Lopatcong Township’s Planning Board is digging into a full reexamination of its master plan, with data centers at the center of the fight over how the township should grow. The review kicked off after the board found a council-backed ban on data centers didn’t line up with the township’s existing development rules, setting off months of meetings over whether to rewrite the plan or just patch it.
The board voted on June 24 to find Ordinance 2606 — a council-introduced measure that would prohibit data centers as permitted uses in the township’s research-office-manufacturing zone — inconsistent with Lopatcong’s master plan, according to Citizen Portal. That vote authorized the master-plan reexamination now underway. Citizen Portal’s report on that meeting identified the document in question as the township’s 2012 master plan, while TAPinto has reported that Lopatcong’s master plan was last updated in 1989 — a discrepancy the available records don’t resolve.
Board Opens Formal Review, Takes Its Time
The planning board formally opened its periodic reexamination of the master plan at an Aug. 26 meeting, per Citizen Portal’s account of township proceedings. By the board’s Sept. 23 meeting, members had taken no action on the reexamination, TAPinto reported. Board attorney James Bryce told the board that September session that the panel was still in the process of reexamining the master plan.
Planning board member Robert Samson said the board needs direction for the reexamination and asked planner Dan Bloch to develop a work plan, according to the same TAPinto report. Samson also said identifying clear goals could help the board avoid getting stuck arguing about warehouses. Bloch said the board should focus on the reexamination first and consider a full master-plan rewrite only if that process turns up a lot of needed changes, Bloch said at the September meeting, according to TAPinto.
Staff Points Back to Decades-Old Goals
At a later meeting, township staff presented a draft reexamination report and asked the board to review goals and objectives drawn from the 1989 plan and the reexaminations that followed it, Citizen Portal reported. Board members also discussed whether to strip data centers from the master plan entirely to bring it in line with the council’s ordinance, with legal exposure and public-notice requirements emerging as a focal point of that conversation, per the same outlet’s coverage.
Engineer Adam Wisnewski said any funds budgeted for a new master plan would go toward legal review or other professional review work, TAPinto reported. A full rewrite, if the board goes that route, may cost between $30,000 and $40,000, according to Bryce, as reported by TAPinto.
Six Empty Parcels Already Ready to Build
At the Oct. 28 meeting, the planning board discussed vacant parcels that could be developed without any changes to current zoning regulations, per a planner’s statement reported by TAPinto. Planner Jaqueline Fernandez told the board that Lopatcong has six parcels of land unencumbered by wetlands or streams, meaning they could move to development relatively quickly under the rules as they stand now.
That detail underscores what’s at stake in the board’s broader review: even as officials debate rewriting the plan’s goals around data centers and warehouses, land already cleared of major environmental constraints sits ready for applications. The Rutgers University Libraries catalog describes the Lopatcong master plan in broad terms, as a study of population estimates, economic potential and the physical development of homes, business, industry, streets, recreation, schools and public buildings that the document is meant to project into the future.
A Statewide Pattern of Warehouse Pushback
Lopatcong isn’t alone in wrestling with how much industrial and logistics development its zoning should allow. Wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing employed 12.2% of New Jersey’s workforce as of 2018, the highest share of any state, according to New Jersey Future. The group also reported that container volume moving through the Port of New York and New Jersey had climbed 19% since 2016, fueling demand for warehouse space statewide. About 65,000 acres of New Jersey land were devoted to industrial use as of 2015, or 4.1% of all developed land in the state, per the same report. New Jersey’s transportation, logistics and distribution sector employed almost 400,000 people — 11.6% of the private-sector workforce — in 2017, according to NJ Spotlight News.
Nearby White Township offers a glimpse of how contentious these fights can get. In 2020, White Township planners considered slashing maximum industrial building coverage from 35% to 5%, a change that would have also stripped warehouses and office buildings from the list of permitted uses in certain industrial districts, according to lehighvalleylive.com. Township engineers estimated that full industrial buildout at the higher coverage limit would generate 32,400 additional vehicle trips during peak hours, compared with about 4,200 trips under the tighter restriction — an 87% reduction. Around the same period, White Township’s Planning Board had instructed a subcommittee to draft a master-plan amendment allowing 2.8 million square feet of warehouse space, with another 2 million square feet proposed on an adjoining parcel, NJ Spotlight News reported.
A Possible New Tool From Trenton
State lawmakers, meanwhile, are considering legislation that could give municipalities another pathway for these kinds of reviews. Senate Bill 2960, as described in its committee statement from the New Jersey Legislature, would allow a municipality seeking preferential status for certain state financial assistance to direct its planning board to conduct a special reexamination of its master plan and development regulations. Under the bill, if that special reexamination report recommended changes, the governing body would have to accept, reject or modify those recommendations by resolution and direct the planning board to begin the amendment process. The bill was pre-filed for the 2026-2027 legislative session and remained pending technical review as of the committee statement, according to the Legislature’s own documentation.
For now, Lopatcong’s process continues under its existing rules. The township’s official schedule, posted by Lopatcong Township, lists Planning Board meetings on Sept. 23 and Oct. 28 at 7 p.m., with the township noting that adopted minutes prepared by the board secretary and approved by the board serve as the official record of what happens at each session.
