A proposal to redevelop two parcels owned by the Antioch Christian Church near New Brunswick High School into apartments, commercial space, and a new church recently took a step forward after the city council voted to adopt a redevelopment plan for the sites.
The church is looking to revamp the two parcels it has owned at 25 and 28 Oliver Avenue after 75 years at the location, and is proposing three new buildings just off of U.S. Route 27.
The City Council voted to approve the redevelopment plan during its regular meeting held on February 18. Dan Dominguez, the director of the city’s Department of Planning, Community and Economic Development, explained that the church began working with city officials in 2025 to try to figure out how to redevelop the two lots.
As of the last city council meeting, Dominguez said the church intended to build approximately 60 new apartment units, allocating 20% to affordable housing for residents earning 60% of the area median income, a corner store, and a new church.
Under the plan, the new church would occupy the first two stories of the building at 28 Oliver Avenue. The building at 25 Oliver Avenue—currently a parking lot—would house commercial space, including a corner store and apartments. The southern portion of 28 Oliver Avenue would be redeveloped into a new church, while the northern side of the lot would include more apartments, according to Dominguez.
The combined lots span 55,000 square feet, according to the Middlesex County Clerk’s Office.
An open records request from Jersey Digs revealed that the maximum number of stories in the area is 4 or 48 feet; however, the building with the new church is allowed to go up to 60 feet in height. Permitted uses for the commercial portion of the project include retail, office, laboratories, and high-tech light industrial use, as well as indoor recreational space, schools, daycare, and exhibition space.
The maximum building coverage for the entire site is 40%, meaning the buildings can have a combined footprint of up to 22,000 square feet.
City council voted to pass the ordinance for the redevelopment plan on first reading during its regular meeting on February 4, before adopting the legislation two weeks later, but the text of the plan was not made available by the city council.
Instead, residents of New Brunswick had to wait until the plan was made public by the city’s planning department, one week before the legislation was adopted, to see the redevelopment plan.
Before the city council voted to adopt the legislation, Charlie Kratovil, the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, submitted a public comment asking members of the city council to be more transparent about these types of proposals.
“There are big changes being proposed to our neighborhoods and people usually don’t find out about them until they see the construction start,” he said. Another resident who submitted public comments about the ordinance said that the schools might become overcrowded with the new families living in the city with this development.
Given that the redevelopment plan is intended to serve as an outline rather than a detailed description of what will be built on the site, the Antioch church will likely submit a site plan proposal to the city’s planning board. Both lots have been exempt from paying taxes for more than 43 years, which could change once the two lots are redeveloped to include residential and commercial space.
The redevelopment of the Antioch Christian Church and its adjacent parking lot could redefine the neighborhood, which has seen very little new development in the last 15 years. While the commercial corridor along U.S. Route 27 has continued to thrive, new mixed-use development in the area has been sparse in the last two decades.
The most recent mixed-use development to open in the area appears to be RPM’s Franklin Boulevard Commons project at 727 Franklin Boulevard, just up the road from the Antioch site. That project included ground-floor retail and 66 apartments and opened in 2011. The largest development to rise in the immediate area during that time has been the new $185 million, 400,000-square-foot New Brunswick High School facility, which opened in 2010.
