Dunellen Mayor Jason Cilento has helped guide redevelopment in the borough’s downtown since taking office in 2020, including Metro 526, a new 40-unit apartment building at 526 North Ave. — Photo by Aaron Houston for Real Estate NJ

By Marlaina Cockcroft

There’s been a flurry of activity lately — from new construction to façade improvements — but the plan to revitalize Dunellen’s downtown is more than two decades in the making.

It’s why officials in the Middlesex County borough are eager to keep the momentum going with a balanced but proactive approach that has caught the attention of developers and planning advocates.

“This has been a 20-plus-year conversation,” Mayor Jason Cilento said, pointing to “a nice renaissance” that is in full swing in Dunellen’s central business district. Developers since 2022 have completed three projects with a combined 450 housing units and new retail space — including a seminal, award-winning development by Prism Capital Partners. Three other proposals are moving ahead after securing key approvals in 2024, part of a pipeline of at least eight projects that are in process or being reviewed by borough officials.

Cilento, who took office in 2020, credited former Mayor Robert Seader with laying the groundwork and specifically with getting the approvals to redevelop a long-vacant industrial property downtown before retiring in 2019. That gave way to Prism’s project at 100 South Washington Ave., known as The Nell, which replaced the former Art Color printing factory with 252 luxury apartments and some 9,000 square feet of retail space.

The development, located directly across from Dunellen’s train station, also includes 130 new for-sale townhouses by K. Hovnanian Homes.

“That was his big project,” Cilento said of his predecessor, who spent 21 years leading the 1.1-square-mile borough of some 8,000 residents. “It helped build a nice foundation for where we’re at today.”

The market has responded. Edwin Cohen, principal partner of Nutley-based Prism, said the apartments were fully leased nine months after opening.

“It was incredible,” Cohen said. “We figured a year and a half.”

The Nell, whose sixth and final building opened in 2023, is part of a stock of new rental housing that also includes 14 units at 150 North Ave. by Joseph Villani and Metro 526, a 40-unit project at 526 North Ave. And that’s poised to grow with other developments that were approved in 2024, including projects that would bring a combined 120 units to key corridors on Front Street and North Avenue.

Robert Fourniadis, Prism’s senior vice president for residential, noted that other developers operating in Dunellen shows “that we gave them proof of concept. Once you do something like this, it just builds on itself.”

Taylor Architecture & Design’s busy year in the borough seems to bear that out. The firm designed all three projects receiving planning board approval in 2024: an eight-unit building at 337 Front St., a 50-unit building at 405-415 North Ave. that would replace the Dunellen Rescue Squad and a 62-unit building at 431-441 North Ave., all of which call for commercial space. The developments have been in the works since 2022, according to President Brian Taylor, and they will replace underutilized buildings.

Taylor said the town offered his North Plainfield-based firm creative freedom: “We can’t always do the design that we would love to do” on projects, due to zoning regulations or budgetary constraints. “In Dunellen, we have the best of both worlds.”

The practice also has three other mixed-use projects in the works in Dunellen, though he couldn’t share details yet.

“It’s a good area, it has a good demographic and, in addition to that, it has a mayor and council that are looking for development,” Taylor added.

Cilento said that’s his goal. “Our Main Street story is much like most Main Street stories,” in that the malls and highways built in the 1960s “took the soul out of our downtown.” Then Art Color, the town’s main employer, left in the ’60s.

In the 1990s, the business district was still stagnant, prompting the push that culminated in 2003 when the borough adopted a downtown redevelopment plan. Cilento said, “If you look at the models around the state, this is really the way that you have comeback stories in the downtown.”

Since he became mayor, property and business owners have invested $100 million in downtown redevelopment projects and façade improvements, aiming for a look that honors Dunellen’s history as a transit village, he said. About 89 percent of the tax burden falls on residents, so officials need to increase the commercial values of the downtown to balance things, he said.

