Government

Seaside Park Residents Voice Concern Over Parking Lot Designated for Future Affordable Housing

by
Daniel Nee
March 6, 2026

The property at 1901-19 N. Ocean Avenue, Seaside Park. (Google Earth)

A property in Seaside Park that is currently a private parking lot would be eligible to be developed with affordable housing over the next ten years, though no actual proposals to do so have been filed. The designation raised concerns from some neighboring residents at a borough council meeting Thursday night.

While Seaside Park has virtually no developable land for future affordable housing projects, it is still required to promulgate an affordable housing plan to comply with the controversial Mt. Laurel doctrine imposed by the state. After filing its plan last year, the borough faced a challenge from the Fair Share Housing Center, an activist group that filed challenges against virtually every municipality in the entire state to force the creation of overlay zones that would allow multifamily housing to be developed with affordable units should property owners wish to do so.

Of the more than 400 municipalities that fought the group’s challenge, all but 12 reached settlements which were managed by a cadre of seven retired judges and land use experts appointed by the courts. The 12 municipalities that did fight the challenges ultimately lost, and recently had their cases re

jected for constitutional review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Seaside Park was among the hundreds that reached a settlement, ultimately designated a single swath of block and lots – primarily consisting of 1901-19 N. Ocean Avenue, a hard-packed gravel parking lot for Funtown Beach – as part of an inclusionary overlay zone.

The properties, known as the tax map as Block 91, Lots 24-27, Lots 34-54, are located within the R-5 zone, which requires single-family homes on 50-by-100 foot lots. But the settlement with the Fair Share Housing Center effectively forced the borough to place what is known as an overlay zone on top of the underlying zone, which would allow 26 units of multifamily residential housing to be built there if 11 units were dedicated as income-restricted. A notional multifamily complex would have a height limit of three stories or 35-feet and would be required to include sufficient off-street parking for residents that complies with state standards.

The property at 1901-19 N. Ocean Avenue, Seaside Park. (Google Earth)

Several residents of Farragut Avenue, off which the bulk of the property is located, voiced concerns about multifamily housing and income-restricted units being built in what they had long known to be a zone where only single-family homes would be permitted if the owner of the parking lot ever decided to sell the land. Without using so many words, officials indicated their hands were tied by the aggressive challenge by the activist group.

The question always comes up, ‘why did you pick this area?'” said Municipal Planner Kendra Lelie. “The law is clear … it has to be a property that may be redeveloped in the next ten years. When we were looking at properties, we looked at churches and those types of things.”

None of those properties, however, could realistically be redeveloped, she explained. In what Lelie characterized as a “stringent” insistence by the Fair Share Housing Center, the parking lot property was effectively the only parcel in the entire borough that qualified since it is a vacant property that could support sufficient parking for a multifamily development.

Borough officials said there was no indication that the property owner was interested in either selling or redeveloping the property. There are no proposals to do so, nor have there ever been, and even if the owner was interested in developing the land, they could still choose to use the underlying zoning and build what would be 11 single-family homes. The zoning overlay insisted-upon by the Fair Share Housing Center as part of the settlement, however, would allow for the multifamily development. In the absence of the settlement, Mayor John Peterson explained, the borough could have faced a so-called “builder’s remedy” lawsuit in which a developer could use the courts to force a much more intensive affordable housing project to be built on either that parcel or another in town.

“The state has mandated this against every municipality,” Peterson said, noting that fighting the challenge rather than settling it would use “great resources with a very limited opportunity to prevail.” It was at this point where the mayor noted the unsuccessful objections by the 12 municipalities in state courts and the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court against hearing the case on federal grounds.

“The town has been wrestling with the issue and the mandate for the better part of the year,” said Peterson. “A number of different options were weighed very carefully, and that entailed a process that was going on through this year.”

The borough council ultimately passed the creation of the zoning overlay, as well as an enabling ordinance, unanimously.