New Brunswick Unveils Plan to Redevelop Sears Site into Townhouses, Apartments

A redevelopment plan unveiled at Monday night’s Planning Board meeting calls for the existing structures on the sprawling tract where Sears stood for decades to be leveled.

About 530 apartments, 170 townhouse units, more than 20,000 square feet of retail space, a supermarket, and hundreds of parking spaces would be built on the site.

The Sears Redevelopment Plan presented by New Brunswick’s Planning Director Dan Dominguez would turn the 30-plus acres off Route 1 into what he called a “quasi-new urbanist development” – a suburban plan marked by slightly dense, mixed-use features and mid-rise buildings.

Stacked townhomes that would be for sale would be built on the north side of the property.

The Sears store would be razed and two five-story apartment buildings with ground-floor commercial spaces and underground parking would be built in its place.

The plan also calls for a small supermarket to be built in the space where the Sears auto facility once rotated tires and installed new shocks.

After getting the approval of the Planning Board on Monday, the plan will go to the City Council, which is expected to approve Russo Development as the site redeveloper.

Dominguez said Sears’ parent company, Transformco, has selected the Carlstadt-based developer whose most notable projects include transforming the former site of The Record of Hackensack into a 650-unit building and the development of residential, transportation, commercial, entertainment, and hotel units on the land between Eggers Street and Ferris Street on Route 18 in East Brunswick. Dominguez referred to the Sears Redevelopment Plan as a “sister project” to the work Russo is doing on Route 18.

The Sears site has become a dumping ground for old cars, discarded furniture, and other debris since it shut its doors in April 2020. Transformco filed for bankruptcy in 2018. When it announced it was closing its stores in Rockaway and Hackensack in 2020, that left the Jersey City location as the last Sears store in New Jersey.

When the issue of market demand was raised by Planning Board member Bob Cartica, Dominguez said, “Seeing the rents in New Brunswick, the rents reflect that there is a skew of supply and demand, that there’s less supply than demand. And supply being outstripped by demand and that’s reflected in rental prices throughout New Brunswick. That’s why market-rate housing in New Brunswick rents were $3,500 for a two-bedroom brand-new construction.”

Although Houlihan’s Restaurant and Bar and On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina are adjacent to the property on Route 1, they “are not expected to be developed at this juncture,” Dominguez said. He said they could be part of a longer-term redevelopment plan that could convert them into other retail spaces, office use, or some other use.

By Chuck O'Donnell
Photo Credit: New Brunswick Planning Board