Residents of New Brunswick and students from Rutgers University rejoiced when the city council announced that the redevelopment plan for a 22-acre assemblage along Jersey Avenue would no longer entail the construction of a data center.
The announcement upended what many attendees expected to be a contentious city council meeting on February 18. After the amendment was introduced, several residents who had arrived ready to fight to prevent the data center told the council they no longer had comments — and thanked them for the decision — before pivoting to criticize the affordable housing percentage and lack of transparency in the new plan.
Dozens of attendees who were unable to sit in the council chambers during the proceedings were left outside in the cold. But they made their presence known by chanting in opposition to the data center at the beginning of the meeting.
Although the meeting was dotted with a few tense exchanges between the city council, city residents, and students from Rutgers, the latter groups left the meeting in a mostly positive mood, following the announcement that the new redevelopment plan would be amended to include a park instead of the proposed 27,000-square-foot data center. The amendment reinstated a requirement put in place more than five years ago, which lifted people’s spirits before the public comment section.
Before the city council voted on the amendment, the director of the city’s Department of Planning, Community and Economic Development, Dan Dominguez, said that plans for the data center had been put in place to accommodate the economic liability of redeveloping the site. City administrators, he said, recommended amending the plans to include the requirement for a public park.
While the proposed redevelopment has the potential to breathe new life into an assemblage of four lots with warehouses along Jersey Avenue, the fate of that site, which was part of a redevelopment plan that was in the works back in 2020, remains uncertain, as there is no word on when the developer will get shovels on the ground.
The redevelopment plan encompasses 22 acres, starting at the corner of Sandford Street and Jersey Avenue and extending down to Railroad Avenue.
An open records request filed by Jersey Digs reveals that four of those acres, according to the text of the redevelopment plan, must be converted into a public park for which the redeveloper must grant an easement. The parcels on the north side of the assemblage will be redeveloped into several apartment buildings totaling 660 units – 10% of which will be set aside for affordable housing – while the Parcels on the South side of the lots will be redeveloped for commercial use.
Records from the Middlesex County Clerk show that the properties at 90, 100, 120, and 298 Jersey Avenue were exchanged in September 2025 through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure proceeding. The deed states that Boca Raton, Florida-based Amzak Capital Management took control of the portfolio after the previous owners, several LLCs based in Lakewood affiliated with Yaakov Klugmann, failed to repay a $27.8 million promissory note due in March 2023.
Amzak Capital is the private investment arm for the Kazma family, which invests in telecommunications alongside real estate, but neither the city officials nor the asset manager have made it clear who exactly is leading the redevelopment.
Amzak did not return a request for comment from Jersey Digs.
Dominguez added during the city council meeting that the city has already exceeded the number of affordable housing units it is obligated to support, which is why this redevelopment will make only 10% of units affordable instead of the usual 20%. This decision remained a point of contention among attendees who submitted public comments, who argued that the city should still be doing more, regardless of the number of existing apartments deemed affordable by the city.
Although some meeting attendees submitted comments about the plan and the amendment to the plan, council president Manuel Castañeda had to interject numerous times to remind individuals to stay on track and comment on the plan itself rather than unrelated issues.
Several attendees also took the time to thank the city council for the amendment, noting that there are very few parks in this part of the city.
City council voted 5-0 to amend the plan and again to adopt the ordinance with the new development plan, but the text of the redevelopment plan itself was not made public before the ordinance was passed on first reading on February 4.
The new redevelopment plan says the buildings will top out at four stories and that the affordable housing units in this new complex will be set aside for residents earning 60% of the area’s median income. However, the redevelopment plan, which is meant to serve as a conceptual outline rather than a definitive outline of what will be done with the site, does not provide the specific square footage for each building or their uses.
The owner of the parcels will still need to go before the city’s planning board to present a site plan in the future.
While many residents and locals were happy to see that the city council made the decision to remove the data center from the redevelopment plan, the future of the site remains unknown, as the current owner of the assemblage had already been down a similar road six years ago.
A report in TAPinto New Brunswick from 2022 said that Jersey Ave NB Urban Renewal LLC was designated as the redeveloper by the city’s housing authority under a redevelopment plan under the same name in 2020.
That resolution from the city agency said the developer would invest $170 million to develop three buildings comprising about 220 units, 1,160 parking spaces, 146,000 square feet of office space, 18,000 square feet of coworking space, and 8,000 square feet of retail.
Dominguez added during the meeting that the city and the developer already agreed to a long-term tax exemption back in 2022. This piece of the puzzle, which is often critical for many developers, may finally bring the entire project together, but given the site’s history, it could be years before work commences.
