New Jersey Future has announced the recipients of its 24th annual Smart Growth Awards, recognizing five development projects across the state along with a leadership honoree. According to Real Estate NJ, the Trenton-based nonprofit will present the awards on October 7 at the Newark Museum of Art. The five winning projects span adaptive reuse, affordable housing, transit-oriented development, and brownfield remediation: Audible’s The Pillars in Newark; The Place at Haddonfield, a 100 percent affordable infill development on a former municipal parking lot; the Sanofi Flagship at M Station West in Morristown; The Crossings at Brick Church Station in East Orange; and The Kempson, a former industrial site redevelopment in Metuchen. Separately, CBRE Executive Vice President Gil Medina will receive the 2026 Smart Growth Leadership Award. Medina, a former New Jersey secretary of commerce, also chairs the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and sits on New Jersey Future’s board.
ParkPoint Perspective
The breadth of project types recognized — brownfield remediation, transit-oriented mixed-income housing, adaptive reuse — reflects the range of execution complexity that characterizes responsible infill development in New Jersey’s constrained urban markets. For investors, the pattern is notable: several of the honored projects repurpose underutilized or contaminated sites in walkable, transit-accessible corridors. This suggests that regulatory and community alignment around smart growth principles can unlock land that conventional acquisition screens overlook, though entitlement risk and remediation cost remain material considerations in underwriting such opportunities.
Source: Real Estate NJ