Planning Board — June 23, 2025

What happened

No vote was taken. The Planning Board opened the public hearing on the 2025 Fourth Round Housing Plan Element and Fair Share Plan, dated June 13, 2025, at 5:02 p.m. and ran until 8 p.m. without ever reaching the comment period — the entire public portion went to the question period. The chair carried the hearing to Thursday, June 26 at 5 p.m., with the statutory adoption deadline of June 30 four days away. The agenda item was styled “Master Plan Public Hearing and Adoption of Resolution,” and the chair told the room the night would end with board discussion and “potentially a vote depending on time.” The vote never came. (The township’s planner confirmed at a later meeting that the plan was adopted in June 2025.)

The plan presented by township affordable-housing consultant Michael Sullivan of Clarke Caton Hintz set out a Fourth Round prospective-need obligation of 260 credits and a present-need (rehabilitation) obligation of 73. It relied on 92 extensions of expiring affordability controls — 60 at McKinley Court, of which only 38 could count against the state’s senior cap, plus 35 at McKinley Commons and 19 at Montgomery Glen — and on three inclusionary sites: 417 units on the Kenvue campus, 70 of them affordable; 180 units at 23 Orchard Road, 36 affordable; and affordable assisted-living beds at the Thrive continuing-care community. The plan projected a surplus of 24 credits.

The Kenvue arrangement was unusual: the contract purchaser would build 70 affordable units on site and separately fund 54 off-site control extensions, which Sullivan said lifted the effective set-aside from roughly 15 percent to 26 percent, and would dedicate about 125 acres to the township. The extensions at McKinley Commons and Montgomery Glen — about $1,080,000 — would be paid by the developer rather than out of the township’s affordable housing trust fund.

Why it matters

This is the meeting that put 417 homes on the Kenvue site in a formally adopted township plan. Residents learned the specifics only when the roughly 800-page document went online on June 13, ten days before the hearing; the legal notice had run in the Courier News the day before, on June 12.

The township’s case, made repeatedly from the dais, was that the alternative was worse. If no plan were adopted by June 30 the township would lose its immunity from builder’s-remedy lawsuits — Sullivan cited South Brunswick, which he said had its immunity pulled and lost control of its planning board, and Englewood Cliffs as cautionary examples. The township put a number on the substitution: replacing Kenvue with straight 15-percent-set-aside zoning elsewhere would require sites able to hold about 706 units. Township staff also said the plan would generate about 348 public school children, against roughly 952 under a “do nothing” builder’s-remedy scenario.

Residents did not accept the framing, and several of their questions have aged well. One asked what the contingency plan was if Kenvue fell through. Staff answered that earlier plans had carried backup alternatives but “we didn’t have any backup alternatives for this plan” — the board would have to come back and amend it. That is exactly what happened in 2026.

The acreage argument also got its clearest airing that night. Reading the assessor’s records aloud, Devra Keenan broke the main parcel into a 160-acre commercially assessed portion, net assessed value about $41 million, and an adjacent 97 acres carrying a farm qualification. 160 plus 97 is the 257-acre Limited Manufacturing core; the township’s own housing plan puts the full holding, across Block 14001 Lot 2 and Block 13001 Lot 15, at 382.771 acres.

Worth watching

• The planner’s presentation (2:30)
• Demolition and the I.M. Pei building (1:11:30)
• “A fait accompli” (1:23:20)
• Acreage, zoning and 417 units (1:50:10)
• The 706-unit replacement math (2:08:20)
• Traffic: residential vs. by-right industrial (2:26:00)

Public comment

Speaker after speaker was sworn in and gave a Grandview Road, Fairview Road or Skillman address. Several said they had learned of the meeting the day before, or an hour before.

Recurring themes: that ten days was not enough time to read an 800-page plan; that notice in the Courier News reached almost nobody, and that residents near the sites got no mailed notice (staff explained the 200-foot notice requirement attaches to zoning changes and site plan applications, not master plan hearings). Residents asked why the township never challenged the state’s obligation number — Sullivan said his firm’s own model showed only a minimal difference, and staff, relaying an update from the township attorney, said that of 431 participating towns 159 had calculated their own number, fewer than ten had won approval for a lower one, and most of those were only about 4 percent below the state figure. Several asked whether Montgomery would join the 27 municipalities residents said were suing the state over the Round Four formula; the chair said it was not for that night’s discussion, and a board member questioned whether it was in the Planning Board’s purview at all.

On the site itself: the environmental sensitivity of the Sourland foothills and the wetlands; well and septic impacts; the rail crossing and left turns onto County Route 601; school capacity; and the loss of the I.M. Pei & Partners-designed building, which Shellie Jacobson raised after establishing that the concept plan demolished “pretty much” everything. Residents attributed that building to Henry N. Cobb and W. Steven Wood of I.M. Pei & Partners at the Township Committee on July 17, 2025; the plan the board was hearing found there are “no historic or architecturally important sites or buildings on the property.” Devra Keenan questioned both the density and the premise, noting that the deed was still in Johnson & Johnson’s name and that the township was negotiating with a contract purchaser who had not yet closed. Sullivan, pressed on whether his job ended that night and for whom he worked, answered: “I’m an adviser. I’m not a decider.” The resident’s follow-up was blunter — that he had given the impression he was paid by the developer, not the township.

One exchange did not surface again for months. Asked why Pike Run — 210 affordable rentals out of roughly 1,200 units, more affordable units than any other development in the plan’s inventory — was absent from the plan, staff said they had approached the property owner and the owner was not able to agree to extend the controls. Pike Run preservation became the centerpiece of the 2026 amended plan. The township’s account of the change came later: at the March 9, 2026 hearing Sullivan said the Pike Run opportunity was not available when the June 2025 plan was prepared because the owner “had not previously expressed interest,” and that discussions after adoption made the amendment possible. The public record does not explain why the owner’s position changed, and we do not speculate about it.

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Sources: the township’s archive — meeting video and its transcript — and the official minutes, Montgomery Township, June 23, 2025.