Meadowlands Master Plan

Located six miles from Manhattan in the New Jersey Meadowlands, this mixed-use community in a 785-acre brownfield site includes protected wetlands to be restored and enhanced, and landfill to be capped according to regulations specified by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The total area will yield 36 acres of golf, along with three areas of development to be nestled into the surrounding wetlands. The primary neighborhood, the Village, at approximately 105 acres, will comprise 1900 residential units, 40,000 square feet of retail, 175,000 square feet of office space, a four-acre village green, a 350-room golf resort hotel, a conference center and spa, and two golf clubhouses, as well as a public community center. Half of the residences are slated for active adult use; their location to the southwest of the village gives them an identity of their own. Adjacent to the Village is Rutherford West, a hamlet of approximately 15 acres that will contain 200 more active-adult residential units and an active-adult community center. To the northeast lies the North Village; with its location at a proposed stop on the North Bergen commuter rail line and adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike, the North Village will act as a gateway to the other two neighborhoods. Its 650,000 square feet of office space, 400-room hotel, and associated parking are massed to create a central plaza and a gateway to the south.

A central Main Street unifies the Village as it leads from a small market square past five-story buildings with retail and office space below and loft apartments above to a large village green, and then connects to the southeast with the neighboring community of North Arlington. Structured, as well as surface parking is easily accessible off of the side streets, but is hidden by perimeter buildings. The main residential blocks are organized around the green with four- to seven-story garden apartment buildings facing the green on one side and two- to three-story townhouses facing the golf course on the other. The center of each block is organized into an intimate series of garden-like pedestrian mews. High-density attached houses are entered off these mews; their garages face open air parking courts one level below. Small fifteen-story apartment towers punctuate the beginning and end of Main Street. At the western edge of the Village, a grand hotel and two golf clubs anchor a large crescent that looks out to the southwest across a reflecting pool to the eighteenth greens of two golf courses. On the east side of town, a curving “Riverside Drive” faces the protected wetlands of Berry’s Creek and is punctuated by freestanding four-family “villas” spaced to allow pedestrians views to the golf courses and to the Manhattan skyline beyond.

The project has been designed in collaboration with the landscape architecture and urban design firm EDAW, which acted with our firm as co-master planner.