For instance, the borough created a five-year tax abatement program to incentivize smaller property owners to make improvements. Cilento said he doesn’t want longtime business owners feeling pushed out. Getting owners of older properties to revitalize their sites while maintaining their historic look is “just as much my goal (as) to get a new builder in and tear down an old building and build something new.”

Cilento said officials work with a town planner, and they survey residents yearly and run town halls to make their redevelopment plan “a living document, to really be what our residents and our business owners and general community want the town to become.”

Locals told him they didn’t want new apartments, especially taller buildings, to affect Dunellen’s small-town feel. As a result, the redevelopment plan caps projects at three stories.

Residents were also concerned about high-density development expanding throughout the town. Cilento agrees with them.

“Our housing stock is very quaint. It’s a mix of Victorians and colonials and Sears homes and capes and bilevels,” he said. “You drive through Dunellen, and you can see all eras of homes that have been built. I appreciate that look.”

But Taylor and Cohen say there is a need for new housing. Taylor said Dunellen has “old housing stock. It’s not really up to par with a lot of the new housing that’s coming online.”

“New Jersey in general is still under-housed,” Cohen said. “There’s not enough housing to accommodate the demand that’s out there,” especially multifamily housing with expanded amenities.

As Dunellen rebuilds, officials keep multiple issues in mind. Each new project offers an affordable housing component. The Nell has 58 units reserved for that purpose, a higher percentage due to the total number of homes, Fourniadis said.

Cilento also said every project incorporates flood and stormwater management, while the town has a climate resiliency plan. Meantime, a new South Avenue culvert under the railroad embankment and the federal Green Brook Flood Control Project should provide additional protection.

Eventually, Cilento wants to re-evaluate Dunellen’s flooding map. The Department of Environmental Protection’s current map adds more of the borough to the flood zone, forcing changes to planned developments, he said.

That includes Taylor Architecture’s North Avenue projects. Brian Taylor said the team raised the first floor about a foot and added a ramp and drainage without seriously impacting the design.

Cilento said the redevelopment plan is bringing results. He’s seeing more foot traffic downtown, and shop owners tell him they have more visitors. Dunellen will keep working to attract new businesses as well.

He’s got big plans for the town where he grew up and is raising his family. When he travels around the state and mentions Dunellen, he hopes that “people go, ‘Oh, I know that town.’”

It’s not just local leaders and developers that recognize the appeal of downtown Dunellen. In early November, the borough announced that it won the esteemed “Great Downtown” designation by the American Planning Association’s New Jersey Chapter, noting that the award celebrates vibrant, walkable business districts that excel in fostering economic development, sustainability, cultural vitality and inclusivity, while touting it as an endorsement of the collective efforts of local businesses, residents and municipal officials.

“Dunellen is open for business, and we invite everyone to experience the energy and excitement of our revitalized downtown,” Mayor Jason Cilento said at the time. “This is just the beginning, and we are excited to see what the future holds as we strive to make downtown Dunellen an even more inclusive, sustainable and thriving place for all.”

The news came just weeks after Prism Capital Partners accepted a New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award for The Nell, its mixed-use project that redeveloped the former Art Color printing factory across from NJ Transit’s Dunellen train station. The coveted honor followed the strong lease-up of the property’s 252 apartments, which occupy the site alongside a 9,300-square-foot, freestanding retail building at 100 South Washington Ave.

The project’s success is also a personal achievement for Robert Fourniadis, Prism’s senior vice president for residential. He recalled in an interview that, while working for Centex Homes, he was struck by “this dilapidated old industrial building” that he saw while driving through Middlesex County. He wanted to build in walkable communities with transit, and Dunellen seemed to check all the boxes.

He made an offer on the site, but that was sidelined by the 2007-2008 recession. After joining Prism in 2012, he got a second chance to make the deal.

“The Nell is a prime example of how developers, their architect partners and municipal governments can work together to benefit communities for the long term,” Fourniadis said last fall, as the firm announced the New Jersey Future award. “Prism and the borough of Dunellen worked diligently to bring this project to life. Redevelopment of complex sites like this can only succeed through trust, collaboration, patience and shared goals.”

Marlaina Cockcroft is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.