Listen to this article

The basics:

• NJ municipalities increasingly impose conditions on warehouse and industrial approvals
• Requirements include truck curfews, route limits, road upgrades and noise controls
• Strong industrial demand continues amid limited land and growing public pushback
• Attorneys say early municipal engagement is key as boards intensify scrutiny

As warehousing, logistics operations and data centers continue to drive industrial real estate demand in New Jersey, towns are increasingly using conditions of approval to help address potential quality-of-life effects.

Requiring developers of such facilities to comply with truck curfews, route restrictions, roadway improvements or infrastructure upgrades has become a tool that gives municipalities some influence over project scale and operations while also avoiding litigation. The trend comes amid ongoing public concern that industrial development is becoming overwhelming in certain parts of the state.

Warehousing pressure in New Jersey tends to be concentrated along major freight corridors, where strong demand from e-commerce, port activity and last-mile delivery has outpaced available land.

A recent study from The Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation at Rutgers University found that warehouses and distribution centers in New Jersey support about 1.35 million jobs and generate about $295.8 billion in business activity.

Of the almost 1.02 billion square feet of space dedicated to the use across New Jersey, nearly 956 million square feet are occupied, the report said. CAIT’s analysis does not factor in Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties.

Development for industrial also remains active. According to commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE, construction in New Jersey ticked up to 7.8 million square feet as of mid-2025.

Benefits vs. battles

While municipalities with highway access and developable sites can benefit from the ratables, jobs and infrastructure upgrades that come with development, the statewide squeeze has also fueled zoning battles, community pushback and growing competition for the limited space that remains in an already dense state.

In recent years, large-scale industrial-use projects in Gloucester Township, Hillsborough, South Harrison and Mullica Hill were shelved after resident concerns over traffic, pollution, noise, and farmland loss prompted developers to withdraw applications or planning boards to reject the proposals.

“Municipalities are very cognizant of the issues the public feels these uses present. There’s definitely been pushback from municipalities and the general public on the number of warehouse and industrial type uses that are being approved. I guess that’s the nature of any type of development. There’s always that ‘We want our packages delivered next day, but don’t put it near my house,’ type of thing,” said Andrew Kohut, managing partner at Paramus-based commercial law firm Wells, Jaworski & Liebman LLP.

“As an applicant’s attorney and as an applicant, you have to understand that the people that are coming to voice their concerns and they’re going to have to live with what is developed on this site,” said Kohut, who chairs the firm’s land use, zoning and development group and practices with the commercial real estate group.

“New Jersey’s a home rule state, so municipalities have a lot of say in what gets approved and what does not get approved and how it can be approved. When there was this huge influx of warehouse or what I’ll just call industrial uses, you saw a lot of municipalities implementing zoning ordinances that would limit what could be built to regulate what was going on in their towns,” Kohut said.

“And then as far as once you’re in front of a board in the projects I’ve done, those are the things that boards are looking at, especially if you’re located in close proximity to a residential zone. It’s the quality-of-life issues, like truck traffic and noise pollution,” he said. “And they try to impose what has to be reasonable conditions to allow you to do what you want to do on that property … it’s part and parcel for pretty much all land use now in New Jersey.”

Intensifying process

Under the site plan approval process, municipalities may impose requirements involving truck idling, road widening, traffic light installations, landscape buffering or overnight activity bans, for instance.

As these mandates became more common, courts typically upheld the conditions because they tie into health, safety and welfare – all of which fall squarely within the authority of local land use boards, according to Kohut.

Since Kohut began his career two decades ago, he has observed the site plan review process become “more intense.”

“Land use, zoning and site plan approval work in New Jersey is not easy. You have boards that have very strong opinions. Most people on these boards who do this work have a genuine care for their community and a genuine care for their town,” he said. “The requirement of these boards is to be transparent and allowing the public to have a say has brought more scrutiny on these projects. So, I think boards are cognizant of that and rightfully they want to make sure that what they’re approving doesn’t cause a problem for their neighbors.”

He went on to say, “Towns boards are really trying to alleviate much of the negative they feel a certain use will bring to its community by imposing reasonable conditions to try and avoid a situation where there’s a substantial detriment to the surrounding neighborhood.”

Read the room

As part of his practice, Kohut has represented clients through the entirety of the development process, from the initial planning stages to post-approval compliance. Besides application work, Kohut regularly advises clients on projects involving redevelopment and rezoning, as well as handles a wide array of developments, including large industrial, multifamily, mixed-use, houses of worship and other commercial projects.

Additionally, he represents both buyers and sellers in commercial real estate transactions, ranging from small multifamily developments to large industrial facilities.

When it comes to a proposed industrial development, Kohut said he always advises clients to try and build “a partnership with the municipality.”

“In my experience, the best thing you can do as a developer is to have pre-meetings with the municipality to go over what you want to do and what you envision on this property. I think it would be naive to just submit an application for an industrial use that’s going to be hundreds of thousands of square feet without talking to municipal officials first,” he said. “Meet with them, see what they like, see what they don’t like, see what their concerns are before you even submit a plan or an application. And that will help the actual hearing. I feel that the work you do before the hearing is just as important, if not more important than the actual hearing itself.”

In my experience, the best thing you can do as a developer is to have pre-meetings with the municipality to go over what you want to do and what you envision on this property.
– Andrew Kohut, managing partner, Wells, Jaworski & Liebman LLP

“You need to preemptively work with the municipality and see what the temperature is in the town, because you may meet with the officials and just after the meeting, just say, ‘You know what? Not the right town for us,’” he said. “At least find that out before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on development costs and soft costs.”

Working it out

In his 20 years of practice, Kohut said he’s always been able to work with local land use boards to address their concerns. Kohut also said he’s never been in a situation in which conditions requested by a municipality derailed a project.

