Chiropractor in Avenel, NJ

Photo Credit: Floor & Decor Outlets of America

Photo Credit: File Photo

Floor & Decor Outlets of America to open its newest New Jersey retail store at Delco Plaza in Avenel.Photo Credit: Floor & Decor Outlets of America

By TONY GALLOTTO

Last UpdatedJanuary 18, 2023 at 1:10 PM

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — Do-it-yourselfers and contractors may soon have a new place to shop for renovation project supplies.

Georgia-based-based Floor & Decor Outlets of America plans to open its newest New Jersey store at 1550 St. Georges Ave., replacing the Avenel Kmart in Delco Plaza that closed last year.

Floor & Decor has an application pending before the Woodbridge Planning Board, scheduled to be heard at 6 p.m. Wednesday, January 25.

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Floor & Decor sells an extensive selection of tile, wood and stone materials for flooring and walls. It also sell an assortment of kitchen and bath accessories, plumbing and electrical fixtures, lighting, and tools. About 60 percent of its sales are to contractors, according to Floor & Décor.

Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Smyrna, Ga., outside Atlanta, it’s listed among Fortune’s 100 fastest-growing companies with nearly 90 U.S stores. It already has New Jersey outlets in Elizabeth, Paramus, Moorestown, Toms River and Wayne.

Each stores typically employ 40 to 50 people, the company says.

Delco Plaza is located in a highway business district where “big box” retailers are already a permitted use. Floor & Decor needs preliminary and final site plan approvals from the Planning Board to make a series of renovation.

It plans to refurbish the store’s former outdoor garden center, replace a concrete slab, and enclose an overhanging roof in the loading area to create 1,200-square feet more interior space. It also intends to:

● Install a garbage compactor behind building

● Install new outdoor wall and free-standing signs off St. Georges Avenue

● Improve the fence around the former garden center

● Making a series of safety and aesthetic parking lot improvements.

The Avenel Kmart closed in April 2022, leaving the state’s last remaining store in Bergen County’s Westwood Mall. The once-sprawling chain still has Kmart stores on Long Island and in Miami.

WOODBRIDGE – The township school district has canceled plans to build a new Avenel Street School after construction delayed by the COVID pandemic and supply shortages have driven up the cost by at least $15 million, Superintendent of Schools Joseph Massimino said at last week’s Board of Education meeting.

Voters approved $35 million for the new elementary school in an $88 million referendum in March 2020 just before the pandemic, funding that will now go toward renovating the existing school, the superintendent said.

"A few days after that referendum passed, we were struck with COVID. The pandemic obviously changed our world, and the projects were put on hold for quite some time," Massimino said.

The school's builder, AECOM, told the superintendent that the new cost would be at least $15 million more than the original pre-pandemic $35 million price tag to build the school, he said.

"They say to us that they would not be able to complete the project without additional revenue, as well as dramatically changing the scope of the building," Massimino said. "They told us the increase in project costs and financing had dramatically changed through the inflationary cycle that has gripped our country and it's exacerbated by supply-chain issues obtaining steel, lumber, some of the interior fit out items for construction."

Avenel Street School, which is the oldest in the district at more than 100 years old, houses approximately 400 students in grades K-5. The new school, set to be home to 700 K-5 students, was planned for 6 acres on Rahway Avenue and would include 33 full-sized classrooms, a cafeteria and full-sized gym with stage.

In a letter to the community Wednesday, Massimino said school district officials discussed the situation and decided “the best course of action would be to pivot to a more efficient, functional solution and dedicate the remaining funds in the referendum to new construction and renovations” at the current school.

"The plan would parallel the work underway at Lafayette Estates Elementary School #25 and Matthew Jago Elementary School #28," Massimino said. "This new construction will allow for the building to remain open while enhancing the gymnasium and cafeteria and adding several new classrooms."

Approximately $2.5 million has been spent on the Rahway Avenue site, which the district never took ownership of, for architectural design plans, engineering services, site exploration, legal fees, and various permits, Massimino added in the letter.

Massimino said that the construction at the existing school would be similar to the original plan for the new school.

