New Jersey Land Use Law & Warehouse Development

New Jersey’s always been conveniently located between Philadelphia and New York, with ports, airports and interstate highways all within relatively short distances for access to other cities and hubs, domestically and internationally. As more businesses need storage space, especially ecommerce companies, New Jersey has been a logical location for warehouse development.

In South Jersey, particularly Atlantic County, Burlington County, Camden County, Cumberland County, Gloucester County and Salem County, there are also many communities with plenty of room for development and redevelopment. As opposed to North Jersey and other more congested regions where warehouse development has met some local resistance, there are many municipalities that wholeheartedly welcome new development to help boost tax revenues and take the burden off homeowners.

In these less populated places, storage facilities are ideal because they put minimal burden on government services and don’t require a nearby customer base like other commercial businesses. Opportunities abound to take formerly developed but currently unused land, close to transportation but away from residential properties, and turn it into storage and distribution space.

It all depends where you aim to build.

In municipalities like Waterford Township (also known as Atco), in eastern Camden County, you may have to meet municipal and county regulations as well as comply with the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, an independent state agency charged with protecting the Pinelands National Reserve, an area of more than 1 million acres in Central and South Jersey that encompasses more than 50 communities and more than 700,000 permanent residents. Many developers may be unaware of this agency and unfamiliar with how to meet their standards, which aim to protect water quality, endangered species, and other sensitive aspects of the reserve. But getting Pinelands permits is nothing to be scared of if you have the right representation who has worked with them hundreds of times before.

You may have seen some news coverage recently about the New Jersey State Planning Commission’s Office of Planning Advocacy releasing new guidelines for warehouse development. You can see the guidelines here that were adopted in September 2022.

Those guidelines are meant to help local governments better plan for regulating and approving warehouses. In some ways, if more communities proactively plan for this type of development, it can make it easier for developers by avoiding some of the controversies seen in places where commercial usage conflicts with residential needs.

We have studied these guidelines carefully and continue to monitor their impact. We expect to see more authorities adopt new rules for distribution and storage facilities, and will continue to stay at the forefront of this dynamic situation to help our clients navigate the approval processes for their projects.