The Millburn Downtown Redevelopment Plan is officially DEAD.
December 2, 2008
Great news. All five Township Committee members, at the most recent meeting, came to their senses after listening to the residents during the recent public hearings. They officially and unanimously voted down the Millburn Downtown Redevelopment Plan at 9:47pm on Tuesday night December 2, 2008.
The five members of the Township Committee and the in-house or town attorney debated for well over an hour on the actual wording of the final resolution before they voted to make it official. A few of the Committee members wanted to add that right after the start of 2009 they would do research and look at a new Development Plan. Many in the audience asked that they change to wording from Development Plan, with all those connotations, to just "a new plan".
They finally agreed and changed the wording. They had previously agreed among themselves that they wanted to do more in the new resolution than just kill the proposed redevelopment plan. They also wanted to charge themselves with the ongoing assignment of working on a new revitalization plan for the downtown area even if not as grandiose as the one they were voting down. They said they felt that the $219,000 spent on the outside planning firm and traffic and parking studies will not all be wasted and they even suggested that the in house town planner might be able to lead the next effort to avoid incurring new costs.
That was the conclusion as they unanimously voted to kill the proposed plan before them.
Our non-profit grassroots informational organization, WeLoveMillburn, was credited by the Mayor and other members of the Township Committee with helping to get residents to attend the public hearings. WeLoveMillburn was opposed to the actual plan but they also wanted to get residents out to these public hearings so that they could decide for themselves.
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