"We're working with architects obviously," he said. "The process that got us here is something that we have to take a good long hard look at. That was 30 months ago. So we're trying to figure out how we can best utilize and get the most bang for our buck so to speak. The plan right now is to have an equal size program building that we originally had planned for."

email: cmakin@gannettnj.com

Cheryl Makin is an award-winning features and education reporter forMyCentralJersey.com, part of the USA Today Network. Contact: Cmakin@gannettnj.com or@CherylMakin. To get unlimited access, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

By TONY GALLOTTO

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — A state corrections officer from the Avenel Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center will be prosecuted for official misconduct for his alleged role in a 2019 beat-down of an inmate that ended with the inmate’s death.

A state grand jury indicted corrections officer Giuseppe Mandara, 54, from Wallington, charging him with second-degree official misconduct. Mandara, a corrections officer since 2002, earned $89,500, state records show.

The grand jury declined to charge Mandara with homicide, but Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin says the state’s investigation is continuing, and additional charges are possible.

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The indictment alleges Mandara allegedly used “excessive or unlawful force” against the diagnostic center inmate on August 23, 2019. Days later, inmate Darrell Smith, 50, suffered a fatal stroke after he was taken to a Middlesex County hospital.

Mandara’s alleged behavior violated state Corrections Department policies, procedures and training, Platkin said.

Among the evidence presented to the grand jury was testimony from a state medical examiner about the cause of the stroke, manner of death and its relationship to the alleged altercation.

Smith’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against state Corrections Department and others saying he was previously attacked twice, and severely injured, by a group of correctional officers in “gang-style” assaults.

The Avenel Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center houses nearly 700 male inmates with violent or repetitive sex offender status. Inmate receive mental health counseling and may take educational courses or vocational training.

State law requires the Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability to conduct an investigation of a person’s "in-custody" death during an encounter with a law enforcement officer acting in official capacity

The law requires all such investigations be presented to a state grand jury to determine if the evidence supports the return of an indictment against the officer or officers involved.

New Jersey politicians, clean energy and environmental justice advocates and news media convened at an Earth Day week community solar event organized by project developer Solar Landscape to highlight a regional warehouse and logistics business providing solar energy to some 700 local residents.

On Wednesday, pv magazine USA toured a 1.1 MW (dc) rooftop solar system of RPM Warehousing and Transportation in Avenel, N.J., where Brendon Shank, executive vice president for engagement, Solar Landscape, introduced seven statewide speakers who discussed the shared benefits of equitable solar generation hosted on commercial and industrial rooftops.

Thomas Connery, chief operating officer of site host RPM Warehousing, told pv magazine USA that after the owner, operator and lessor of 10 warehouse facilities first installed a 480 kW rooftop solar array to offset its Edison, N.J. headquarters’ energy consumption in 2017, its management team saw the benefits of providing its “hundreds of thousands of square feet” warehouse roof space to provide clean energy to local residents.

Connery said RPM now generates 4.3 MW of solar energy from two of its warehouse facilities in Edison and Avenel, N.J., which is available to local residents, and the logistics business plans to install a third rooftop solar array of about 3.5 MW to 4 MW on a 480,000 square foot facility at a site within a few miles of its Edison home base.

The logistics executive said having on-site solar generation has offset 100% of the company’s own energy consumption, and over the last two years it saw traction in the New Jersey community solar market taking off to provide clean power access to local residents, many of whom are in low-to-moderate income households. In the early stages of providing community solar to Garden State residents, Connery said combined its facilities have saved local residents about $150,000 per year in energy savings and removed 3,600 tons of CO2 emissions from being burned by conventional power plants.

Solar Landscape’s Shank said RPM’s first 3.2 MW facility in Edison, N.J. is nearly fully subscribed, while its second facility (1.1 MW) is nearing completion. John Bruno, a Solar Landscape rooftop installer, said the 1.1 MW facility is using about 2,300 Hanwha QCells modules on its rooftop, equipped with SolarEdge inverters. The installation took about one month to assemble.

Bruno said he received solar installation training over a week-long training course held at a GAF Energy training center in Asbury Park, N.J., and finds the new career exciting, while in a nascent market “creating thousands of jobs along the way.”

“Solar jobs are booming in New Jersey thanks to community solar,” said Tony Staynings, business community liaison, Edison Job Corps, a career training program for young adults. “We are training our students to become part of the green energy workforce of the future and build projects like the one we are touring today.”

After neighboring state Maryland put out official plans for a long-term community solar platform earlier this week, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is in the mid stages of seeing the state’s pilot community solar framework become a long-term platform. The New Jersey Board is receiving public stakeholder feedback at an April 24 public hearing, taking place at 1 p.m., while stakeholders have a May 15 deadline to send feedback to the regulator for or against the community solar framework, said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, a clean energy advocacy group.

