plainfield-train-station.JPG

The Plainfield train station as it looked in a 1906 postcard

(File Photo)



PLAINFIELD — Plainfield today became the state's newest transit village, giving officials access to planning expertise and grants for redevelopment projects around the train station

The designation by the state Department of Transportation and NJ Transit is the 28th in the state and the sixth in Union County.

Mayor Adrian Mapp welcomed the news.

“We believe that the Transit Village designation will greatly advance Plainfield’s continued revitalization,” Mapp said. “The transit village status, in conjunction with the one-seat ride to New York City, will help us promote the mixed-use development that has already begun in our downtown.”

Begun earlier this month, the one-seat ride on NJ Transit's Raritan Valley Line allows passengers to make a direct ride into New York without first transferring at Newark Penn Station.

The city was cited for its redevelopment plans around the train station, which provides daily service to Newark and New York City and for its more than half dozen bus routes.Transit village hubs are required to be pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods where people can live, shop, work and play without the need for a car.

Plainfield joins Rahway, Cranford, Elizabeth, Linden and Summit as Union County transit villages.

“A municipality can only be designated a state Transit Village after performing the important visioning and planning work that sets the stage for redevelopment to occur,” transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson. “I applaud the city of Plainfield for their careful planning efforts and the proactive approach in their exciting current and future development.”

With an eye toward encouraging mixed use development near the train station, the city in 2010, with help from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, developed a report outlining its transit-oriented development projects, Simpson said. From those recommendations, 13 projects are either under construction, planned or under consideration, he said.

The projects include mixed-use of commercial and residential, straight commercial, and straight residential, including 218 apartments and 32,000 square feet of retail.The proposed redevelopment is a mixture of new and rehabilitated construction.

Mapp said that since 2011, the city has worked with the Transit Village Task Force, a group of 10 state agencies to earn the designation.

New Jersey's first transit village was Pleasantville in 1999. The roster now also includes Morristown, Rutherford, South Amboy, South Orange, Riverside, Metuchen, Belmar, Collingswood, Bloomfield, Bound Brook, Matawan, New Brunswick, Journal Square/Jersey City, Netcong, Burlington City, Orange, Somerville, Montclair, West Windsor, East Orange and Dunellen.

RELATED COVERAGE

•Historic first 'one-seat ride' on Raritan Valley Line arrives in NYC

•Summit is latest N.J. town to be accepted into state Transit Village program

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