Valley Street's New Plan Is Modeled on the Block With the Bakery

The counter glass at The Able Baker's new South Orange shop came from somewhere else first. It once stood in the old Town Hall Delicatessen on South Orange Avenue, and local handyman Paul Lewis moved it to the bakery's second location at 209 Valley Street, The Village Green reported when the shop soft-opened on July 9. Owner Julie Pauly made it official on July 29 with a ribbon cutting at the corner of Fourth Street. The shop is open 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and the original Maplewood Avenue location, open since October 2011, keeps running.

Ten weeks after that ribbon cutting, the South Orange Village Council voted unanimously on Monday, October 12, to adopt the revised Valley Street Redevelopment Plan. The two events are related. The plan's streetscape rules are drawn from buildings already standing on the corridor, including the one that now holds the bakery, so the plan works as a set of instructions for the rest of the street to look like that corner.

The Corner the Plan Copied

At the October Planning Board meeting where the plan advanced, Board Planner and Zoning Officer Greer Patras said its corridor-wide streetscape standards were based on built projects at 3rd and Valley, 4th and Valley and "the storage facility," TAPinto SOMA reported. Those standards cover tree pits and their spacing, benches, lighting, bike racks and loading. They also call for six-foot sidewalks with three feet of planting between the walkway and the curb, which is meant to make a county road easier to walk.

Two storefronts at 209 Valley show what that looks like when someone actually walks in. The Able Baker sells cakes, breads, pies, Julie-O's, poptarts, scones and decorated cookies, plus coffee. Playa Bowls, which serves bowls, smoothies and juices, lists the same address and posts daily hours. Next door at 215 Valley, Dr. Fix-It's Home Design Studios appears in the South Orange Downtown directory. Food, a quick stop and a design showroom now sit on one short stretch, all at street level with windows facing the sidewalk.

That street-level detail is what the plan now requires on the rest of the corridor.

What the Plan Asks of Every Ground Floor

Patras organized the plan around three parts, according to TAPinto SOMA: streetscape activation, expanded housing opportunities and the corridor-wide streetscape standards described above. Here is what the first two mean for the sidewalk:

• An active ground-floor requirement. Ground floors in designated areas have to engage the street.
• More allowed uses. The plan adds "neighborhood production," described as low-impact maker spaces, tool libraries and similar uses. Patras said the market had been looking for more creative uses than the old B-1, B-2 and B-3 zoning allowed.
• Transparency standards. Those new uses have to meet them, for example with large windows that invite people in.
• Small-scale housing rules. The plan makes existing nonconforming one- and two-family homes legal, sets standards for "missing middle" buildings of two to eight units, permits townhouses in certain areas and applies the Village's affordable housing requirements across the corridor.
• Home-based creator spaces and small-business incubators. Patras pointed to provisions that allow them as long as they don't disturb neighbors.

The plan also requires on-site stormwater management for what it calls local major developments. That applies state DEP-level standards to smaller projects, an approach already tested on the 185 Church Street townhouse development. The Village Green reported that feedback from an August Town Hall shaped the revisions, including stronger stormwater requirements, historic preservation protections and better sustainability standards.

Mayor Sheena Collum described the document's scope at the adoption vote. "It establishes the framework for future redevelopment, including permitted uses, building heights, design standards, streetscape improvements, and other requirements consistent with our adopted master plan, which was completed in 2021," she said, as reported by The Village Green. The paper noted she called it a planning and zoning document, not a proposal or approval for any specific project. Patras made the same point to the Planning Board: the plan isn't prescriptive, and each site plan still has to come before the board, show it complies and request any deviations it needs.

The Village posted the September revised plan and a summary of public input on its website. The process started long before this fall. Patras said the corridor was designated an area in need of redevelopment more than ten years ago, and the 2018–2021 master plan process gathered roughly 6,000 points of public feedback. When the October 12 hearing opened, nobody spoke on the ordinance, even though the room was packed for another item on the agenda, the Village's ban on gas-powered leaf blowers.

The Landmark Going a Different Direction

A few doors down from the bakery, 219 Valley Street shows how much the plan leaves open. The five-story building has housed South Orange Storage and Flexible Warehousing. Essex News Daily reported that Rimback Storage began building it in 1926 and finished in 1929, and that the same family has owned it since 1959. The Village Green, citing the company's website, put the business in South Orange as far back as 1889.

This summer the owners opened all five floors to the public for a final sale of furniture, antiques, artwork, rugs and vintage collectibles, and they planned to close at the end of the summer. Essex News Daily reported that the property has been sold and is scheduled to be redeveloped as part of a future electrical infrastructure project. The Village Green identified the buyer as PSE&G. In early July, Village Administrator Julie Doran told the paper that no demolition permits had been applied for and that any demolition would require review by the land use board, unless the structure is unsafe.

The planned future use of 219 Valley is electrical infrastructure. Whatever is proposed there still has to go through the same land use review as everything else on the corridor.

Station to Grocery Store, Address by Address

Valley Street already has a mix of long-running businesses, recent openings and a few that are hard to place in either group. Here is the corridor in street-number order as of this fall:

The Stop & Shop remodel is the change most people on Valley Street will notice day to day. At the June 26 reopening, the company said the store had added more than 800 new products, expanded its multicultural selection to more than 300 items, including more Latin and Caribbean products, and enlarged its grab-and-go deli section. The Village Green noted that shoppers joked about not being able to find things in the new layout, and the paper suggested asking the manager for a tour.

Just past the Valley Street corridor, in Seton Village, Tropical Juice Bar opened September 26 at 401 Irvington Avenue with juices, smoothies and Caribbean- and Dominican-inspired food, The Setonian reported. The business confirmed it was officially open in an October 6 post.

Where the Next Decisions Get Made

The plan sets the rules, but the Planning Board decides on each project, one site plan at a time. The board's next regular meeting is Monday, November 2, at 7 p.m. Several nearby applications were carried to that night or remain under review, including a proposal for 15 units at 36–40 Cottage Street that first had to go before the Historic Preservation Commission on October 15, according to TAPinto SOMA.

Before that meeting, the season's outdoor calendar wraps up close to the corridor. Spooky Spiotta runs Sunday, October 25, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Spiotta Park, with a free costume contest, a Halloween obstacle course, face painting and trick-or-treat stations. The South Orange Farmers Market has its last Wednesday of the year on October 28, from 1 to 6 p.m. in the Sloan Street Parking Lot at 12 Sloan Street, rain or shine.

The plan described here is a zoning framework. This post is general information, not legal advice, so anyone weighing a project on Valley Street should confirm how the plan applies with the Village and their own attorney or land use professional.

If you're watching Valley Street change and wondering how this year's openings and the new plan might shape your South Orange real estate plans, Richa Garg is glad to share what she's seeing in the local market, calmly and in detail. Book an Appointment to start the conversation.

^{Photo Courtesy: https://www.southorange.org/}