Fair Haven looks to the future
Plan focuses on area of River Road shopping center
BY LIZ SHEEHAN
Correspondent

CHRIS KELLY staff A planner will help the borough of Fair Haven develop a plan for the shopping center where the Acme supermarket is located.

FAIR HAVEN - A $40,000 grant from the Municipal Land Use Center will be used to map out a vision of the future of Fair Haven.

Mayor Michael Halfacre said at the Borough Council meeting last week, before introducing Andy Wiley-Schwartz, of Project for Public Spaces, New York, the firm retained by the borough to work alongside residents and officials to design a plan for the borough.

The focus, Wiley-Schwartz said, will be on creating public spaces in Fair Haven that bring people together and to encourage riding bikes and walking to destinations in the town.

"We shape our public spaces and then our public spaces shape us," he said.

"If you plan for cars, you get cars," Wiley-Schwartz said, "but if you plan for people that's what you get.

"You have to think about which you want more."

Wiley-Schwartz said his firm had spent 30 years "helping municipalities, even countries," to determine how to make better use of their assets, "from Red Bank to Kosovo."

Halfacre said he had spent two hours showing staff from Project for Public Spaces around the town before the meeting.

The area covered by the grant study is in the western area of the borough's business district around the shopping mall that includes the Acme supermarket on River Road.

Many of the people who attended the meeting and questioned Wiley-Schwartz during his presentation had already been asked by the borough to participate in the group that would take part in the process of drawing up a vision plan under the grant.

Others asked to be included and were told to give their contact information to be notified about meetings.

Wiley-Schwartz said that input from residents on what they want to have in the borough and their knowledge of existing conditions would be an essential part of the planning process.

As an example, he said, "you are expert in how to get place to place" in the town and that

knowledge could be used to plan pedestrian and bicycle-friendly routes in the borough.

The grant the borough received is not a matching grant so it will not require any funds from the town.

Martin Bierbaum, director of the Municipal Land Use Center at The College of New Jersey, Ewing, said Tuesday that the grant Fair Haven has been awarded was one of nine planning grants given by his organization after a competition in which 29 municipalities submitted proposals.

He said Rep. Rush Holt (D-12), who obtained a federal grant to establish the land-use center, awarded the grants last year.

Halfacre, Councilman Jon Peters, Borough Administrator Mary Howell and Jim Kennedy, chairman of the Planning Board, attended a four-day seminar in March as part of the grant process.