Large N.J. horse farm can now be redeveloped as warehouses, city decides

The Manalapan Township Committee last week voted to allow for warehouses and sports complexes on a 225-acre swath along Route 33 occupied mainly by the pastures, pens, stables and apply tracks at Gaitway Farm, New Jersey’s primary education facility for the standardbred horses that race at the state’s two harness tracks, Freehold Raceway and Meadowlands Racetrack, and others all over the region.
Capping a calendar year-extensive approach that involved the township setting up board’s recommendation that the region was “in require of redevelopment,” the committee voted 4- last Wednesday to adopt the Gaitway Region Redevelopment Prepare, which amends area zoning to allow warehousing and indoor recreation southwest of the intersection of Route 33 and Woodward Travel.
The farm is owned by the heirs of Kenneth W. Fischer, a espresso and tea merchant who also owned horses as effectively as Freehold Raceway, located just a couple miles west of Gaitway, a engage in on the phrase gait, which refers to a horse’s managing design, as in trotters or pacers. Fischer died in Freehold in 2011, leaving the farm in control of his sons, Kenneth Jr., Gary and Jeffrey Fischer.
The redevelopment space encompasses the 200 acres of Gaitway Farm, as very well as lesser further homes considered blighted or underused, like an abandoned nursing dwelling, Manalapan Manor, which fronts on Route 33 just east of the entrance to Gaitway, a sprawling equestrian facility mostly hidden from the chaotic east-west artery.
The farm, which boards 550 horses, sits throughout Route 33 from Knob Hill Golfing Club, an 18-keep course and residential local community made by the senior Fischer.
In addition to warehouses and indoor sporting venues, other makes use of under the system consist of gentle field, and the agricultural action that currently goes on there. To enable offset whatsoever new development may perhaps manifest as a end result, the program phone calls for 100 acres of the redevelopment location to be preserved as open up place.
Mayor Jack McNaboe and other township officials stressed throughout the conference that the program did not authorize the town to condemn the residence and change it about to a selected developer, a highly controversial follow condemned by assets rights advocates and others. Alternatively, according to the mayor, Township Legal professional Roger McLaughlin and the township’s setting up guide on the redevelopment space, Jennifer Beahm, the prepare relied on the voluntary advancement or sale of the homes concerned by their entrepreneurs.
“This is not a condemnation designation,” mentioned Beahm, who appeared through Zoom on a large watch in the committee chamber. “If the proprietor of Gaitway Farm does not want to promote, they do not have to do so.” Just what the farm homeowners want continues to be unclear, officials and observers claimed. Fisher’s three sons, now in the 60s and 70s, could not be achieved. A concept remaining at the selection for Gaitway was not returned, and recurring phone calls very last Thursday were satisfied with occupied sign.
In an job interview earlier in the 7 days, McNaboe explained the township experienced been contacted by a lawyer for individuals interested in establishing warehousing on the site. The lawyer, Kenneth Pape, did not return a get in touch with. McNaboe said the farm was in monetary problems, and that at least some associates of the Fischer family members had been in favor of a sale.
He informed the community on Wednesday that, if the proprietors were to provide the farm, owning the prepare in place would help avoid the property’s redevelopment as a bigger-influence use. For instance, a developer could sue to to earn permission for a significant-density housing contributing to the town’s economical housing need, which would pressure township companies and the university district, he reported.
“I’m all in favor of their staying a horse farm, but let’s experience it, folks, I really do not see that taking place,” McNaboe told the accumulating. “I have to be real looking. Dollars does communicate.”

Socially distanced associates of the general public attended a Manalapan Township Committee assembly on Wednesday, in opposition to a redevelopment program, later permitted by the council, that will enable warehouses to be made on the website of the Gaitway Farm standardbred horse education facility off Route 33.Steve Strunsky | NJ Progress Media For NJ.com
But the redevelopment plan has elevated considerations between residents of Manalapan and neighboring communities about overdevelopment of their however largely rural patch of western Monmouth County, as perfectly as fears by customers of the standardbred racing marketplace that permitting more makes use of on the residence beneath the program could — as its identify implies — speed up its sale and redevelopment, removing a facility important to the racing market.
“This ordinance entices them to market,” said Julie Miller, a Millstone resident who was at the meeting as a standardbred owner and trainer who boards 50 of her have horses at Gaitway together with 10 other people belonging to purchasers.
Miller explained she had relocated to Monmouth County from Illinois specifically for the reason that of Gaitway, and that there were simply just no equivalent amenities to replace it for her and other trainers and homeowners, and getting rid of the facility could reverse a remarkable comeback by New Jersey’s racing market thanks to better purses and online wagering, soon after decades of declines in attendance and betting at the observe. She was not alone.
Victoria Britton, a law firm for the Standardbred Breeders & Proprietors Association of New Jersey, the state’s harness racing trade group, informed the committee by using Zoom that reduction of the training facility, “would be a devastating blow to our members.”
Miller was between additional than 30 individuals who attended Wednesday’s conference at the Manalapan Municipal Setting up in-particular person. Just about all of them were being opposed to the redevelopment prepare, judging by shouts and a exhibit of arms outside the committee chamber just right after the vote, when the group rose in unison from their socially distanced folding chairs and filed out of the meeting room in disappointment.
Some feared that warehouses would increase even additional truck website traffic to Route 33, which runs into the New Jersey Turnpike about 5 miles west of the farm, an influence they claimed had presently been shown by the opening of an Amazon facility a handful of miles east of the farm site in Monroe Township.
“How substantially can one freeway take care of?” Pat Butch, a resident of neighboring Millstone Township, claimed soon after the vote.
“There’s just also many warehouses,” Manalapan resident Alan Poliner informed the committee. “We do not need to have any a lot more.”
Phrase of a system to persuade redevelopment of a rural, functioning horse farm designed up mainly of grass, picket fences, and a several ancillary properties drew the focus of general public coverage students at the Rebovitch Institute at Rider University, whose director, Micah Rasmussen, tweeted about the difficulty in advance of very last Wednesday’s meeting. In an interview, Rasmussen said he had by no means listened to of these a point.
“How can you redevelop one thing that was not formulated in the initially place?” Rasmussen stated.
Just after the assembly, the mayor reported he comprehended the considerations and disappointment expressed by people and other people.
But McNaboe reiterated the possible charge to taxpayers of allowing the house to be produced as housing, which would demand included expert services like law enforcement patrols and trash assortment, not to mention additional teachers and lecture rooms. Individuals, in flip, would final result in tax hikes that would anger other folks just as a lot if not more.
“We’re in the we-don’t-gain enterprise,” McNaboe explained.
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Steve Strunsky might be achieved at [email protected].