Kushner Breaks Ground on Controversial Colts Neck Project

Kushner Breaks Ground on Controversial Colts Neck Project

COLTS NECK – Kushner Companies broke ground on its 360-unit residential rental community, Livana Square, previously Colts Neck Manor, after winning a critical state permit that held up the development’s progress for years.

The groundbreaking event was held July 31 at 7 County Route 537, a month after the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) approved a crucial license requirement for the construction of an underground, computer-controlled wastewater treatment facility to be built on the site. The Treatment Works Approval permit was the final obstacle to the project despite ongoing public opposition.

“It’s fair to say that this rezoning and approval process has been a bit controversial,” Michael Sommer, the chief development officer at Kushner Companies, said at the groundbreaking Wednesday morning. Addressing the underlying concerns of residents about the biggest development project in the bucolic township, Sommer said, “We are committed to being responsible members of this community and we will ensure that this will be a first-class operation throughout the development process and beyond. And we’re prepared not just to ask for your trust, but to earn it.”

The construction of Livana Square is expected to begin “immediately” with an anticipated completion date of February 2027.

Pegged as the “first-ever luxury apartment community in Colts Neck” by the developers, Livana Square will have a modern farmhouse design that pays homage to Colts Neck’s equestrian heritage. The plans include 360 rental residences on nearly 40 acres, with a mix of one- , two- and three-bedroom floorplans – some of which will meet affordable housing requirements – across 15 three-story buildings. The project will have a clubhouse, co-working spaces, outdoor recreation areas, a dog park and the underground Amphidrome septic system that caused the most consternation for several Monmouth County residents and environmentalists.

The Amphidrome is an advanced, computer-controlled, underground septic system almost the size of a soccer field. It has come under public scrutiny for its potential threat to Monmouth County’s drinking water supply. The property abuts the state-designated critical-1 freshwater stream Yellow Brook, which feeds into the Swimming River Reservoir. The reservoir supplies drinking water to nearly 300,000 Monmouth County residents.

However, Buddy Pinkava, president of Marlin Construction Services, working with Kushner’s in-house construction company on the project, said Amphidrome systems are not new and have been built in the region and nearby. “We’ve built four of them in Monmouth County,” Pinkava said. “This would be the largest, but it’s basically, it’s the same process for each system, and they’ve all been working very efficiently.”

Because the septic system has a “very large holding” capacity in case of any wastewater effluent overflow, it will “not impact the Yellow Brook,” he said.

The groundbreaking event comes after Kushner Companies spent almost a decade seeking government approvals for the underground sewage treatment system.

The project was announced in 2006 and called for 48 townhomes with approximately 14,400 gallons of wastewater per day. The approved project will nearly quadruple the state’s limit of allowed wastewater disposal from 20,000 to 71,500 gallons a day. The state approved the increase in March.

The TWA permit, signed June 20, 2024, is valid for two years and can be extended for up to five years. According to details mentioned in the permit approval letter obtained by The Two River Times from the NJDEP, the Amphidrome system “is being accepted by the NJDEP based on the applicant (Kushner Companies) engineering design, experience, review of case studies of similar facilities and professional engineering judgment that the proposed system will adhere to the required effluent limits” approved by the state.

The letter further noted that “any failure within the system or improper functioning of the treatment units as designed will require reevaluation and replacement of the system as needed, and all discharge of the effluent must be stopped immediately until all issues are resolved.”

Before the developer could receive state approval, the project had to be greenlit at the township and county levels.

The Colts Neck Township Committee approved the expanded project to avoid a builders’ remedy lawsuit from Kushner Companies in 2021. A builder’s remedy lawsuit is legal action by a developer to force a municipality to allow higher-density developments than its zoning laws permit. In 2021, then-planning board member David Kostka, who also chaired the township’s environmental commission, said the decision was “very difficult.”

At the county level, the Monmouth County Commissioners had to amend the county’s Water Quality Management Plan (WQMP), which ensures clean drinking water for all, to accommodate the needs of the project. In February, the commissioners passed a site-specific amendment to the WQMP, allowing the application to qualify for the last leg of state permits.

Regardless of all the resistance, proponents of the project spoke of its benefits.

Residents, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters, engineers and others testified to the project’s shortcomings at every level of government. Many banded together to form the grassroots group Concerned Citizens to fight the project.

Concerned Citizens challenged the state permits, arguing the NJDEP based its decisions on the developer’s “self-certified” engineer who “misrepresented site conditions” in the material they submitted to the NJDEP. The group commissioned a report in early March from an independent hydrologist who confirmed and identified serious issues with the underground septic system.

According to the report, local soils would obstruct proper wastewater treatment and likely cause untreated discharge, such as fecal coliform bacteria, to surface in the Yellow Brook tributary “rather than percolate to aquifer levels as intended.” The report also warned the proposed system could not remove all contaminants. “Most alarmingly,” the report cautions, in case of a system failure, the onsite wastewater treatment system operator would have “less than a day to restore the system to operation or risk a major overflow of raw sewage on slopes above Yellow Brook.”

During the groundbreaking event Wednesday morning, Colts Neck Deputy Mayor Tara Torchia Buss acknowledged the concerns expressed by some residents. “A lot of people don’t like change,” she said, but mentioned there are many others who don’t want the “burden of homeownership” and are excited about the project. “A lot of people have these big homes, big pieces of property, and they want to rent but they don’t want to leave their town. So, I do think that there is a need here.”

Torchia Buss noted that the township has been working to address its affordable housing obligations, with the Livana Square development being one component of that effort.

Torchia Buss said she is reassured by the fail-safes in place for the septic system. If the “monitoring stations go off, then there’s protocols in place,” she said and, given the joint resources of the township, county and the developer, “there’s a lot of support here if something does happen.” The monitoring by NJDEP is “very involved,” she said, and the township’s permitting process inspections “will continue throughout the project and after. It’s a project that everybody will have eyes on, not just during the construction, but when people start moving in.”

Marianne Cucolo, the founder of Concerned Citizens, attended the groundbreaking. She said she hopes the project “works out” for the community.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Cucolo said.