160 Apartments and 12,500 Square Feet of Shops Proposed for Former ShopRite Site in New Milford; Planning Board Hearing Is Tonight

NEW MILFORD, N.J. — A developer wants to replace the long-empty former ShopRite on River Road with 160 rental apartments, ground-floor shops and a restaurant pad. The Planning Board takes up the plan at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20, in the Council Chambers at Borough Hall, 930 River Road. It is the only new business on the board’s agenda.

The applicant, 814 River Road Urban Renewal LLC, is seeking preliminary and final site plan approval for 810 and 814-820 River Road (Block 501, Lots 9 and 10), a 4.14-acre site at the northwest corner of River Road and Dilworth Road, according to the application and a legal notice published Oct. 8. The application is pending; the board has not voted and may carry the hearing to another date.

The application says Lot 10 holds the vacant former ShopRite supermarket and Lot 9 holds a medical office in a former bank building. Everything on the site would be demolished.

Who is behind it

The applicant lists an address at 20 Ridge Road, Suite 210, in Mahwah, and a business phone number that are the same as those of Crossroads Companies, a Mahwah real estate firm. A Sept. 4 Bergen County review letter lists the applicant’s contact with a Crossroads (xroadsre.com) email address, and Crossroads’ website says the firm is “currently in pre-development” on about 160 luxury apartments and 12,500 square feet of retail in New Milford. The borough’s PILOT ordinance describes the LLC as “an affiliate of the contract purchaser” of the site. None of the filings Bergen TV reviewed spells out who owns the LLC.

What’s proposed

According to the application and a July 22 review by the board’s planning consultant, Phillips Preiss:

• 160 rental units in three buildings: 128 market-rate and 32 affordable (20%). Eight of the affordable units are age-restricted.
• Building C: four stories over a below-grade garage, with 152 apartments (10 studios, 46 one-bedrooms, 91 two-bedrooms and five three-bedrooms), a central courtyard and a rooftop amenity deck. The planner listed its height at 49.8 feet; the redevelopment plan allows 50.
• Building A: one story, with 9,500 square feet of retail and the eight age-restricted units.
• Building B: a one-story, 3,000-square-foot commercial pad with outdoor dining.
• 300 parking spaces: 158 in the garage and 142 on the surface, including 47 EV spaces.

Parking

The planner calculated that state residential standards and the borough’s retail ratios call for 350 spaces, or 315 after the state’s EV-space credit. The plan provides 300. The applicant’s shared-parking study, by Bowman Consulting, says peak demand would be about 200 spaces, on a typical Friday between 7 and 8 p.m. The board is being asked to approve shared parking between the homes and the stores.

Signs and other relief

The legal notice lists sign variances and an aboveground transformer in the Dilworth Road front yard. The planner’s July review identified more relief from the redevelopment plan: a rooftop-terrace setback (1 foot proposed, 5 feet required), compact and parallel parking stalls, a dog run inside a required landscape buffer, and a retaining wall about 3 feet from the Dilworth Road property line.

On signs, the planner’s review lists a 69-square-foot monument sign, 10 feet tall, where 18 square feet and 6 feet are allowed, and two temporary leasing signs totaling about 303 square feet where 4 square feet is allowed. The applicant filed revised plans dated Oct. 5, and some of these figures may have changed.

Traffic

The applicant’s traffic study, by Bowman Consulting, projects about 1,048 new vehicle trips on a weekday, including 93 in the morning peak hour and 81 in the evening peak hour. The study concludes the project would have a “minimal impact” and that the River Road driveway would operate at level of service D or better during both peak hours.

Open items in the record

• Board engineer: In a revised review dated Oct. 19, the board engineer’s office, Neglia Group, says the application is now “deemed complete.” It lists items still open until the board acts, including testimony on deliveries, trash, security and snow removal, generator screening, sight distances at both driveways, and support for the shared-parking figures. It says the applicant must clean and video-inspect the sanitary sewer just downstream of the site, and it notes the applicant’s proposal to replace back-pitched sections of the existing sewer. The plan removes 10 trees and requires 21 replacement trees.
• County review: River Road is County Route 41. In a Sept. 4 letter, the Bergen County Department of Planning and Engineering asked for 15 changes, among them a new curb line 25 feet from the River Road centerline, a concrete bus pad at the existing bus stop, and making the parking aisle that runs parallel to River Road one-way northbound. The applicant’s engineer says the revised plans “substantially address” those comments, which remain subject to further county review.
• Sewer and other approvals: The legal notice says the project may need off-site sewer work on a neighboring lot on Dilworth Road. The application lists approvals still needed from the Bergen County Utilities Authority, the state Department of Environmental Protection (a treatment works approval) and Veolia Water, among others.

The tax break

The Mayor and Council designated the two lots a non-condemnation area in need of redevelopment on Dec. 16, 2024, and adopted a redevelopment plan on July 28, 2025, according to Ordinance 2026:01. That ordinance, listed among the borough’s 2026 adopted ordinances, authorizes a financial agreement for payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) with the developer. The PILOT runs 30 years from the project’s completion, but no more than 35 years from the agreement’s signing. The ordinance says the mayor, who is Michael Putrino according to the borough website, sent the developer’s tax-exemption application and the financial agreement to the council with his recommendation for approval.

The application says it was filed under a redevelopment agreement between the borough and the developer dated March 10, 2026. The financial agreement itself is on file with the borough clerk; its annual service-charge terms are not in the ordinance.

The applicant is represented by attorney Andy S. Norin of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath. Bowman Consulting Group is the site engineer, and Minno & Wasko Architects and Planners is the architect.

The application is pending before the New Milford Planning Board. No approval has been granted. Bergen TV will update this story after the hearing.

Sources

• Legal notice, New Milford Planning Board, published Oct. 8, 2026
• Planning Board agenda, Oct. 20, 2026
• Planning Board application, 814 River Road
• Variance application
• Application review files (Phillips Preiss review, July 22, 2026; Bergen County letter, Sept. 4, 2026)
• Bowman Consulting response letter, Oct. 7, 2026
• Shared Parking Analysis, Bowman Consulting
• Traffic Impact Analysis, Bowman Consulting
• Neglia Group revised completeness and engineering review, Oct. 19, 2026
• Ordinance 2026:01 (PILOT financial agreement)
• Planning Board application files
• New Milford Mayor & Council
• Crossroads Companies, New Milford project page