Spreading like a cancer through NJ, another warehouse in store for Somerset County

If New Jersey were a patient, the doctor would have very bad news about the seemingly unstoppable spread. Like cancer, the proliferation of warehouses across the Garden State seems to be at stage IV.

And experts say they are bad for your health.

When COVID-19 hit, a lot more people got used to shopping online. This brought about many more hastily built distribution centers, and these warehouses are often put in poor communities. The loss of habitat, increased traffic, and a big jump in harmful freight truck emissions all paint a bleak picture. But they just kept building more.

How fast is this cancer spreading? In a Bergen Record article on the problem in July 2023, there were said to be over 1,700. Less than two years later, there are now over 3,000.

And the hits just keep on coming. In Branchburg, where the township has already put its foot down and paid $28 million to buy up land to prevent more warehouses from going in, there’s a proposal for a new one. Rules be damned I suppose.

50 Meister LLC, of North Brunswick, is scheduled to appear before the township Zoning Board on May 6 to seek a variance since the town prohibits more warehouses. They want to build a warehouse with associated office space that would take up 125,000 square feet. It would be the size of two football fields.

In October 2020, Branchburg passed a zoning ordinance declaring warehousing was no longer permitted as a principal use in the Industrial Zone, but only as an accessory use. So will the warehouse gods smile down upon thee and have the board decide this is accessory use? Remains to be seen.

All I know is people are getting fed up that warehouses are growing faster than the white-tailed deer population.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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