Montgomery's Fourth Round housing plan

The Township Committee directed the Planning Board to study whether Block 14001, Lot 2 at 199 Grandview Road meets the statutory criteria for a non-condemnation redevelopment area, and authorised an escrow agreement under which E. Kahn Development pays for the study. Both passed 4-0 with Committeeman Martin absent, over roughly 40 minutes of public comment that ran heavily against them. The township attorney also said on the record that the widely reported "$300 million" damages figure in the data-center lawsuit is false.

A short meeting with one item that matters to the housing story: the township administrator's update on the "Transit Commercial" site, where 189 market-rate apartments called Belle Mead Station are planned as what she called "the offset to the extension" of affordability controls on 96 Pike Run apartments. The Board then went into closed session on hiring a special planning consultant and on E. Kahn Development's lawsuit against the Board.

The Committee adopted Ordinance #26-1779, which prohibits data centers and detention centers everywhere in Montgomery Township, by a 4-0 roll call after a public hearing at which a lawyer and a partner for E. Kahn Development asked them to table it. The same meeting opened with Deputy Mayor Vince Barragan's resignation and closed, after an executive session on the affordable housing litigation, with an added resolution approving a Fourth Round settlement agreement with Fair Share Housing Center.

The adoption meeting. After a hearing that ran about twenty minutes and drew no public comment, the Planning Board adopted the 2026 Amended Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan on an 8-0 roll call — the plan that replaces the Kenvue site and the other proposed inclusionary developments with extended affordability controls on 210 existing units. Board planner Michael Sullivan put the total at 275 credits against a 260-unit obligation. The rest of the three-hour meeting was the Princeton Promenade signage and model-home application.

The Township Committee adopted every implementing piece of the amended Fourth Round housing framework — the rewritten Chapter 15 ordinance, the amended spending plan, the administrative agent and the affirmative marketing plan — all 5-0. The township attorney reported that Program Judge Miller had found no consensus among the objectors and had recommended a fairness hearing before any order issues, and that the Planning Board hearing on the plan itself, snowed out in February, was reset to March 9.

The township planner walked the full Committee through the draft amended Fourth Round housing plan — the plan that drops the Kenvue site and substitutes preservation of existing affordable units — and the Committee introduced Ordinance #26-1771, the implementing affordable housing ordinance, on first reading. Residents used public comment to press for no zoning change at 199 Grandview Road.

A 30-minute information session, not a hearing: township staff walked the Planning Board and the public through the draft amendment to the Fourth Round housing plan, which drops the E. Kahn/Kenvue site, 23 Orchard Road and Thrive Assisted Living in favor of extending affordability controls on existing units. No vote was taken on the amendment.

The meeting opened with the township attorney's report on the first mediation session in the Round Four housing case: the township had formally notified the Program and all interested parties that it would amend its plan, and — with an agreement in principle to extend controls on at least 96 Pike Run units — no other development, including the Kenvue site, would remain in the plan. The Committee then held the public hearing on and adopted Ordinance #25-1766, the $1,100,000 bond ordinance that pays for those extensions.

The first Township Committee meeting after the November 4 election, and the night the alternative to building on the Kenvue site became concrete: a $1.1 million bond ordinance to pay for extending affordability controls on existing affordable homes, the first two extension resolutions covering 54 owner-occupied units, and a resolution ratifying a settlement agreement. All five members were present and every recorded vote was 5-0.

Mayor Singh read a statement announcing an agreement with the owner of Pike Run to extend affordability controls, and said that as a result the Kenvue site would no longer be needed in the township's housing plan. Later the same night, without discussion, the Committee voted 5-0 to direct the Planning Board to study 23 Orchard Road as a non-condemnation redevelopment area.

The first regular Township Committee meeting after the Fourth Round housing plan was adopted. Nothing about the Kenvue site was on the agenda, yet roughly 80 minutes of public comment was about it — the headquarters building slated for demolition, which speakers that night attributed to Henry N. Cobb and W. Steven Wood of I.M. Pei & Partners against the plan's finding of no architecturally important buildings on the site; Grandview Road traffic, flooding, and repeated demands for an alternative site. Officials corrected the unit numbers, explained why the township did not challenge its state obligation, and promised August town halls.

A special 5:00 p.m. meeting that ran two hours and forty minutes: the continuation of the Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan hearing, roughly two more hours of public comment, and then the vote. The Board adopted the June 13, 2025 plan — the version that put around 400 homes on the Kenvue site at 199 Grandview Road — on a roll call of eight ayes and one no, four days before the state's June 30 deadline.

The public hearing on the 2025 Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan — the plan that put 417 residential units, 70 of them affordable, on the former Kenvue campus at 199 Grandview Road. The meeting 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; the board took no vote and carried the hearing to Thursday, June 26.