New Jersey Still No Developer Picnic

EDISON, NJ–Even with a new “business-friendly” governor at the helm, there’s no shortage of government problems the real estate community deals with. Multiple speakers at a “Business Issues Update” meeting from the New Jersey chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties pointed to these problems.

Susan Karp, partner at Farer Fersko, spoke about the new prevailing wage law as it related to brownfield remediation as a current issue. Developers can get up to 75% of the remediation costs from the State, a program that has greatly sparked remediation. Applying prevailing wage laws, she said, jumps the labor cost of remediation by up to 25%, making remediation harder to pencil out. “It brings us to conflicting public policies,” she said.

A new “Mansion Tax” puts a 1% tax on most properties over $1 million, including most commercial properties, said James Helmus, executive director of the Schonbraun McCann Group. Also, changes to the popular Urban Enterprise Zone procedure will make it harder for small businesses to utilize the zone’s benefits.