Radburn (a part of Fair Lawn, in Bergen county) is an icon of the planning profession everywhere. Publicizing it as the 1 st “town for the motor age”, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright devised a brilliant adaptation of the British garden city model to the emerging realities of the American car culture. Whatever one may think of Radburn from a formal community design perspective, there is no question that its three neighborhoods constitute a significant milestone for planning and design both in this country and abroad. Indeed, in 1975 Radburn was listed on both the New Jersey and on the National Register of Historic Places.

However, Stein and Wright’s original plan was never completed, due to the Great Depression, and Radburn’s 4 th neighborhood was never fully executed. Responding to the economic model of the time, Stein and Wright planned for an industrial area at the edge of Radburn, on 12 acres between Plaza Road and the rail line.

Much of the area was used for manufacturing – a brickworks operated there for a number of years, and supplied a good deal of the brick used in the construction of Radburn. Later a chemical plant produced dye and pigment products and from 1952 until 1981 the property was used as a welding and metal fabrication facility. In the late 1980s the site was cleared, the railroad siding was removed and a comprehensive environmental cleanup was initiated. The cleanup is now nearing completion, and the site is prime for redevelopment.

But two other parcels were not developed for industrial uses. One of them – Daly Field -- was acquired around 1940 by the homeowners’ association and used for baseball fields until 1987, when contamination was discovered on the adjacent parcel. A small third piece, known as Archery Plaza is virtually landlocked and contains a little used soccer field.

The Radburn homeowners’ association would like to see all three of these tracts redeveloped with housing and improved public space. After all, the Radburn train station is only 300 feet away, and transit-oriented development is the alpha and the omega of smart growth. In addition, the association could use the added revenue.

Fair Lawn’s Master Plan provides for residential development of the area at a density of 15 units per acre. Not uncharacteristically, the zoning is for single-family housing on 10,000 square foot lots, which is completely alien to Radburn, but not to the rest of Fair Lawn.

Landmark Properties, a developer, has acquired the remediated brickworks property, and has a contract with the homeowners’ association for the other two parcels. Landmark has proposed 175 units of housing in a variety of housing types, along with a re-energized Archery Plaza. The developer’s proposal is not an off-the-shelf product. Indeed, it is highly sensitive to Radburn’s design tradition -- a proposed apartment building is similar in scale and design to Radburn’s Abbott Court, while the townhouses are shallow and wide, creating an interior common area reminiscent of Radburn’s greenways.

The plan meets all the criteria of smart growth, but has been unable so far to sway a group of local residents, the Citizens Concerns for Radburn’s Future. The group’s mission is “ to preserve property values, lifestyles and historic character of Radburn by keeping Daly Field green.” Never mind that Daly Field was never part of the original Radburn plan; never mind that one thing Radburn does not lack is open space; and never mind that the current zoning is totally inappropriate for the site and antithetical to the Radburn ideals. The group is fighting tooth and nail the necessary zoning change, and would prefer to see the area redeveloped with cookie-cutter 10,000 square foot lots, all in the name of saving “the historic character of Radburn” and ” saving the community from high-density development and all the problems that will bring”. Even though the proposed development density is perfectly consistent with the rest of Radburn.

This controversy illustrates the difficulties smart growth continues to encounter in New Jersey, and the difficult challenges the planning profession faces.

As always, we welcome your thoughts. Please contact us at ROV.ROD@VERIZON.NET.