PARSIPPANY — Parsippany-Troy Hills celebrates being one of two towns in the State of New Jersey to be named “Tree City” for 40 years by the Arbor Day Foundation, yet it granted the builders of Waterview Marketplace to demolish over sixteen acres of trees.
Waterview Marketplace will be anchored by a Whole Foods Market that will occupy 48,000 square feet of the 150,150-square-foot center set to open in 2018. This Whole Foods Market store is set to become the third location in Morris County, and will feature indoor and outdoor dining space for customers.
Mayor Barberio’s administration spent $3.5 million from Parsippany open space funds to purchase a little over nine acres.
“$3.5 million for a buffer zone at taxpayers expense not a good outcome,” said resident Nicholas Homyak. “This is also a misuse of the open space funds. It smells of a kickback to RD developer for all the trouble they went through. Never forget the Council voted No Rezone, and the promise was 26+ acres of open space, not the 10 acre buffer zone, that will benefit the Waterview mall more than the immediate neighborhood,” he continued.
“Stay-tuned more to come. Parsippany’s continued refusal to live by its master plan or improving it with conformance consistency remains not in the best interest of its people, now or the future. Although no change in the immediate neighborhood warrants such a rezone, the neighborhood will be forever changed,” said Homyak.
In 2014, as part of a proposed settlement with RD Management, Mayor Barberio’s administration requested $3.5 million from Morris County Open Space Fund to purchase the little over nine acres of mostly steep slopes and an area in which approximately two thirds of it was already protected as a buffer zone in the current master plan, but the County Open Space Fund committee rejected the request.
RD Management owns 20 properties in New Jersey and has more than 150 properties in its national portfolio.
