Mack-Cali CEO Mitchell Hersh said “the jury is still out” as to whether municipalities are learning to lay out the welcome mat to multi-family developers. His company is in the midst of a massive portfolio shift from primarily office holdings to multi-family.

“Several municipalities are moving to create overlay zoning, creating neighborhoods that are microcosms, with some office as well as multi-family, particularly in transit-oriented areas,” Hersh noted to the crowd of more than 400 real estate professionals. Hersh said antipathy to any development that might add school-age children to the population appears to be unyielding in other locales, however.

“It is a political issue,” Hersh said. In many of the state's more than 560 localities, he said, “people get very accustomed to the quality of life – and they fear change.” He said developers have to proceed with educating municipal leaders and residents concerning the different nature of “today's tenants – Millennials, young, well-educated, professionals, empty-nesters, etc...”

Eric Witmondt, CEO of Woodmont Properties, said anti-apartment sentiment is a carryover from long ago, the 1950s through the 1970s when some towns had “bad experiences” with willy-nilly construction. “There is still a barrier” in some places because of this, he said.

Actually, said Carl Goldberg, who heads the Roseland apartment-development division of Mack-Cali, the picture varies significantly from municipality to municipality. Before Roseland was acquired, Goldberg recounted, his company had a “long and difficult history” with a multi-family project in Parsippany, where attitudes were “tainted” against apartment development.

On the other hand, Golberg said, “We built a project in Verona, and five years ago when we asked if we could build a second, the mayor said: 'When can I do the ribbon-cutting?

Both Woodmont Properties and the AvalonBay Communities are surging ahead with multi-family development in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania, panelists noted.

“In some of our deals in the Philadelphia area, they want school-age children, because they now have schools with empty desks,” said Ronald Ladell of AvalonBay. By contrast, he said, it is a foregone conclusion that planning for one-child-per-unit will not be approved in most New Jersey communities.