Mayor Signs Senior Center Contract

Seniors gave Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs a standing ovation Thursday as she signed over a city-owned tract for a new senior center and condo complex.

Rahway-based developer Glen Fishman will finance the $15 million project that will give seniors their long-desired new center at no cost to the city.

“This is a day of victory,” Robinson-Briggs said.

As promised, the mayor had senior center president Charles Nelson sign the contract in recognition of all the work he and others did on plans for the new center. Each senior at the ceremony received a bottle of spring water with a red bow to mark the occasion.


“This is our champagne,” said Inez Dowling, who with others vowed to keep the bottles to drink a toast when the center opens.

Fishman said ground may be broken in two or three months. At the Dec. 7 Planning Board meeting where the proposal won site plan approval, Fishman said he hoped to have the building occupied in time for Christmas 2007.

The ground-floor center will have 12,800 square feet of activity rooms, offices and a large meeting hall that will seat 200 for special events. A veterans center will also be located on the ground floor. Three floors of market-rate condos, 63 in all, will rise above the center. The city is expected to receive $400,000 annually in taxes from the condo development.

Fishman praised local officials for their speedy approvals of the project, saying achieving them in about five months was “a record in this state, for sure.” The condos will be marketed at over $300,000 each to empty-nesters and young professionals who are likely to find the nearby main train station a draw for commuting.

Assemblyman Jerry Green said the condo units will be the same as those going up in Cranford but will cost $200,000 less. A similar condo in Manhattan would cost $1 million, he said. Green also praised Robinson-Briggs, the city’s first female mayor, for accomplishing what several past male mayors had promised to seniors and not delivered.

The project site was cleared of homes, a landscaping business and a lawyer’s office over several years. The lots were combined into one in 2006 and conveyed to the developer Thursday for $1.
In September, the City Council agreed to turn the site over to the Union County Improvement Authority and to authorize the mayor to sign it over to the developer once an agreement was worked out among the UCIA, city and developer. A zoning change on Nov. 22 made the center a permitted use in the downtown and mixed use zones.


The city is paying about $100,000 in annual rent for leased space at 305 East Front Street. The new site is at 400 East Front Street. Seniors rejected other proposals over the years, saying they wanted a new center downtown and nothing less.

The closest the city came previously to building a new center was a $4 million proposal in 2005. Nelson quipped Thursday that he still has his ceremonial shovel from the May 2005 groundbreaking that never led to construction.

--Bernice Paglia