NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ-Final construction documents are completed and construction has begun on New Brunswick Gateway Transit Village, a 24-story, $150-million, 632,000-square-foot mixed-use building in Downtown New Brunswick.

Developers New Brunswick Development Corp. and Philadelphia-based Pennrose Properties expect the project, located at the intersection of Somerset Street and Easton Avenue adjacent to the New Brunswick train station, to be completed in June 2012. The project, being designed by New York City-based Meltzer/Mandl Architects, will include a pedestrian bridge linking the train platform with the main campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, which is located directly across the street.

“This is a remarkable Transit-Oriented Development project in many ways,” says David G. Carpenter, a partner and executive vice president at Meltzer/Mandl. “It’s being built atop a very steep site (including a 23-foot difference in grade), so extraordinarily careful and detailed preparations and calculations had to be made to insure that the various levels would be built in a way to provide just the right access for pedestrians and vehicles alike. The best TODs encourage less reliance on the automobile by clustering modes of mass transport with living, working and shopping spaces. It’s a model for the future.”