When Washington Township, NJ set about planning its town center as a neo-traditional development, local leaders were hoping to create a better quality of life than typical suburban zoning could provide. Early numbers seem to indicate that they may also be creating fiscal sustainability even they couldn’t imagine.

Like many largely-rural municipalities abutting major metropolitan areas, Washington Township, which lies just outside of Philadelphia and Trenton, was feeling the pressure to “suburbanize.” Hoping to avoid the strip malls and unsightly commercial ratables plaguing other New Jersey bedroom communities, the township planning board, in conjunction with developers, turned to smart growth concepts.

“They wanted to create a sense of place for the community. They didn’t want to be identified as a patchwork quilt of suburban sprawl developments,” notes Robert Melvin, the township planner. “[But] intuitively, the fiscal was in the back of their minds.”

Ironically, it may be the very desire for a better quality of life that is moving ratables in a positive direction. By building a community that attracts residents from varying demographics, consists of several housing unit types and conserves open space, Washington Township has built a better tax base, or so the early numbers seem to indicate.

According to preliminary numbers presented in an initial proposal, the area developed using previous suburban zoning would have generated 2,282 children. Yet, that same area, using smart growth techniques, would generate only 805 children.

That’s a huge difference in a state such as New Jersey, where the entire burden of the school budget is placed on the local municipality, which relies mainly on real estate taxes to fund education and receives nearly no assistance from the state. With each child costing around $9,300 to educate, it’s almost impossible for municipalities with typical suburban zoning to reach equity.

The Ratables Race

Current suburban zoning in New Jersey encourages the development of large houses on large lots, superloading the community with houses that generate schoolchildren. Consequently, a house in New Jersey is usually considered a negative ratable. This is one of the root causes of what Melvin calls the “ratables chase,” in which municipalities fight over commercial development simply to improve the tax base.

“Towns don’t want huge amounts of warehouses or huge amounts of strip shopping centers, but they fight over them in order to pay for the bills that the houses generate,” laments Melvin.

What is remarkable about Washington Town Center is that the most recent data shows that the houses themselves are trending as positive ratables.

“Because of the mix of housing that the [Washington Town Center] zoning promotes, there are houses without school children and there are houses with school children, so there’s a better balance, a healthier balance,” Melvin notes.

David Listokin, co-director for the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University, estimates that the average New Jersey four-bedroom, single-family detached unit generates between 0.8 and 1.2 kids. The same housing unit in Washington Town Center is generating between 0.313 and 0.44 school-aged children, with townhouses generating the fewest at 0.165.

And while no one involved with the project is surprised that the neo-traditional development numbers are different than typical suburban zoning, they are surprised at just how good the initial numbers are, from a budgetary standpoint.

The number of children being generated is actually 38% less than originally projected. Projections from 1998 show 245 children for 481 units, while 2002 figures show only 153 children for the same number of units.

“With 250 houses on the ground, we now have real data on how many children are being generated per house type. As a result of this data, combined with the knowledge of actual selling prices for houses and the taxes that they generate, the fiscal impact is dramatically different than the 1998 projections,” Melvin observes.

What should have been a negative million dollars a year to the township in house ratables alone has “actually turned out to be about a million dollars a year positive to the township,” enthuses Melvin. “And it’s all because of the number of kids being generated.”

“Then, when you add the commercial part, which is the total mix of a mixed-use development, the positive ratable becomes even more attractive. New Urbanism, when done the way we’re doing it, is a more healthy community fiscally, a more sustainable community, at least from these early numbers.”

The community is also healthier in the environmental sense of the word, having a remarkable 850 acres of open space, including 22 parks and gardens and 500 acres of green belt around the 450-acre development core. Under previous suburban zoning, 14 acres of Wetlands would have been conserved.

Listokin, however, is more cautiously optimistic. “One should not jump at these initial numbers. One would like to know how many preschool children there are, how many school-aged children there are, and how many of those are actually attending the public school.”

“You need more seasoning here. It looks like these numbers are low, but you want to revisit these numbers in a year or two and see where they are….These numbers on the initial cut are lower than one would expect for units with that number of bedrooms, of that there’s no question.”

The Big Question

Washington Town Center’s success — fiscal and otherwise — could be the catalyst for TND development in New Jersey and, as such, is being watched closely by builders and developers alike.

The first “new town” in the state since WWII to be fully designed and developed by a municipality in partnership with the development community, Town Center is being held up as the standard-bearer of the smart growth movement — a movement which Governor James E. McGreevey’s office has recently emphatically embraced.

Even as Chesterfield and Hudson counties are being lauded as smart growth success stories, it is Washington Township which is setting the standard for creating a planned community that follows the tenets of New Jersey’s State Plan, offering plenty of open space and sustainable economic development.

Steven Bodzin, communications director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, singles out the development as “an excellent example of a suburbanized area attempting to create a tax base and an identity through urbanism.” Washington Town Center earned the organization’s 2001 Charter Award, which “recognizes the best practices in the world of New Urbanism.”

While Melvin admits that “it is entirely possible that there will be a mini-baby boom once people move into their houses,” he believes that the numbers add up to an endorsement for New Urbanism. “Even with a spike in fertility, even if we were off by 100 percent, we’re still lower than what we thought we would be, so [these numbers] are really dramatic.”

Regardless, of how Washington Town Center’s numbers continue to trend, one thing is certain: It will continue to be the center of attention when it comes to TND development in New Jersey.