Sweetwater Continues to Ride Multifamily Wave – According to Dodge Report, for the first half of 2018 NY Metro Commercial and Multifamily Construction is #1 in US, and multifamily housing, in particular, is up 22% from 2017. Sweetwater is presently engaged in the construction of 470 units in 3 locations around New Jersey.
With another 2 in preconstruction, and 3 others finished recently, Sweetwater’s general construction teams have been busy with multifamily development all over New Jersey. The latest project completed is a bank of 8 faculty townhomes for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
In Evesham, Sweetwater is engaged as Construction Manager for the construction of 5 apartment buildings totaling 433,000 square feet of living space. The Residences at Renaissance Square is a development that includes the renovation of an adjacent shopping center with more than 950 parking spaces for residents and retail.
In Jersey City, a 5-story structure containing 4 stories of residential units, a grade level of amenities and underground parking is being built by Sweetwater. The Pine Street Lofts apartments will boast a mix of unit types and a roof terrace.
The Cobalt Apartments in downtown Somerville were completed in 2017 by Sweetwater and client, Weiss Properties. This was the 2nd multifamily project Sweetwater has completed for Weiss. With a focus on the revitalization and redevelopment of Somerville as a transit village, a third project – The Davenport – will break ground in October. It will have 60 units and multiple amenities in a 5-story building with 68 underground parking spaces.
“We expect the boom in Sweetwater’s multifamily construction business will continue for the next several years”, says Gary Coopersmith, Sweetwater’s EVP of Business Development and Preconstruction. “A January 2017 ruling by the NJ Supreme Court states that townships can no longer reject applications from developers to build affordable housing. The towns had successfully fought this requirement for several years, creating a backlog of needs for more affordable housing. Now they are compelled by the courts to allow new construction of multifamily complexes. With 20 percent of apartment units needing to be designed as affordable, there is a multiplier effect on the total backlog for some years to come.”
See NJ.com’s article, N.J. Needs to Build 155,000 Affordable Housing Units, for more information on this subject.