Town Center work officially begins

VERNON-A day-long downpour doused any ideas of sinking shovels into the sodden earth as is customary on such occasions. So, instead, some 20 county, state, and local officials and citizens simply gathered under the roof of the firemen's pavilion and talked about what Vernon was about to undertake. "This has been decades in the making," Deputy Mayor Janet Morrison told her small audience last Friday. "It is a town center that befits the largest community in Sussex County." Behind Morrison, traffic flowed by on Route 515 past the A&P. In front of her, beyond her audience, stakes delineated a future street, and yellow construction equipment stood silently by, waiting for Monday, when the digging n and the accompanying traffic snarls n would begin. Nearly a year ago, with an election bearing down, the township had staged a groundbreaking for the Main Street that will be the spine of Vernon's town center. A sign went up across Route 94 from the end of Church Street, where the street will begin. But little visible activity has taken place since as the township has gone about the process of acquiring the land for the right-of-way and securing county and state approval for the sewer lines that will make the dense development of the center possible. A committee formed of council representatives, planners and citizens also met regularly for most of a year discussing the design standards that will be applied to Vernon's first downtown area. Morrison is involved as a founding investor in the Highlands State Bank nearing completion on Route 94 just west of the Route 515 intersection. She said she hopes the design of the bank, which includes a high gabled roof and a wood and stone exterior, will set a standard for future buildings. Morrison called Friday's informal ceremony "a groundbreaking for the town center as opposed to a groundbreaking for Main Street." Friday's was the one that signaled the beginning of serious construction. By Monday, Route 515 was clogged with traffic and traffic cops ushering drivers past the sewer construction. The sewers, officials said, have to go in before anything else. Then Main Street will connect Church Street and the A&P plaza, forming a loop road. Finally, the county will rebuild Route 515 south from Route 95 past the grocery store, building turn lanes and a low barrier between north and south lanes. About a mile west on Route 94, the town's second center, built around the Mountain Creek Resort, is already well underway, with the first 100 units contained in the first section of the Appalachian just a couple of months away from completion. Vernon is the most populous town in Sussex County, with more than 25,000 residents, and, at 68 square miles, is nearly identical in area to Wantage. But before the twin projects began, Vernon had been eligible for Gertrude Stein's line about Oakland: "There is no there there." Getting to Friday, Morrison said, has been the work of probably 30 years, a process that began when earlier governing bodies first started to discuss bringing sewers into the township. "How many councils and committees, how many commissions and studies have there been since then?" she asked rhetorically. The decision to build a town center was made several years ago under a New Jersey law that allowed towns to concentrate development in a central area as a way to preserve open space in the remainder of the community. Township Manager Don Teolis said that Vernon was the last town in the state to gain town center status before the state regulations changed. Since then, Vernon has changed its zoning, increasing lot sizes in most residential areas to five acres and moving to preserve farmland and open space. Although the current construction is the visible sign that a major change in the nature of Vernon is underway, Morrison emphasized it is only the final step of a long process. "The hardest work was done by the people who came earlier," she said. "The easiest leg of the race has been the sprint to the finish line." That didn't diminish the significance of Friday's ceremony. "I'm very proud," she said, "to have served on the council that brought this to its final phase."