What an 'Area in Need of Redevelopment' Study Actually Means

On September 17, 2026, the Township Committee took the first formal step toward a redevelopment designation over the former Kenvue campus. Most of what people assume about the phrase “area in need of redevelopment” is either too alarming or too reassuring. Here is what the law requires.

The statute, in plain language

The Local Redevelopment and Housing Law, N.J.S.A. 40A:12A, sets out a sequence a municipality must follow before it can treat an area as a redevelopment area. It is a process with several off-ramps, and each step is public.

1. The governing body authorizes a study. By resolution, the Township Committee directs the Planning Board to conduct a preliminary investigation of a specific property. The resolution must state up front whether a designation would authorize the use of eminent domain.

2. The Planning Board’s planner prepares a map and report. The report applies the statutory criteria — the things that, in the law’s older language, add up to blight. In plain terms, the statute asks whether buildings are substandard, unsafe, unsanitary, dilapidated or obsolescent; whether commercial or industrial buildings have been discontinued or abandoned, have stood significantly vacant for at least two consecutive years, or have fallen into such disrepair as to be untenantable; whether obsolete layout, faulty arrangement or excessive land coverage makes an area detrimental to public safety, health or welfare; and whether a lack of proper utilization, caused by conditions of title, diverse ownership or similar conditions, has left land in a stagnant and unproductive condition. Not every criterion needs to apply. But the statute is not a general-purpose planning tool: a property does not qualify simply because the town would prefer something else there.

The criterion written for a campus like this one. Since a 2019 amendment, P.L.2019, c.229, criterion (b) reads in full:

The discontinuance of the use of a building or buildings previously used for commercial, retail, shopping malls or plazas, office parks, manufacturing, or industrial purposes; the abandonment of such building or buildings; significant vacancies of such building or buildings for at least two consecutive years; or the same being allowed to fall into so great a state of disrepair as to be untenantable.

That language was added for emptied office parks and dead malls, and a corporate campus that its tenant is leaving is the obvious candidate for it. It also sets a clock. A vacancy finding needs “at least two consecutive years” of significant vacancy, and Kenvue is still operating at the site until the end of 2026. When significant vacancy began, and in which buildings, is a factual question the planner’s report will have to answer with evidence. The Appellate Division applied the same clock in an unpublished 2025 case, Beach Haven Automotive, holding that a lot vacant for about six months during an environmental cleanup was neither “abandoned” nor vacant for two consecutive years.

What the courts require. In Malanga v. Township of West Orange, 253 N.J. 291 (2023), a unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court held that a designation gets deference only if “substantial evidence” in the record supports it. “Judicial deference does not mean that a court is a rubber stamp,” and “more than a bland recitation of applicable statutory criteria” is required. Under criterion (d), the Court said, the statute “does not presume harm; it requires a showing of actual detriment,” and proof “that a property is not used in an optimal manner or that it could function better is not an independent basis for redevelopment.” The older Gallenthin decision (2007) holds the same line from the other side: land that is merely “not fully productive” is not blighted. Malanga is the case resident Dave Leonard cited to the Committee on September 17 and again to the Planning Board on September 28.

3. A noticed public hearing. The Board must hold a hearing, with notice published and sent to the affected owners, at which objections become part of the record.

4. A recommendation, then a decision. The Board recommends; the governing body holds its own public hearing and then decides, by resolution, whether to designate.

5. Only then, a redevelopment plan. A designation by itself builds nothing. To change what can be built, the governing body must adopt a redevelopment plan by ordinance — and that is the step with real consequences. A redevelopment plan can set its own permitted uses, densities and standards in place of the zoning that applies now; the municipality can designate a redeveloper and negotiate an agreement with them; and redevelopment areas open the door to financial tools ordinary zoning does not offer, including long-term tax exemptions.

Condemnation versus non-condemnation

This is the distinction that matters most, and it is the one most often lost.

Since a 2013 amendment, New Jersey requires a municipality to say which kind of designation it is pursuing. A condemnation redevelopment area carries the power of eminent domain: the municipality can take property at compensation. A non-condemnation redevelopment area does not. Everything else about the process is the same, but the taking power is absent.

The Montgomery study is expressly non-condemnation. Nobody’s property can be taken under it. Anyone telling you otherwise — in either direction — is not reading the resolution.

A designation is also reviewable: New Jersey law requires notice of the determination to be served on affected owners within ten days, and anyone may apply to the Superior Court for review within 45 days of its adoption — though only a condemnation designation must spell that deadline out in the notice itself.

What Montgomery actually did

Resolution #26-9-260 directs the Planning Board to conduct a preliminary investigation under the redevelopment law into whether 199 Grandview Road, Lot 2 in Block 14001, meets the criteria for designation as a non-condemnation redevelopment area. Board consultant Clarke Caton Hintz is to prepare the map and report and hold a duly noticed public hearing.

