In what is a major development for Orthodox Jews living in Jackson Township, the council moments ago introduced an ordinance which will allow house of worship in most areas of the township to be built on just one acre of land on main roads.
According to current land use regulations, a house of worship requires at least two acres, a significant impediment for religious Jews seeking to acquire land for a Shul.
According to the text of the ordinance, only half an acre will be needed in limited areas of the municipality, including the Brookwood neighborhood.
The ordinance still needs to pass a second reading before it can take affect.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Oh my!
The little duchys lift tons of Federal & State money, (our tax money), but can’t pick up a couple of pieces of paper like The Constitution and The Bill of Rights.
Perhaps Jackson is showing more progress in their deployment of opposing thumbs.
Thank you to Rabbi Mordechai Burnstein for all your efforts and lobbying to make this happen.
May the Almighty bless you and your family.
Does anyone know what the proposed frontage requirement is? Until now it has been 200 Ft.
Every prospective Shul should be required to install left turn signals at every intersection within a half mile of the Shul before there’s a problem.
FYI, please sign the petition circulating to rename Jackson to “Lakewood Phase II”
This will rescind all zoning laws allowing for unimpeded growth to equal & eventually surpass Lakewood.
Short term goals:
Reduce parks & green spaces by 50%
Reduce on street parking by 38%
Require all schools to host wedding halls
Convert single family lots into a minimum 6 separate units with 1 parking spot for every 3 units.
Some are saying all the towns surrounding Lakewood will be Lakewood North/South/East/West and will be one day renamed “The greater Lakewood metro area”.
Thank you to all those who got this done.
My question for the Orthodox community and its leadership is as follows : how do you create the Orthodox infrastructure needed without the entire region turning into Lakewood style development with unbearable traffic, congestion, and infrastructure collapse? Lakewood’s growth was poorly planned and Jackson, TR, Howell, Manchester, Brick could potentially end up like that. Would love to hear answers on this forum.
I am not sure there is an easy answer to your question. The reality is that most of the areas that turned into ultra orthodox areas Like Lakewood ultimately turn into congested areas due to many factors such as the necessity of being within walking distance to a synygogue. There are definitely many orthodox jews like myself that want to maintain the quality of life but not sure in the long term anything can be done to prevent the overdevelopment.
There are plenty of Frum communities in America that don’t look or function like Lakewood.
Please show me a large hareidie community in the tri state area that’s not congested. I dodnt disagree I just believe it’s very complicated to figure out what contributed to the mess in lakewood or other large communities.
Mr. Stein – I appreciate your honest response. The thing now is they are saying that most of Ocean County public schools and the infrastructure are going the way of Lakewood in the coming years – bankruptcy and complete erosion of the infrastructure if there is not some type of smart planning. I respect the needs of your community but it seems the leadership is not looking to the future as well in creating a better quality of life that does not resemble Lakewood or Kiryas Joel.
And also dangerous driving on the roads.
Passaic and Teaneck come to mind
There are Co. that will work with towns on how to mange growth. They have data on what works and what does not.
The question is will anyone be interested in listening to them or will they go with developers cash?
We create the needed infrastructure by claiming “Anti-Orthodox hatred” & “Antisemitism” if anyone complains.
thank you Council President and Mayor! Jenn and Scott rock also
I hope this is not the beginning of the end of Jackson. We can’t allow it to turn into Lakewood 2.0. We all moved out of Lakewood for the quality of life ajd we have to fight and make sure it does not turn into the Lakewood mess.
Or the end of Ocean County!
You have to realize that many in our orthodox Jewish community like myself want to maintain the quality of life and are moving out of Lakewood for the better quality of life. There seems to be some very complicated issues that we have to figure out.
To everyone who says this is the end of Jackson, I strongly disagree. I do think there needs to be laws and authority to prevent overdevelopment, but find me another town outside of Jackson that requires more than 2 Acres to build a Shul / House of Worship?
It was simply not a realistic rule and is a big strain on us people who live there.
Laws and regulations are not all or nothing.
There is a happy medium between making laws that can fit the needs of the community and keeps a town nice vs a town that has laws that are actively trying to make it hard for them to live with their basic needs or on the opposite end letting them do whatever they want.
Me good luck in fining a happy medium. Just look at every other large Hareidie community they are all trending towards over congestion and over development. To deny the fact that our community has an overdevelopment problem is a lack of truth and emes!
Well, striking the balance may be hard & we need to consider how other people perceive this and the consequences for them as a result of our hectic lifestyle.
We don’t own these towns. If we want respect, let’s ensure that we’re respecting others
Having a shul on 1/2 acre? how about parking? how about sufficient insulation/boundaries to prevent loud noise in quiet neighborhoods during evening events. Adequate access in and out of the parking lot to prevent MVAs?
we do better when we remember that we are golus yidden!
2 acres is not that large a space when you think about it. You also need to provide parking as well as building a building. If you would like to build your shul the size of a 3 bedroom house and 5 parking spaces max. maybe you don’t need any space.
@# Yaakov E. Passaic and Teaneck is not Haredie like Lakewood.I said most of the Hareidie communities are congested.
How about Lakewood adopting these rules?
the fact is that all this community growth and neighborhood development actually helps the towns’ government out of the red, stimulates the private sector, helps the local businesses stay open, keeps the locals who are employed in the nearest branch of a national chain comfortable and secure with their jobs, schools, retirement plans, and keeps the parks, streets and malls safe, so to whoever is behind all this, THANK YOU!
There are other quality of life issues to consider as well.