A group of residents, keeping the record straight

Save Montgomery is an unincorporated group of residents. We are not a nonprofit — there is no tax-exempt determination and no charitable registration behind the name — and this site does not solicit donations of any kind. Our members include people who have lived in Montgomery for decades and people who arrived last year. The group's attorney is Bruce Afran, Esq.

We are not opposed to affordable housing. Montgomery has a constitutional obligation to provide a realistic opportunity for its fair share, and it should meet it. Our objections have been to the process by which the township's Fourth Round plan was assembled, and to concentrating high-density development on the former Kenvue campus. We now also oppose a redevelopment-area designation over that site.

We are reachable at info@savemontgomery.org and in our Facebook group. Those are the only two channels we run; any other account using this name is not ours.

In June 2025 Montgomery published its Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan. Headline News Montgomery totalled the plan's two inclusionary sites at 597 units, 106 of them affordable — and the plan's own presentation to the Planning Board placed 417 of those units, 70 affordable, on the former Kenvue campus at 199 Grandview Road, which would have required demolishing the existing buildings — including the headquarters building that residents told the Township Committee on July 17, 2025 was designed by Henry N. Cobb and W. Steven Wood of I.M. Pei & Partners, and that the plan itself passed over in finding there are “no historic or architecturally important sites or buildings on the property.”

The Planning Board hearing on June 23, 2025 ran about three hours in all — roughly the first half-hour the planner’s presentation, the rest questions — and never reached the formal public-comment period. It ended with no vote and was carried to June 26, four days before the statutory deadline to adopt a plan. Asked what the contingency was if the Kenvue site fell through, staff said that earlier plans had backup alternatives but "we didn't have any backup alternatives for this plan."

That is the gap this group formed to fill: not to shout, but to read the agendas, watch the video, and put what was actually said somewhere residents could find it.

The Kenvue site is no longer in Montgomery's housing plan. After the first mediation session on November 14, 2025, the township said on December 4 that it would take the site out. The Planning Board adopted the Amended Fourth Round plan on March 9, 2026, and the Township Committee endorsed it on March 19. The amended plan meets the township's 260-unit obligation for 2025–2035 not by building but by extending affordability controls on existing homes: 210 preserved units plus 65 bonus credits, 275 credits in all — fifteen above the obligation.

We do not claim sole credit for that. The township negotiated it. What the plan rests on is an agreement in principle with the owner of Pike Run to extend controls on at least 96 units — reported to the Township Committee on November 13, 2025 and described on December 4 as verbal and not yet executed — which is enough to carry the whole plan without Kenvue. Staff had told the Planning Board on June 23, 2025 that the same owner “were not able to agree to extend the controls.” The public record does not explain why that position changed, and we will not guess. The hearings where residents turned up in numbers, and the questions asked at them, are part of the public record of how this unfolded.

Worth knowing: the extensions at McKinley Court and McKinley Commons were disclosed on March 9, 2026 as conditional on continuing discussions with the developer, and those controls do not expire until 2032. The 275-credit total is not yet bolted down.