Resolution #26-9-261 authorizes an escrow funding agreement with E. Kahn Development Corp. to pay the township’s costs for that study. The resolution states that the Township gives “no assurance of a particular result.” The escrow reaches beyond the study itself: it covers “other actions reasonably connected with the investigation and potential designation and redevelopment of the Property.” The version printed in the September 17 agenda also carries wording from a different template: a reference to “the Borough,” and a recital about “the application for long-term tax exemption,” the same phrase used in the Thrive at Montgomery escrow resolution on the same agenda. No tax-exemption application for the Kenvue site has been made public. The adopted text, printed in the September 17 minutes (approved October 15, 2026), fills in the blank resolution number but keeps both of those passages. A developer-funded escrow passed the same night for Country Club Meadows — Resolution #26-9-259, on a site designated back in 2024 and already under a redevelopment agreement — and the township attorney called the device “a common practice throughout New Jersey.”

Whose idea was it? Resident Paul Hao asked the Committee directly whether the two resolutions were requested by the developer or were the Committee’s own idea. The answer from the dais was: “That’s his request. Yes. It’s his request.” That does not make the study improper — a property owner is entitled to ask, and the Committee still had to vote — but it belongs in any honest account of how the item reached the agenda.

Nor is the mechanism unprecedented here. In June 2024 the Committee designated the undeveloped portion of Block 4020, Lot 1 in Belle Mead a non-condemnation redevelopment area (Resolution #24-6-221); a redevelopment agreement there now covers a continuing-care senior community. And in October 2025, the Township Committee authorized and directed the same Planning Board to conduct a preliminary investigation into whether 23 Orchard Road meets the criteria for designation as a non-condemnation redevelopment area. Planning Director Lori Savron described that referral on the record on February 9, 2026, and the township planner repeated it to the Township Committee ten days later. Same statute, same kind of resolution, same absence of eminent-domain power. Anyone describing the Kenvue study as unheard-of in Montgomery is mistaken; the question is not whether the township uses this tool, but whether the statutory criteria are met on this parcel.

And that precedent has run its course. The 23 Orchard Road study, by Clarke Caton Hintz, came back in March 2026. The Planning Board’s hearing on March 23 drew no public comment, and the Board found the site met “one or more criteria.” On April 16, 2026 the Committee designated it by Resolution #26-4-138, 5-0, six months after ordering the study. It then directed the Planning Board to prepare a redevelopment plan. On April 27 the Board postponed hiring Clarke Caton Hintz to write that plan, and on September 28 it hired an economic adviser, eConsult Solutions, instead. Six months after designation, no planner has been appointed to write the plan and no draft exists. Nobody spoke at the designation hearing; eleven people spoke on April 27, once the question was what would be built (the April 27 entry). It is the closest Montgomery example of this process.

Both resolutions were adopted 4-0. Committeeman Douglas Herring, Ahn, Deputy Mayor Taylor Todd and Mayor Singh voted yes; Committeeman Mike Martin was absent, and cast no vote in any roll call that night. It was not a 5-0 vote and it should not be described as one.

Two scope limits are material. The study covers only Lot 2 in Block 14001. The property as a whole is the 382.771-acre former Kenvue campus at 199 Grandview Road (Block 14001 Lot 2 and Block 13001 Lot 15), whose Limited Manufacturing core is about 257 acres — so the study does not reach the rest of the campus, and the resolution should not be read as covering the entire holding. And, as the township attorney put it, the study “does not authorize a plan… does not green light any project. It is the first step in a multi-step process.”

The arguments, both of them

Against. Bruce Afran, attorney for savemontgomery.org, submitted a statement that was read into the record. A designation, he wrote, “will fail in the courts if it amounts to cherry picking, isolated incidents of repair or maintenance needs, and fails to identify true blight,” and “the Kenvue buildings are largely in a pristine state and are well suited to their intended uses, or can be adaptively reused.” Resident Dave Leonard made a related legal point from the floor: citing a 2023 New Jersey Supreme Court decision involving West Orange, he argued a designation needs proof both of a listed statutory condition and that the condition is detrimental to the community’s safety, health or welfare. A resident who gave her name as Jennifer objected that residents should not be asked to underwrite a private investment decision, and others that the item sat at the very end of a long agenda.

For. Committee Member Ahn framed his yes vote as preserving options. The alternative on file is a by-right limited manufacturing complex — “a lot of trucks and lights all up, all at night time,” as he put it — and the township cannot shape a by-right application. Mayor Singh added that she and others had approached the NJEDA and Somerset County about buying the site outright, without success. Deputy Mayor Taylor Todd was blunter: “I want us to have options and the ability to have a say in what happens. So I’m voting yes.”

