New Brunswick's Planning Board has signed off on a site plan that will bring 660 apartments, commercial space and parking garages to a sprawling stretch of Jersey Avenue near the city's NJ Transit station. The approval, submitted by New Brunswick Improvement Owner LLC, lands seven months after the city council and the developer scrapped an earlier plan for a 27,000-square-foot data center on the same property.
The vote arrives roughly four years after the Planning Board first approved a mixed-use vision for the corridor. As mycentraljersey.com reported in 2022, that plan called for 660 residential units alongside 121,000 square feet of commercial space and a parking garage, with approval to consolidate the properties at 90, 100, 120 and 200 Jersey Avenue into two new lots. The city itself had earlier billed the project as a $170 million undertaking that would ultimately bring 660 housing units and a mix of retail and office space, according to a notice posted by cityofnewbrunswick.org.
From Data Center Fight to Public Park
The project's most dramatic pivot came earlier this year. Per Jersey Digs, New Brunswick residents and Rutgers University students opposed the data center plan almost unanimously at a city council meeting on February 18, 2026. The amended redevelopment plan that followed swaps the proposed data center for a public park and caps new construction at four stories, the outlet reported.
The newly approved site plan subdivides the property at 90, 100, 120 and 200 Jersey Avenue into four lots, according to Jersey Digs's report on the approval, which cited a TapInto account of the September 14, 2026 Planning Board vote. The first lot, spanning nearly 5 acres, is slated for a 330-unit building and a 555-space parking deck. The second lot, at 8.05 acres, would hold a second residential building and a 440-car parking deck. A 6.09-acre third lot is designated for roughly 39,000 square feet of flex space with surface parking, while a fourth lot of 4.16 acres, located in the property's southeastern portion, would include a recreation area and pedestrian trail.
Two Four-Story Phases, 1,132 Residential Parking Spaces
The build-out is organized in phases. The first phase calls for a four-story building with 330 apartments along with parking and other site improvements, while a third phase would add a second four-story, 330-unit building with its own surface parking and garage. A second phase in between is set to include commercial space and industrial flex space. Altogether, the proposal includes 1,132 parking spaces for the residential portion and 147 spaces for the commercial portion.
Ten percent of the complex's units — 66 apartments — will be set aside for affordable housing residents, matching the affordable-housing share described in the 2022 approval covered by mycentraljersey.com. The earlier coverage also noted that the commercial space may include office and retail uses alongside surface parking and a parking garage, and that an existing cellular telecommunications antenna and facility are scheduled to be relocated on the site.
Ownership Changed Hands Through Foreclosure
The project's ownership picture has shifted since the city first laid out its vision. Jersey Ave NB Urban Renewal LLC was designated redeveloper of the parcels by the city's housing authority back in 2020, per Jersey Digs, and a housing authority resolution at the time said the redeveloper would invest $170 million to build three buildings. But the properties at 90, 100, 120 and 298 Jersey Avenue changed hands in September 2025 through a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure proceeding, the outlet reported, after the previous owners failed to repay a $27.8 million promissory note that had come due in March 2023.
Boca Raton-based Amzak Capital Management took control through that process. New Brunswick Improvement Owner LLC, the entity that submitted the newly approved site plan, is a subsidiary of Amzak, which the Jersey Digs report describes as the Kazma family's private investment arm with holdings in telecommunications and real estate. The developer and the city had separately agreed to a long-term tax exemption in 2022, according to the seed reporting on the project.
A Much Larger Vision Than Originally Pitched
The scale of the project has grown substantially since its earliest iteration. The 2020 redevelopment resolution described three buildings comprising about 220 units, 1,160 parking spaces, 146,000 square feet of office space, 18,000 square feet of coworking space and 8,000 square feet of retail — a plan that, as the seed reporting notes, never fully materialized. The project's uncertain start and completion dates remain unresolved even with the new approval in hand.
The Jersey Avenue project isn't the only large residential push underway in New Brunswick. The city also approved plans for 530 apartments and 190 townhomes, along with restaurant and retail space, on the 30-acre former Sears property along Route 1, according to mycentraljersey.com's 2022 coverage of the broader development landscape. Jersey Digs also separately noted a conflict in how the Jersey Avenue site's footprint is described, with one of its reports placing the redevelopment plan at 22 acres.
