Hope New Jersey

As urban sprawl continues to spread out along Route 80 from New York City towards the Delaware Water Gap, Hope is balanced between growth and preservation, between the highway and the landscape.

Hope boasts many things to be proud of: an unspoiled landscape of rolling hills, farmland, and forest, excellent access to the interstate highway system, and a gorgeous historic Moravian Village settlement dating to the 19th century. However, despite these tremendous assets, Hope Township faces several challenges:

• The Township has almost no commercial rateable activities, and the municipal budget is strained to provide services. Farmland conservation and preservation is a high priority for the community, to preserve the historic and agricultural heritage. However, the cost of acquiring rights to all the land available for development is prohibitive. The Village Center contains many beautiful and historic homes, but it is also incomplete, with gaps in the village fabric. It needs to be reinforced with new, context-sensitive infill development, both commercial and residential.
• Large parcels of land around the Route 80 interchange are vulnerable to development that could be incompatible with the character and history of the community, and could draw vitality out of the downtown.

For Hope – and other communities across New Jersey – the critical question is how can a community reconcile new development with open space preservation?

This report offers three categories of recommendations to address these challenges.

• To preserve the rural character of the community and its landscapes, Hope should move to protect its most critical agricultural lands. The report provides an open space assessment that the Farmland Preservation Committee used to prioritize 3,263 acres of land in three areas. In addition to other farmland acquisition programs, a financing strategy explains how a Planning Initiative Grant will provide fiscal tools to acquire and protect this land.
• To reinforce the Village Center and increase linkages to the interstate highway, Hope should plan for complementary growth in these areas. The report analyzes different strategies for the land around the Route 80 interchange, demonstrating how fiscal impacts can be balanced against aesthetic concerns. Different types of development around the interchange can support the town character and create new linkages if there are controls on building placement, setbacks from critical view sheds, sensitive treatment of environmental resources, and limits on the amount of land which can be developed. In the Village Center, the report demonstrates the benefits of infill development, including a small hotel or inn.
• To balance budgets in coming years, Hope should shift away from its over-reliance on the residential tax base, which approaches 90 percent if farms are included. The proposed development alternatives are evaluated for fiscal impact, which illustrates how commercial development can be balanced with other types, such as attractive townhouses, which would also have positive impacts on the municipal budget.

Hope’s goals of open space and development analyses can complement each other. These goals can be met by innovative planning and zoning techniques, including conservation subdivisions or clustered site planning, overlay zoning to deal with complex sites, and design guidelines.

Perhaps most importantly, Hope should investigate the potential to use Transfers of Development Rights (TDRs) to balance growth and preservation. Regional Plan Association’s analysis tests two redevelopment scenarios for the village and interchange, including fiscal impacts. They demonstrate how Hope can generate significant funds to preserve its farmland by shifting residential development to the interchange parcels of land.