Community Corner
NJ Nursery Closes After 100 Years, Affordable Housing Will Replace It
- The plant nursery, which has been a staple to this town for over a century, will soon shut down. A big housing project will take its place.
Remy Samuels,
Patch Staff
Posted Fri, Jun 10, 2022 at 12:33 pm ET
Williams Nursery is located at 524 Springfield Ave in Westfield.
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WESTFIELD, NJ — Now slated to be the location of an affordable housing complex, Williams Nursery in Westfield announced they will soon be closing for good, after serving the community for over a century.
The family-owned plant nursery’s last day will be July 3, according to a lengthy Facebook post, signed by the Williams and Jackson families who own the garden. They wrote that shutting down a business that is 102 years old is “a difficult thing.”
“There have been countless wonderful customers that have passed through our doors,” the owners wrote on Facebook. “We are going to miss sharing the smiles, and chats. We know that some of you used our store as an oasis in a bump in your lives. We are grateful that we got to help smooth the edges of those bumps.”
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Brindle said the Williams Nursery has been zoned for affordable housing since the 1990s, and this project will help Westfield meet its state-mandated affordable housing obligations.
Brindle explained that the Williams Nursery cannot be repurposed for another use, even for green space, because any property previously zoned for affordable housing must either:
Maintain its current use; or Be developed into inclusionary multi-family housing once the owner chooses to sell.
Unless buyers pay fair market value and are willing to maintain the property as a nursery, Brindle said the property must be sold and developed for the purpose of affordable housing.
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Sorry but the Gooferment, of all levels, is out of control. Do this! Don’t do that! IF it’s YOURS, unless we say so.
“Would you tell me please, Mr. Howard, why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man’s rights as easily as a king can.” Mel Gibson as the character Benjamin Martin in the movie The Patriot http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187393/quotes
Sorry but we seem to have “tyrants” all around us.
Argh!
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