He explained, “I have had situations where we had to go back in front of a board to modify a condition based on post-approval discussions. And we were able to work it out in that situation. But, depending on intensity of the condition, lenders will obviously have a say in it, and they’re going to look at the resolution of approval and see what you can and can’t do, especially if it has a substantial restriction on the use of the building. All those things come into play and not often, but it has required us to go back in front of the board to modify those conditions.

Spotlight on: Real estate law

Experts from Scarinci Hollenbeck forecast the trends that will drive commercial real estate in 2026. Read that story here.

“One of the big things you would see is sometimes when a municipality tries to impose an offsite improvement from the developer where they’re being asked to pay more than what their rata share is or what a reasonable contribution for what their use impact will be on that offsite improvement,” he said. “That’s where you have a dollars and cents issue. And it’s that the cost you are asking us to incur is not in line with what we’re proposing to do.”

“And, how does it impact the bottom line of the project? If you don’t have a tenant, how marketable does it make the project to a potential tenant? If you have the wrong condition in the approval that makes that dissuades any potential tenant from using it, you’ve got a big problem,” he said. “You’ve got an approval, that’s great, but you’ve got an approval that no one wants to use,” he said.

However, he went on, “I don’t think developers right now are building these things on spec where they don’t have a tenant in mind and just hoping that a tenant will occupy it or use it. The good thing about that is if the developer has the tenant or the end user already lined up, you have another set of eyes looking at these conditions and contemplating these conditions and advising me or the development team that ‘this isn’t going to work for our use.’”

“So, it’s not only the developer, me and the professionals I work with who do this for a living but also the specific end user who’s saying, ‘We can’t agree to that condition,’” he said. “And again, you just rely or you hope that the board will listen to the testimony and listen to why that condition’s unreasonable or reasonable to the tenant and listen to what they could agree to address that specific concern they have.”

‘Nature of development work’

Kohut said he doesn’t want to speculate that municipalities may be requesting more conditions in response to negative public sentiment. “But it makes sense, right? Especially if you’re asking for variance relief, a board can hold your feet to the fire a lot and require certain things,” he remarked.

“I think these types of users have had an easier time being approved in central and southern New Jersey as opposed to northern New Jersey. And that’s just by the number that are being built that you see or read about the approvals in the newspaper. Maybe that has to do with location being near the [Garden State] Parkway, the [New Jersey] Turnpike or the highways; or maybe it has to do with land values a little bit. Or maybe it has to do with there’s more open space where these uses can go that don’t impact residential neighborhoods,” he said.

In North Jersey, most of the newer projects “are going where there already was an industrial use that’s outdated or that’s dilapidated that needs to be redeveloped. Or there’s a large office complex that is vastly underutilized at this point, given the market for office space right now,” he said.

Just a few of the recent warehouse/light industrial projects that Wells, Jaworski & Liebman have handled include proposed redevelopments of the former Nabisco factory in Fair Lawn, the former Sheraton Crossroads property in Mahwah and a former Sears site in Maywood. All three projects are now in various stages of the development process.

“Especially if you’re asking for a use variance. If it’s a use variance where the use is not permitted in the zone, part of a board’s job is to impose conditions that will alleviate the negative or the detrimental impact that that type of use could bring to that neighborhood. But they need to be reasonable. They can’t be outlandish conditions or ones that would prevent my client from being able to function with that condition,” he said. “Then, it’s just not feasible and you have to educate the board on why that condition is unreasonable given the situation.

“There are a lot of really, really good board members out there. But a lot of times the board members you’re presenting in front of that’s not their area of expertise … When you go in front of a judge, you assume the judge always knows as much or more than you on the topic that you’re litigating over. Whereas here, all these board members are residents of the municipality and they have their regular jobs that may not deal with what you’re presenting to them. It’s a unique dynamic,” Kohut said.

Willing to work together

“Most board members are receptive to that if you’re showing that you’re trying to address their concerns,” Kohut added. “That’s really what board members want to see … at the end of the day, these boards have to answer for the approvals they give. And it just gives them a sense of security. And from just a presentation standpoint, it shows the board that this applicant is willing to work with us on the issues that we foresee. So, I think everyone benefits from it.”

Kohut also believes applicants are very aware of the importance of cooperating with officials and being mindful of the community.

“I have not worked with a developer in this asset class that just wants to go in and just bulldoze the municipality, bulldoze the residents and get their project approved. I have not experienced even one time where they’re just like, ‘I don’t care what anybody says, this is what we want. This is what we’re doing.’ It just doesn’t happen,” he said. “They know there’s concerns, and if there are reasonable concerns, they need to be addressed. I mean, that’s just the nature of doing development work in New Jersey. I think anywhere from that matter, not just New Jersey.”

I have not experienced even one time where [a developer is] just like, ‘I don’t care what anybody says, this is what we want. This is what we’re doing.’ It just doesn’t happen.
– Andrew Kohut, managing partner, Wells, Jaworski & Liebman LLP

Kohut recalled his recent representation of a client that sought to redevelop a rundown, 138,000-square-foot warehouse in Wanaque.

“It hadn’t been used to its maximum capacity for years because it was in such bad shape. So, we were actually reducing the size of it, but drastically improving the functionality of it, which is paramount importance now. And it took us about three hearings to do. And in that situation, truck routes where you access the property from, landscaping, noise, was on the table,” he said.

“And at the end of the process by the board, they appreciated that my client was willing to address everything that was in their power to address all their concerns. So, whether it was significant landscaping, upgrades, lighting, noise, upgrade to the property in general, like fencing, signage, the conditions of the parking lot, irrigation in truck routes, we were able to address those things,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:31 a.m. Dec. 15, 2025, to correct the spelling of Andrew Kohut’s name.