SERA grants extension for senior housing plan More than 200 units may soon be proposed for River Road site BY MICHAEL ACKER Staff Writer SAYREVILLE — Officials hope to reach an agreement with a developer for the construction of senior housing near the borough’s Senior Center on Main Street. The Sayreville Economic Redevelopment Agency (SERA), which in 2005 designated the PRC Group as the developer of the site known as the River Road Redevelopment property Aug. 28, 2005, last week approved an extension of the company’s conditional designation. PRC’s designation would have expired tomorrow, but the change will give them until Feb. 28 to reach a redevelopment agreement with the borough. PRC must submit a nonrefundable initial deposit of $150,000 to SERA by Dec. 28 as a condition of the extension. “This $150,000 payment is more or less an option payment,” SERA Executive Director Randy Corman said. “It allows them to stay in the game while we work out the details of the agreement. The price that they pay for the property will be dependent on how many units they are allowed to build.” SERA Commissioner Dennis Grobelny, also a borough councilman, told the Suburban that the state Department of Environmental Protection is conducting a study of the site to make a wetlands determination so that the developer can propose a concrete number of housing units. “[PRC is] waiting for DEP delineation of wetland,” Grobelny said. “That is going to determine how much buildable land there is. They have a rough idea.” That estimate has changed over time, Corman said. PRC originally hoped to build over 300 units on the site before realizing the extent of the wetlands. Wetlands may bring the number down to approximately 250 units, Corman said, adding that it is too early to know what number PRC will propose. The number of housing units permitted on the site is 200 homes per tract, Corman said, noting that the site has two tracts. SERA hopes to have senior housing built on the River Road redevelopment property in part because of its proximity to the Senior Center. “One of the reasons we selected PRC is because they proposed to integrate the project in with the Senior Center, so people who live by there would have easy access,” Corman said. There will also be overflow parking capacity on the site for patrons of the Senior Center, he said. “One of the problems with the Senior Center is that once the parking lot fills up, there is nowhere to park,” Corman said. “You have to go across the street or down River Road, because you can’t park on Main Street. So the concept of integrating the facilities and allowing for overflow parking was a big selling point.” PRC also agreed to pay for the construction of the 3-mile-long Main Street Bypass on the portion of the road that will go through the River Road redevelopment property, Corman said. SERA Commissioner Michael D’Addio said SERA will likely close on the project by March 2007 and it should break ground by the summer after going to the Planning Board. “We are going to have part of it for lower income seniors and the rest will be market units,” D’Addio said. “There is already a pathway provided in the plans where the seniors can walk from the development to the Senior Center. There will be picnic tables around the lake and some barbecues. It’s going to be a nice little community.” The municipality’s interest in having senior housing built by the Senior Center goes back many years, Corman said. “[Former] Mayor John McCormick talked about it a number of years back,” Corman said, “and those dreams are finally coming to fruition.”