“New Jersey is the Saudi Arabia of rooftops,” said O’Malley about the Garden State’s many adaptable rooftop areas suitable for commercial and industrial solar systems.

Just 20 years ago, New Jersey had just six solar installations under its belt. Now the state has 4.41 GW of aggregate solar installations and provides enough clean energy to more than 705,165 households, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez, who represents the state’s 19th legislative district in Perth Amboy, N.J., was in attendance at the event and commended Solar Landscape for installing “shared access” power systems that provide clean energy to low-income residents across her district.

“Whether it’s local composting, recycling, or now shared community energy access, we’re building a future for a time to come,” said Matilde Montalvo, a local community solar subscriber who signed up to procure power from a community solar project over the last year.

Formed in 1981, RPM Warehousing is a public warehousing and transportation company with 1.5 million square feet of food-grade and general warehousing space along the East Coast at 10 facilities.

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WOODBRIDGE – A ribbon-cutting marked the opening of a new affordable housing community backed by a public and private partnership.

Greens at Avenel, located in the Avenel section, consists of 101 affordable units, including 25 for individuals with special needs.

The project, unveiled on Friday, transformed a former vacant and underutilized site into a residential community that includes a new 1.25-acre township youth sports field.

The complex is a partnership between Pennrose, the Woodbridge Redevelopment Agency and the township, financed in part by the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA).

"Today's grand opening of the Greens at Avenel represents yet another milestone toward achieving our goal of ensuring that Woodbridge Township special needs residents have access to quality residential options that allow them to affordably continue to live in the Woodbridge community," McCormac said. "Our partnership with Pennrose resulted in the construction of the first new fully-accessible residential community specially designed for Woodbridge Township’s developmentally disabled residents.”

McCormac said there are so many programs and services for the special needs community of all ages in the township, and now the township has housing, too, with this project.

"It's a joint project between the state, the township and the private section and it worked out tremendously," he said.

“Providing housing that is affordable and accessible to those who live with disabilities is at the core of our Administration’s efforts to create a stronger and fairer New Jersey for all,” Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, who serves as Commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs (DCA), said. “Gov. Murphy and I are thrilled that this new apartment complex is meeting the need for quality, affordable housing while revitalizing the surrounding community. We commend those from the public and private sector who came together to make it become a reality.”

The four-story development includes 20 one-, 61 two- and 20 three-bedroom units. The units are earmarked for residents earning between 30% to 60% of the area median income, according to NJHMFA.

Twenty-five units will be set aside as supportive housing with rental and service support provided by the Department of Development Disabilities (DDD) and the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). Of the 25 units, 15 will be reserved for physically and developmentally disabled individuals and 10 will be for residents with mental health challenges referred through DDD and DMHAS, respectively.

The complex includes a 1,300-plus-square-foot community room, a library, game room, fitness center and partially enclosed green courtyard.

“Working together, this public-private partnership benefits the entire Woodbridge community and expands housing opportunities affordable to working families,” NJHMFA Executive Director Charles A. Richman said. “The Greens at Avenel also provides critical stable, supportive independent community-living options for our residents with special needs.”

In 2015, the township took title of site, formerly owned by the New Jersey Department of Corrections, that it had identified as a prime location for the housing. Pennrose was selected as the master redeveloper in 2016 and worked closely with the township to secure funding for demolition and development activities.

According to the township, its financial contribution came from the Woodbridge Township Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is funded by developers, and did not include any taxpayer dollars.

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“Regardless of their abilities or socio-economic class, everyone desires the dignity of work and the opportunity to live independently," Sen. Joseph F. Vitale, D-19th District, said in a statement.

READ:Woodbridge opens new senior housing complex in Sewaren

Residents are anticipated to begin moving in by the end of October. Rents on the one-bedroom apartments for special needs residents are $565. Rents for a two-bedroom apartment will range from $1,258 to $1,524, and from $1,450 to $1,757 for a three-bedroom apartment, according to NJHMFA.

For rental information, visit www.pennrose.com/apartments/new-jersey/greens-at-avenel.

Susan Loyer covers Middlesex County and more for the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey. Contact her at 732-565-7243 or sloyer@gannettnj.com.