redevelopment of unused or underused realty for commercial purposes; infrastructure maintenance and improvements throughout the borough; funding for housing, recreation, and public amenities; and investing in unique projects and processes that save money and improve services for its businesses and citizens.

“We’re very conservative in our budgeting techniques,” Gural adds. “But we’re very aggressive as far as the improvement and redevelopment projects that we take on, which is kind of the heart of what drives economic development in Palmyra.”

Palmyra’s senior management team from L; John Gural, Administrator; Doretha Jackson, Municipal Clerk; Donna Condo, Chief Financial Officer; Tanyika Johns, Tax Collector

Redevelopment projects

Topping the redevelopment agenda in the borough is the Route 73 South Development Area — about 186 acres of land which the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) designated as a Brownfields Development Area in 2003. “It was a former landfill and a former Army testing site for high explosive munitions at the end of World War II,” Gural explains. “We were able to turn that around.”

Working with many public and private partners, including: the DEP, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the Fair Share Housing Center, the Burlington County Bridge Commission, the Burlington County Board of County Commissioners, the Stock Development Group Inc., Cherokee Equities LLC, the Sansone Group, Pritchard Associates, YesWay Logistics, and Crow Holdings, Palmyra Urban Renewal Entity LLC (PURE) completed Phase 1 of its redevelopment project in 2022 with the construction of the 702,450-square-foot Tac-Pal Logistics Center warehouse, a Class-A industrial facility featuring 110 loading docks, 253 trailer stalls, 438 car stalls, and up to 457,000 square feet of industrial infill.

Phase 2, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, is another 700,000-plus-square-foot Tac-Pal building, plus 102 units of affordable housing, and 34 acres of open space, including wetlands and shoreland restoration. By the time the Area is complete, it will have leveraged over $400 million in investments.

The two new warehouses are PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) projects. A PILOT is intended to attract new businesses to redevelopment areas by requiring them to pay a fixed annual fee instead of regular property taxes for a specified period of time. “The annual service charges are about a million dollars for each one of those warehouses,” Gural notes.

“In a small town, with a budget of $11 million, you get an injection of $1 million from one of these projects – it’s a real game changer for our community. Then we have all of the development on the highway frontage parcels that we’re working on now. For example, F.C. Kerbeck, the premier luxury car dealership in America, is building a Rolls Royce showroom, and a Maserati dealership in our redevelopment area, to go with their other luxury brands like Lamborghini, Bentley, and Alfa-Romeo.”

Another ongoing project in Palmyra is the redevelopment of the former Knights of Columbus building.

“The building was in need of substantial improvement, and we recognized that there was an opportunity there,” Gural recounts. “We prepared a plan, then marketed that to folks that we thought would be interested in developing that property.” Sure enough, a company came forward. The new property owner is SEA BOX Inc., which specializes in the design, custom modification, and manufacturing of shipping and storage containers and modular building systems. “They’re renovating that building and moving their offices to Palmyra. That’s the first building in Palmyra when you enter from the north. It’s going to anchor our business district and will certainly help attract new development to our downtown area.”

“We have another development project,” Gural continues. “The PNC Bank building – we ultimately took that property via eminent domain from an uncooperative former owner and worked with a local business person who is now building a new, high-tech training fitness center (Outlaw Performance and Recovery) with a number of professional athletes from Philadelphia sports teams as clients. He’s a Palmyra guy (Geoffrey Wade) so we’re happy to keep it in the family, so to speak, but at the same time, you’re talking about injecting a huge amount into our local economy. And, again, it will help drive development in our downtown district. And it’s another positive sign that Palmyra is really the place to be if you want to operate a successful business.”

Housing projects

“We’re a small town,” Gural affirms. “And we’re 100% built out. There are a couple of lots, maybe, but not much in the way of an opportunity to build new homes, except in our Route 73 South Redevelopment Area. So, we designated it years ago as the location for the potential construction of affordable housing if it ever came to fruition. Well, it did. About 8 acres were carved off, situated by the Palmyra Cove Nature Park, with the most stunning views of downtown Philadelphia that you’ve ever seen. We’re working with Conifer Realty and building 102 affordable housing units. By affordable, I mean they’re subsidized but they cost quite a bit to build – about $330,000 apiece. So, they’re certainly on the higher end, as far as quality construction is concerned. They’ll be done in about a year and available for rent by the folks who will need those units.”

Gural adds that the borough’s traditional single-family housing stock also needed a boost, so it sought funding in the form of Regional Contributions Agreements (RCAs). “Municipalities (in New Jersey) who are required to build affordable housing but don’t want to, can give their money away to municipalities who can use it, provided that they use the funds to fulfill their obligations” he explains. “Well, we were happy to take that money. And so far, we have distributed over $2 million, interest-free, to over a hundred homeowners in Palmyra to fix up their homes. Those loans are all forgivable if they stay for ten years and it’s another program that directly benefits our homeowners.”

