Lakewood Looks To Clean Up Former Jamesway Site

Lakewood, NJ - Russell K. Corby stands in the parking lot of the old Jamesway discount department store along Route 9 and sees a run-down lot.
For now, the run-down site at the boundary with Howell isn't much to see, but future plans could transform it from vacant land to a small business incubator and federally-funded health and dental clinic.

Corby hopes to get a report back soon from a consulting firm that is studying the Jamesway site and the surrounding area, a roughly 18-acre tract bounded by Route 9, Kennedy Boulevard, Clifton Avenue and the Metedeconk River. The report is expected to "offer alternative planning strategies and recommend beautification and landscape concepts for the subject site," according to a letter from Stearns Associates LLC, the Hunterdon County firm preparing the report. The company was hired for about $35,000

But Lynn Celli, an outspoken member of the LDC board of trustees, said she opposes using public money to review options for private redevelopment. She said the Jamesway building's owner, Beth Medrash Govoha, a downtown rabbinical college, has owned the property for six years and has let it deteriorate in that time. Property records show BMG, as the school is known, bought its 6.6-acre parcel on Route 9 for $1.9 million in 2000.

Corby disagreed, saying the township can work with a private owner to help redevelop the property. He emphasized that the study the LDC paid for is to give the township options, not committing the town to funding a private redevelopment project.

Chanie Jacobowitz, director of governmental affairs for BMG, said in an e-mail that a partnership between the township and BMG would help upgrade a gateway area of Lakewood. "Hospitals, universities and nonprofits usually make good partners with municipalities because they have a common focus on a common good," Jacobowitz wrote.