Bergen County's suburbs embrace a touch of the city

MARKO GEORGIEV/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Demand for rental units near transportation has already prompted some towns, including Ridgewood, above, to alter their downtowns.

Robert Weiner, co-owner of the Bruce the Bed King mattress and furniture store on Hackensacks Main Street, last week took his 96-year-old father to see a first in the 60 years since his family opened its store a 222-unit apartment building rising on State Street, a block from downtown.

That project and two others that will put an additional 700 apartments on Main Street are the result of zoning revisions that Hackensack put in place two years ago and the first signs of a policy shift that could produce the biggest transformation of North Jerseys downtowns since the arrival of the malls pulled shoppers away from town centers in the 1960s and 1970s.

A growing number of North Jersey municipalities, like Hackensack, believe that adding rental apartments in their downtowns is the key to revitalizing their Main Streets. Not everyone, though, is convinced that downtowns and residential apartments are a perfect fit.

North Jersey, and particularly Bergen County, was an example of suburban prosperity in the latter part of the 20th century, typified by single-family homes and shopping centers along highways. But now North Jerseys suburbs are responding to a 21st-century sensibility of millennials those between the ages of 18 and 33 who want to live in urban environments such as Hoboken or Brooklyn, as well as aging suburbanites who want to downsize without leaving their hometowns.

michael karas/staff photographer

Englewood, a city of 27,000, has already added one apartment building to its downtown, and last week its City Council adopted sweeping zoning changes designed to encourage residential development downtown.

Demand for rental apartments, especially near train stations, is driving the change. People want to live in places where they have that downtown, where they can live close to things that theyre going to eat and things that theyre going to buy, and the market is following, said Maggie Peters, director of the Bergen County Economic Development Corp. Developers, she said, have known this already and now municipalities are starting to react.

Thats reflected in requests for multifamily unit construction. In Bergen County, permits for multifamily units have outpaced single- and two-family permits every year since 2009, according to the states Department of Community Affairs.

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Bergen County's suburbs embrace a touch of the city