Roads and infrastructure

“We have 23 miles of roads that we own and operate and it’s a program that everybody can see and feel,” Gural states. “So, in recent years, we’ve undertaken a very aggressive campaign to address as many roads as we’re able. Our engineer (Environmental Resolutions Inc.) inspects and ranks the conditions of all of our roadways. We then use that as one of the tools to determine which roads we should be moving into next as far as improvements are concerned. We apply for grants for those roads and attack the biggest problem areas first. Of all of the roads, 70% of them are ranked either ‘new’ or ‘good.’ There are about 8% that we consider in poor condition. The 2024 road program is well under way and we’ve already got plans and grant applications for the ’25 road program.”

“We fully expect to improve all roads that need it by 2026. We spend about a million dollars in road improvements a year. That’s huge for a town of our size. But we have a dedicated grant writing company – Community Grants Planning and Housing. At one point, Palmyra had received more grant funds than any other community, per capita, in south New Jersey. That’s how successful we have been at it. So that $1 million is offset by a significant number of grants we received from the state for road improvement programs.”

“Two years ago, we received a grant of $343,000 from the state to improve an area in our community that was very prone to flooding during times of storms,” Gural continues. “Our engineer designed a subterranean collection system of 30,000-plus gallons in order to collect and redistribute that storm water into the river. What we built on top was a rain garden with various features. So, we got the stormwater management we needed to alleviate the concerns in that neighborhood, but we also got a beautiful, aesthetically pleasing rain garden right in the middle of the neighborhood.”

Left: Chief Payton I. Flournoy, Sr., Memorial Park – Chief Flournoy was appointed Palmyra’s Police Chief in 1959 and was widely believed to be the nation’s first African-American Chief of Police; center: Palmyra Borough Hall; far right: Community Center

Thinking outside the box

“One project that we’ve undertaken in the last number of years is critical to everything that is going on in Palmyra,” Gural relates. “About three years ago, we recognized that trash collection costs were out of control in the state. Costs were doubling as trash collection vendors were rebidding contracts upon their expiration. So, we took a very unique approach: into the bidding documents that we released for the vendors to bid on, we included a provision that allowed the Borough to drop certain neighborhoods from the contract, should we decide to take those trash collections on, ourselves. We didn’t have a plan, but we wanted the opportunity to develop a plan if we saw one that could work.”

Eventually, Palmyra purchased one collection truck at the cost of about $400,000, hired some trained personnel from established collection companies, and trained some of its own people. “We took advantage of the provision and gave our contractor notice that we were going to move into one small neighborhood and just pick up trash in that little community, while we learned how to do it. And we did that. Then we took advantage of another neighborhood and now we’re collecting trash in about 35% of our community. Now, our vendor, Republic Services, realizes that they bid on a contract that they thought had a value of ‘X.’ But since we took advantage of the provisions that we built into the bid specification (that no one has ever done before) they’re seeing a loss in revenue, and they said they couldn’t maintain the contract. So, we re-negotiated, which gave the borough the ability to release them from their obligation on January 1, when we will take over trash collection for our entire community with years still left on the contract. And they agreed to that. They could not believe that we were able to do that, and in such an efficient way — one trained operator in a truck completes an entire neighborhood in just a couple of hours.

“We now have three trucks with a fourth one on the way. That’s something that no other municipality would be undertaking. We’re expecting our fourth trash truck to arrive in October and we didn’t just buy a lesser, traditional trash truck. We purchased high-tech, high-end Automizer Side Loaders. And we previously spent about $180,000 buying all of our own trash carts, and delivered them to everybody. So, not only are we saving nearly six figures for each neighborhood that we move into, but the service to our residents increased exponentially.”

A unique, close-knit community

Gina Ragomo Tait is Palmyra’s mayor. She believes that the borough is unique not just because of its sophisticated administrative practices, but because its population has remained stable and close-knit for years with many generations of families still living there. “We’ve all known each other since we were five,” she says. “So it fosters compassion. People here expect you to have their best interests in mind. And most of our employees are from Palmyra – either they graduated from school here, or they moved into town.  I think that brings a little more awareness of what needs to be done.”

Recently, Tait joined a national group of mayors whose focus was on feeding hungry children. Since then, she and some civic minded businesses and organizations, local churches, and volunteers have stepped up to create several free food programs — especially important during the summer months when school is out and the students who would normally receive free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches during the school year, may go without nutritious meals. “With 7,000 people, nobody should go hungry in Palmyra,” she declares.

Another program close to her heart is the borough’s Community Garden at the Palmyra Cove Nature Center, a partnership between the borough and the Burlington County Bridge Commission. It’s a sustainable vegetable garden free to all borough residents to work in and benefit from. Based on that garden’s success, the borough is planning to open another community garden with eight new beds behind Borough Hall, with a small grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The second garden is expected to be completed by the beginning of September, just in time for the borough’s elementary school children to learn where food comes from and perhaps grow and harvest some of their own. “One of the beds will have garlic, which grows in the winter,” Tait says.

AT A GLANCE

Palmyra, New Jersey

WHAT: A borough of 7,500 in Burlington County

WHERE: On the Delaware River across from Philadelphia

WEBSITE: www.boroughofpalmyra.com