The fiscal case. Most of the township’s argument is money, and it is a serious argument that a site opposed to the study should still report. The township attorney said Kenvue will cease operations at 199 Grandview Road by the end of 2026. Mayor Singh told the Committee that Montgomery expects a resulting gap of roughly $1.4 million a year in tax revenue — the developer’s own presenter called the site the township’s second-largest tax-generating parcel — and that E. Kahn has already told township staff it will come to the township seeking relief on the emptied buildings’ assessment. A tax appeal was foreshadowed publicly a year earlier: at the September 8, 2025 Planning Board meeting that same presenter said the property was assessed at $41.6 million, was in his view over-assessed by more than 60 percent, and that “a tax appeal will be coming,” which he put at a short-term reduction of $700,000 to $800,000 a year. It has since been filed. On February 27, 2026 the New Jersey Tax Court docketed an appeal of Lot 2’s 2026 assessment in the four LLCs’ abbreviated names (docket 2026001145), seven months before the Committee’s vote, and it was still open on October 23, 2026.

Two things are true at once. A large ratable going quiet is a genuine municipal problem, and the township is entitled to look for answers to it. And a redevelopment designation does not by itself restore a dollar of revenue; nor does it resolve a tax appeal, which turns on whether the assessment exceeds the property’s true market value.

Who a PILOT pays. A redevelopment designation is also the usual route to a long-term tax exemption, or PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes), which Montgomery lists as the last step in its own redevelopment process. The township’s Redevelopment Timeline, published in October 2026, says where that money goes: “PILOT revenues are shared between the municipality and the county, with the municipality typically keeping 95% of the payment, and the county receiving 5%. School districts do not receive a direct portion.” It adds that “municipalities consider potential school impacts carefully before approving any PILOT.” Since January 2024, state law has allowed one exception: a town may contract to pass part of its PILOT money to its school board to repay school-building bonds (P.L.2023, c.311). No such contract for Montgomery has been made public, and no PILOT application for the campus has been made public. See PILOTs, explained.

One factual dispute is now settled by the county record. Lloyd Fernandez of Skillman challenged the statement from the dais that E. Kahn Development owns the property, noting that the deeds of record name separate limited liability companies. They do. The deed recorded December 30, 2025 conveys the campus for $23.5 million to four LLCs as tenants in common: 199 Grandview Partners LLC (47.5%), Grandview Skillman LLC (42.5%), Skillman Investors LLC (5%) and Grandview Investors LLC (5%). Resolution #26-9-261 lists the same four and names E. Kahn as their “representative entity.” That price is also worth setting beside the fiscal case: the township assesses Lot 2 alone at about $41.3 million (the sale, in detail).

What happens next

The Planning Board took the referral up on September 28, 2026. Board Attorney Karen Cayci said that when the report is finished, it will come to the Board and be made public. A public hearing will follow, and only then will the Board decide what, if anything, to recommend. No planner was named for the Grandview study that night and no dates were set. Resolution #26-9-260 directs Clarke Caton Hintz to do the work. The Board’s September 14 closed session listed the “appointment of a special planning consultant,” and nothing more has been announced. When a resident began to read a statement objecting to the designation, the Chair asked her to hold it: “we’re not close to that yet.”

The steps from here are fixed by statute, N.J.S.A. 40A:12A-6:

1. The report and map. The planner prepares a map of the study area and a report applying the criteria. That report is the document to read.
2. Notice. The hearing must be advertised in a newspaper once a week for two consecutive weeks, the last notice at least ten days before the hearing, and mailed to the owners. For a non-condemnation study, the notice must say that the designation will not authorise eminent domain.
3. The Planning Board hearing. Anyone may speak, and written objections become part of the record. At 23 Orchard Road nobody spoke.
4. Recommendation, then resolution. The Board recommends; the Committee decides by resolution. A designation then goes to the Commissioner of Community Affairs for review, and notice must be served on owners within ten days. For 23 Orchard Road the state wrote that no approval step applied: the site is in a PA-3 Fringe Planning Area with sewer service, so the designation “took effect after transmission” to the Commissioner.
5. The 45-day window. A challenge to a designation must be filed within 45 days of notice.

The study was not discussed at the Planning Board’s October 12 meeting; the Board said only that “E. Kahn Development Corp. — 199 Grandview Road” is for “subsequent meetings.” Its next meeting is November 9, 2026, at 7 p.m. at the Municipal Building, 100 Community Drive. As of October 23, 2026 no hearing had been noticed. Check the township’s board calendar and its public notices, and this site’s timeline, which will carry the hearing date once it is noticed.

You can watch the September 17 votes and the discussion around them: Resolution #26-9-260, 1:53:20. And the Planning Board’s first update: September 28, 2026, 1:05:30.