A long stalled corner of downtown Fair Lawn is finally being rebuilt, and the project now has the financing to see it through. Plaza Greene, a mixed use development going up at the site of a former strip mall on Fair Lawn Avenue, has secured a $66.85 million construction loan, JLL announced August 5th, giving the age restricted community the capital it needs to move from groundbreaking to completed building over the next two years.

JLL represented the borrower, a joint venture between Livingston based Sterling Properties and Danbro Properties of Caldwell, in arranging the financing, with the loan itself provided by PCCP and U.S. Bank’s Bridgewater office. The deal closed roughly a month after the project’s official groundbreaking in June, when Governor Mikie Sherrill joined Fair Lawn Mayor Cristina Cutrone, the development team, and local officials at the site to mark the start of construction.

A Transit-Oriented Answer to an Aging Population

Once complete, the four story building will hold 145 apartments restricted to residents 55 and older, including 127 market rate units and 18 designated affordable units, along with underground parking for residents. The project’s location was central to its appeal from the start, sitting immediately adjacent to the Radburn NJ Transit station, a proximity the development team formalized by securing a public access easement directly from NJ Transit. That transit connection, combined with easy access to Route 208, Route 4, Route 17, and Interstate 80, puts downtown Manhattan within roughly twenty miles for residents who want it, while still offering the kind of walkable, small town convenience that has made Fair Lawn a consistently strong performer on regional livability rankings.

The demographic case behind the project is just as significant as the transit access. More than 18 percent of Fair Lawn’s population is 65 or older, according to Census Bureau data, and the borough has been actively working toward recognition as an age friendly community as part of a broader local action plan. Plaza Greene fits squarely into that push, giving longtime Fair Lawn homeowners a way to downsize out of a larger single family home without leaving the community, schools, and social ties they have spent decades building. JLL Senior Managing Director Jim Cadranell, who helped lead the debt advisory team on the deal, said the project fills a critical void in the Bergen County rental market, arguing that the combination of a grocery anchor, luxury apartments, immediate train access, and Fair Lawn’s strong underlying demographics gave lenders exactly the kind of well located, well reasoned construction opportunity they have been looking for.

Bergen County’s First Sprouts Farmers Market

The ground floor of Plaza Greene will hold roughly 24,000 square feet of retail space, with more than 22,000 of that anchored by a new Sprouts Farmers Market, a Phoenix based specialty grocer known for its focus on natural and organic foods. The Fair Lawn store will mark Sprouts’ first location in Bergen County, a notable milestone for a chain that has been expanding steadily across New Jersey, with additional locations already planned or underway in Toms River, Somerset County, Sewell, and East Windsor as part of a broader statewide push that will bring its New Jersey footprint to seven stores by next month.

Beyond the grocery anchor, the development is being positioned with a boutique, hotel style amenity package aimed at residents who want more than a standard apartment building. Plans include a clubroom, fitness studio, spa area, and landscaped courtyard, along with interior finishes such as stainless steel appliances, oversized windows, and walk in closets, the kind of details developers typically reserve for higher end rental product rather than standard age restricted housing.

A Site With a Long, Complicated History

Getting to this point took years. The Plaza Greene site previously housed an aging, L shaped strip mall that had sat underused for years before the borough’s council designated the property in need of redevelopment back in 2020. Danbro and Sterling spent several years negotiating with the site’s previous owners before finally reaching a deal, and the outdated retail building was not demolished until early this year, clearing the way for construction to begin in earnest. Before demolition, the development team even volunteered the vacant property to local emergency responders, who used the empty buildings to run hands on rescue training scenarios ahead of the teardown.

With financing now closed and demolition long since completed, March Construction is serving as general contractor and construction manager on the project, with Minno and Wasko Architects and Urban Planners handling the architectural design. Danbro Properties, which has directed more than 600 million dollars in multifamily development across New Jersey and currently controls a pipeline of roughly 1,200 units statewide, has partnered with Sterling Properties on previous projects including Canterly Place elsewhere in northern New Jersey, giving the joint venture a track record that appears to have factored into lenders’ confidence in the deal. Mayor Cutrone, speaking at the June groundbreaking, described the project as advancing several of the borough’s long term goals at once, from bringing new retail and public gathering space to the corridor to improving pedestrian connections between the train station and downtown, while creating both market rate and affordable housing options tailored specifically to the borough’s older residents.